Sunshine’s finally here, and South London is buzzing!
But while we’re all about enjoying those long summer days, let’s not forget about keeping our corner of the city vibrant and sustainable.
Here are our five favourite tips for a summer that’s light for the environment (and your wallet!), and heavy on good vibes:
1. Two Wheels, Zero Emissions: Embrace Cycling in South London
South London’s streets are alive with sunshine, and what better way to soak it all in than by exploring on two wheels?
Forget the crowded buses and stuffy tubes!
Cycling is a fantastic way to get around South London.
Breathe in the fresh air, feel the sun on your face, and enjoy the sights as you whizz past.
Plus, cycling is a great way to stay healthy and active – perfect for those summer ice cream indulgences!
Don’t have a bike?
No worries! Bike rental are readily available for rent all over the city, making exploring different neighbourhoods a breeze.
Even better if you have your own bike, so you can park where and when you want, without paying extras.
Cycling routes are spread all around London.
We have tried from Battersea to Richmond, most of it across the river themes, and was very magical. so green and beautiful!
A must do for any London summer!
2. Pack a Sustainable Picnic
South London boasts some amazing parks and green spaces – think Southwark Park, Peckham Rye Park, or even your local hidden gem.
But please skip the wasteful disposable plates and cutlery.
If we love our outdoors and spending time in them, we really should make sure we leave them green and clean.
It’s so sad to walk in the park and see so much trash.
So pack your bag with containers, plates, and cutlery from home.
The normal cutlery and plates we use at home are more than enough, easy to clean after and zero cost.
Why should we buy new stuff (even the reusable one), when we already have reusable, free things at home?
This, combined with some fresh food made at home (Spanish frittata, sandwiches, pies, cakes – the list of easily transportable picnic food is endless), some fruit and drinks in can or glass bottle, makes the perfect, sustainable picnic.
And believe us when we say the we do love (love!) picnics.
3. From Farm to Fork: Feast on Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables
Speaking of delicious food, why not embrace the bounty that summer gives us in term of fruits and vegetables?
Luckily, June and July are bursting with seasonal goodness, easily accessible in the many groceries and markets in South London.
Think juicy strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries for a sweet treat.
They can even been picked, package free (and price free!) from the huge and very widespread berry bushes present in most green areas of London.
We picked so many blackberry in Brockwell park last year and made jam for the whole winter!
Savoury options include vibrant courgettes, aubergines and peppers
Very popular among our Mediterranean team members (Marco’s aubergine parmigiana is a common talk at lunchtime these days!), they are versatile vegetable that go well on a BBQ, as a sauce for pasta, deep fried, baked…every excuse is good to eat them plenty!
And don’t forget the peas, green beans and broad beans, for a good source of summer proteins.
By opting for local produce at farmers’ markets or greengrocers, you’re supporting local growers, reducing food miles, and getting the freshest flavours possible.
There will be plenty of time to eat those pumpkin and broccoli later on!
4. Stay Hydrated for Free: Refill on the Go
Staying hydrated is crucial in the summer but there’s no need to rely on single-use plastic bottles.
London has a growing network of free public water fountains!
This website provided by london.gov show a map of london with the location of some refill stations.
Even better, the handy “Refill” app [downloadable here] tell you where to find your nearest fountain, so you can refill your reusable water bottle throughout the day.
And, most bar and café will be happy to offer you a refill of your own water bottle or even just a glass of tap water.
We really have no excuses for buy those expensive (it’s just water!!!) plastic water bottles.
5. Escape to the Seaside Sustainably:
Waterloo? London Bridge? Clapham Junction? Denmark Hill? You name it!
South London boasts fantastic connections to the beautiful English coastline, especially in the south coast of England.
Popular options include the vibrant city of Brighton , the historic town of Hastings or Folkestone, or the charming seaside resort of Broadstairs, Ramsgate or Margate.
Most our team is from countries with a real attachment to seaside summers, so we take all possible occasion to go and smell the sea salt and have the breeze in our hair.
And guess what? We don’t even have cars!
And we don’t need them.
Did you know there are often great deals on train travel from London to popular seaside destinations?
Websites like Trainline or National Rail can help you find budget-friendly and eco-friendly train journeys.
And with a railcard, things can get really cheap (check here).
If you are students, under 30, a family, a senior, disable, or even simply have a best friend to travel your summer out with (we have the travel together card, for example), railcards can offers real deals and make your summers cheap, sunny and sustainable.
Conclusion
There you have it!
With a little creativity and planning, you can have a fantastic summer that’s kind to the environment, your wallet, and your South London community.
