As a gardener I am super lucky to be able to be outside in the flow doing something I enjoy.

One of our Horticultural lectures was a ‘sustainability in practice challenge’ which motivated me to take the sustainability in practice certificate. I reflected on my lifestyle to see where I could make changes and improvements and used these points to create a poster. I started by thinking about the most important things in life – coffee and chocolate.

Making small changes to be sustainable starts with an awareness of the resources we use every day and how to reduce/reuse and recycle these resources.

Every day we make choices and each one makes a difference especially if that choice is a sustainable one –  There are 17 sustainable development goals to choose from – maybe try something fair trade today?

I agree with Victoria Hoff, April 2018 https://thethirty.whowhatwear.com/how-to-be-more-sustainable who said “In reality, every little bit counts. Objects as seemingly innocuous as bottle caps and straws can disrupt entire ecosystems, so why is it so hard to believe that on the flip side, we can’t enact positive change in the countless choices we make every day? Living a more sustainable lifestyle can be as simple as swapping your water bottle for a reusable variety or promising to only buy your eggs and produce from the farmers market. Adopting just one of these habits is an incredibly positive thing—and chances are that once it becomes a ritual, you’ll start to think about what else you can do.”

My next aim is to no longer get paper receipts from cash machines because  “250 million gallons of oil, 10 million trees, and 1 billion gallons of water are used each year just to create receipts—and that’s not even accounting for the fact that most of them end up in the trash. Anyway, do you really need that extra wad at the bottom of your bag?”(Hoff V)

-This blog post was written by Kat Luki, a Horticulture student in the Animal, Rural and Environmental Science School,  Many thanks from the Green Academy!  

Want to write a blog post that’s featured on this site? Email us your ideas today at GreenAcademy@ntu.ac.uk!