A person’s left hand in a protective rubber glove holding up an empty, dirty single-use plastic water bottle in front of a pristine beach, presumably there collecting trash.
Photo by Brian Yurasits on Unsplash

Convenient, Low-Barrier Ways to Make Sustainable Changes

One doesn’t have to be a tree-hugger to do the planet a solid.

Liss Campbell
6 min readJun 4, 2022

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Living a more sustainable life requires behavioral changes. Progress can’t be made without a conscious decision to act differently and shift our habits.

In order to make a new habit stick, it has to mimic the original one as closely as possible.

There are plenty of sustainable alternatives I’ve experimented with over the years that have not stuck. Of the items that worked, they didn’t stick because the behavioral shift was too extreme for me to keep it consistent.

I’m going to call a spade a spade: convenience is a major factor in making (or not making) a sustainable choice.

Single-use plastics and packaging were invented for the sole purpose of convenience (and being super cheap to manufacture and ship).

So any product that, in this tree-hugger’s opinion, has any hope of becoming widespread has to have convenience factored in.

The products that achieve creature comforts sustainably are by far the easiest first steps one can take to live more eco-consciously.

Baby steps make small changes manageable and consistent. Changing everything all at once can make us feel like…

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Liss Campbell

Nature obsessor, desert dweller, gastropod admirer, and oxford comma lover.