So, dust off your bike, grab your reusable water bottle, and get ready to explore all that South London has to offer in a sustainable way.
Remember, even small changes can make a big difference.
Here’s to a happy, healthy, and eco-friendly South London summer for everyone!
It happens to everyone: we decide to be committed and mindful about our effort to recycle, making our communities cleaner and contribute to making our planet a better place.
We pick up our rubbish, start sorting it out and then…there is no indication if something is recyclable or not!
How are we meant to know now what to do?
If you have ever found yourself in this position, you are not alone.
Despite the WRAP’s October 2022 Recycling Tracker report, found that 89% of us are committed to recycling, the same report also found that 54% of people admit that they often don’t know where to put certain items and then end up throwing things in the general rubbish bin that could have been recycled instead.
Or, placing non recyclable material in the recycling bin “because is plastic!” that is in fact not recyclable (not all plastic are, for example).
What makes recycling difficult?
I don’t know for you (and we would love to know!), but for us, there are quite a few reasons that make recycling now sure easy:
We have been speaking around our friends and people in our community and found that many people are not aware of what can and cannot be recycled, or how to properly prepare materials for recycling.
Yes, there is information on the package, but what about when there isn’t?
Many products we import from other country hare in different language and they may not clearly write how to dispose the material.
More often than not, those material then end up in the wrong bin.
We totally understand if after a long day you don’t have the mind capacity of sorting out recycling.
Some materials do take effort, such as when they are required to be separated, cleaned and disposed of in a certain way.
Some of the people we spoke to also think things will be much easier if they are given recyclable materials by society. If everything was recyclable, we wouldn’t need to make the effort (the dream!)
So why are the big names, brand, supermarkets, companies not doing this?
Well, all those point are totally understandable and we are not here to comment on the need for societal changes.
However, we can support you in making recycling easy for us, the individuals, which can make a tiny but significant (because we are many) difference.
Our tips to recycle better in less time
Print out the universal symbols for recycling material
Did you know that packaging, regardless of where they come from, often do not have universal symbols that tell us what materials they are made from?
For example, most plastic items will have a little symbol with an arrow, a number in the middle and often an acronym. For example, 1 PET(E) (Polyethylene Terephtalate) or 3 PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride).
Those material are generally either non recyclable or recyclable, so even if they come from China or the USA, if something has the symbol for PET, it will be recyclable no matter where you live.
This makes recycling so much easier!
You can use our guide (at the end of the post) for the most common type of plastic.
Have recycling bins in different location
Most of us probably have a recycling bin in the kitchen.
But what about bathroom products? They are more often than not the most confusing and a mixture of recycling and rubbish.
And the studio?
Having a pair of bins for each room we use the most of our materials in can massively increase recycling rates without having to pile everything in one place, only to separate things again.
Reduce the non-recyclable we buy
Reducing waste starts with what we buy.
When we go shopping, we often search for the products that have the most recyclable packaging.
Honey in glass instead than in plastic, for example, or fruit in paper instead of plastic bags, or pasta in a cardboard box.
This make recycling so much easier because you will know that most of the things you need to throw away are recyclable anyways!
Yes, we know that sometimes those items are more expensive but they really shouldn’t be, and as consumers we can push the market promoting and buying those products, so that as demand increases, the more they will become common things (and decrease the cost).
Make It a Ritual
It is very easy to mindlessly (because we are in a rush or distracted) just toss something in the bin without thinking about where it should go.
If this is your case, there is a very good strategy to avoid this: having a “I-will-sort-it-out-later” bin.
Toss everything in the same bin and then set a morning to revisit your trash and separate.
So that you don’t need to do it at the moment or if you just had a long day and you don’t feel like it.
It’s like cleaning the house: do we need to clean everything everyday?
Make it a habit to incorporate in your weekend housekeeping schedule.
Like this, you will probably become more focus on it and it will feel less like a burden.
Now we need you
We hope that you will take some of those tips and try them out.
Most of all, we would love to hear about your experience with recycling:
what are your struggles?
do you have any tips for us?
what do you struggle with?
what do you find easy?
By talking to each other and making recycling a communal point of discussion, we can help each other making our community, our planet, a much more cleaner and stress free place
Free Resources: our guide to the most common packaging symbols
When I started my sustainable journey, the first action I focussed on was trying to shop zero waste.
I was fully committed to buying as little packaging as possible.
I discovered a couple of bulk stores, zero waste shops and local markets around me and only shopped at those places.
I became obsessed with it.
Problem was, they were not always near me, and often reachable only by at least half an hour bus.
But I was adamant about either shopping there or not at all.
