Is Sustainable Living Expensive?

Sustainable living is not expensive unless you opt for a sustainable living product that is made with unique or super-rare material at a fairly remote place.

Sustainable living means trying to live in a way that lessens our use of the Earth’s natural resources. Sustainable living means you spend less as you are minimizing the waste, like zero waste of product, reduce your energy consumption, and use less water, electricity, and fossil fuels. It is still totally possible to live a sustainable lifestyle on a budget and get the best from your experience, making every penny count. I wanted to share some of my favorite simple sustainability tips.

opting green alternatives for every single product

Living Sustainable is about reducing what we buy, reusing what we have, and reimagining our dependence rather than just rebranding them. Living sustainability never promotes us that we need a green alternative for every single product we should leave off.

Like a reusable metal, straw is better for marine life than a single used plastic one. But honestly who needs a straw? (some people need one to avoid smudging lipstick) creating and shipping a metal object halfway across the world for no particularly good reason is an unnecessary usage of energy and resource, a solution to a problem that for most people doesn’t exist. Before you buy, ask yourself if you really need it. Sustainable living is beyond shopping and buying unnecessary items.

Tip:  Understand that sustainable living is made up of the things we have done, not the things we have bought.

Read a label carefully 

One of the great ways to check the hidden cost of a product you come across is the label. If a shirt is assembled in Australia and is made with 60% natural fibers! But when you stop and understand it, what does that really mean? Is the “sustainable” part of this “sustainable brand ” even clear? This brand will definitely be costlier than your local sustainable alternative, prefer a local brand made with sustainable, plant-based materials like linen and silk or made of 100% recyclable polyester. 

Tip: Choose timeless, elegant, local, well-cut pieces with good measure clothes that are made to last, for a reasonable result.

Avoid overpackaging

Packaging can make things more convenient to take on the go but it costs more to your pocket. Stop and consider before buying these single-item packages like plastic-wrapped Bananas, bananas already come in a tough – and biodegradable! – natural packaging.

You wondered if the plastic was really about being able to charge more for the same fruit. Similar to pre warped corn, shoppers remove its hearty natural packaging, rinse it off, then cover it back up with non-natural packaging. Avoid buying the product that is already covered in plastic, that will definitely be expensive.

Tip: Consider, think, and Shop for naked products to draw attention to the waste of unneeded packaging.  

 Reasonable with organic products

The organic price tag more closely reflects the true cost of growing the food like substituting labor and intensive management for chemicals, the health and environmental costs of which are borne by society. It’s also important to note that you don’t need to buy all foods organic aisles like bananas. The thick skin of the banana serves as a protective shield against pesticides, so the pulp is healthy enough to consume on its own. 

Save your money for the other organic produce and buy the conventional versions of these- avocado, cabbage, onions, asparagus, kiwis, and papayas, pineapples too, with thick skin, that builds up pesticides on the outside while the actual fruit remains intact and generally pesticide-free.

In the category of vegetables, not all foods are alike in their level of pesticide treatment. For instance, broccoli is not generally treated with pesticides, though consumers still have the option of buying organic at the grocery store. Other foods like sweet bell peppers, apples, grapes, cherries, and plums are worth the extra amount of money. Fruits such as grapes have little defense against pesticides and are more prone to contain a high level of chemical residue. while peaches are the worst offenders, containing the highest level of pesticides out of any other common fruit or vegetable. They are followed by apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, strawberries, cherries, kale, and lettuce.

Tip: Try to get most of your organic food from farmers’ markets. You’ll be supporting local farmers and purchasing the food at a reduced price since you’re cutting out the middle-man retailer.

 Buy local to avoid shipping and logistics cost

Whether you’re sourcing in your own country or abroad, the transport logistics of your goods from the factory to your warehouse imply additional costs. These are usually known as freight and shipping. You see, all shipping costs something. The heavier the product, the more it costs to ship it. Domestic shipping is usually cheaper because one company processes the package. In the case of international shipping communication between various branches is required. Also, not all products could be shipped on a regular basis.

Tip: Remember the customs and import taxes are one of the compulsory things in every state. Only the total sum per person is different. It adds to the product price a lot. Some countries may try to protect local manufacturers using those taxes.

Exclusivity and social status

One of the most obvious reasons sustainable brands seem expensive is you’re paying for the brand name. The sustainable industry is all about exclusivity and social status. People wear sustainable brands for quality, but also because they want others to know they are wearing sustainable name brand clothing. If it wasn’t about the brand names and labels, prices wouldn’t matter, and neither would fashion.

Tip: Sustainable living NEVER  pushes you to over-consume and make us crave what we do not have.

Buy More things for Replaced Items

The concept of living a sustainable lifestyle sounds great. However, When people are looking for a sustainable solution to their lifestyle or are jumping into sustainability for the sake of it, they end up spending more money by purchasing items or services to help them and get rid of their habit. It could be so emotionally stressful that you got rid of all your favorite stuff or old habits that you buy more things to cover up the hurt. Or, you may spend time and money trying to recover the items that you just got rid of.

Tip: you’ll need to invest time and energy and hard-earned cash to those things that are truly useful, or truly inspire you and bring sustainable joy into your life. 

Sustainable living is about having the “right” things rather than expensive things, Quality over quantity is a popular phrase, especially in living sustainably. It’s easy to own just one piece of nice technology—a laptop, for example—if you’re not constantly worried it will break and you won’t have the money to repair it. You are worth spending the extra money to have quality items. And the thing is, often it’s not even extra money. It’s a higher initial outlay, but far less in the long term. 

The same goes for so many things, quality shoes, underwear, clothes, electrical items… quality trumps quantity every single time.  

Why Do You Want to Be a sustainable lifestyle?

Ultimately, if you want to embrace a sustainable lifestyle, you’ll need to have a fair and clear reason why you have to start sustainable living?

You really need to ask yourselves: Why starting a sustainable lifestyle? If you don’t have a valid reason you’ll be right back to where you started. You have to be really conscious of what you’re trying to achieve a sustainable lifestyle.

You should ask yourself: Are you changing who you are by getting rid of your unsustainable habits or are you working towards a better version of yourself? What other reasons do you have for sustainable living?