Sometimes, this meant that I was either not eating certain foods for weeks because they were not available plastic-free in the shops near me, or I would wait ages for restocking, for example on coffee, because I only wanted to buy it zero waste.
That became unsustainable.
And more expensive too.
My housemates started complaining that our house couldn’t be dependent on if we had the time to shop zero waste or not.
Days with no coffee or no pasta hit us.
So, upon reflection, I decided to change.
I reflected on balance and on the real meaning of sustainability.
I asked myself: is zero waste sustainable for my soul and the people around me?
The answer was, clearly, no.
I began a journey of discovery. A journey to find balance.
The balance between not dropping my values of buying the least amount of packaging and the essential needs of my household and me.
The truth was, the prospect of waiting weeks without being able to make my morning coffee with my Italian percolator (we call it Moka) was really not sustainable for my mind.
And nor could sustain the sanity of my housemates.
The journey leads to discovery, and discovery leads to knowledge.
I discovered that the key is knowing where to shop for what, because there is always an alternative to what is around.
And by around I mean even sometimes at the corner shop or the Tesco down the road.
Sure, those places also have a ludicrous amount of unnecessary plastic, but this is the point. I knew that I didn’t need to buy lemons in plastic net in a shop because I explored enough to know that the shop next to it had lemons without plastic.
And this shop hopping started saving me money.
Why should I buy something at this corner store if I know that the next one sells it for less?
So, if I have to give you the most sustainable tip, here is it: know the shops near you and visit them all by buying what is cheaper and more sustainable in each shop.
Sustainability is really about learning about your community, what it has to offer and how you can make your life easier by knowing it.
I discovered that sustainability is to find your most sustainable way.
There isn’t a most sustainable way.
If everything that is plastic would cost double, would this be sustainable? For many people, it would not.
But the alternative is not to give up, or even worse, not try, the alternative is to find a way that includes both goals of living as sustainably as possible, the least stressful life as possible and as much financially doable as possible.
And it’s okay to start small, it’s okay to buy some plastic every now and then, with no guilt because that doesn’t make us horrible, or hypocritical or unsustainable.
It is a journey, and a journey is never linear.
Sustainability is embracing imperfection, embracing that it’s always a journey, that the more we try, the more we know, and the more we will learn how to sustain ourselves with peace and intention.
Often when we start our journey into a sustainable life, we start by focusing on buying new eco-friendly items, eco-substitutions, eco-swaps, bamboo-made items, etc.
More often than not, by doing this we end up paying lots more.
For the sake of buying green products, eco-friendly products, tailored branded alternative, sometimes we even buy thing when we really don’t need to.
This happens even to long-term sustainability champions.
However, by doing this we forget what sustainability really means.
Here at Southstainable we want to invite you to rethink what having a sustainable lifestyle really means.
For us, a sustainable life means a different way of sustaining your community, a way that starts from yourself, to your sustainance, so that we can be able to sustain something bigger without feeling it as a burden or something unachievable for everyone.
When it comes to making our lives more sustainable, this means ditching the expensive eco-friendly branded alternatives, which too often are not wallet friendly and not inclusive.
We can achieve this by just learning how to use what we have.
So here is for you 5 Eco-friendly but not budget-friendly objects that we really don’t need to buy and what to use instead as sustainable, low cost and easy to implement alternatives.
1# Expensive resuable water bottles
If you are still buying water in plastic, please stop. Really
Why would you do that?
And the main reason for that is not what you think.
Yes, plastic bottles represent one of the major pollutant on the planet, threatening not only biodiversity but also entire countries, communities and urban landscapes. That should be enough to stop.
But if it isn’t, let’s think about that.
Let’s think about it. Water. The basic the primordial needs of all biological beings.
Water is free.
No one is making water for us, it is naturally already there.
So why should be paying someone that to provide us something that already exist for free?
Madness.
And then, in the name of saving ocean from plastic, another madness appeared.
I am talking about “eco-friendly” refillable bottle that cost 20/30 pounds (and sometimes even more)
I am talking about those branded bottle that promise you to keep the water cool for 48 hours or so.
20 pounds for a piece of metal that contain some water.
Our ancestor are probably laughing now.
What we are buying is essentially a trendy fashion item, masqueraded as sustainable (for who? Not for us, certainly)
A way more sustainable solution for your pocket and the planet is to buy a normal bottle made of metal or glass.
And by normal I mean one that doesn’t cost a fortune.
Or even keep reusing a plastic bottle, which is one of the essential points of sustainability!
I’ve seen people use the same 1 pound bottle of coke for a year (it is sturdy and has a nice design).
So in the name of sustainability, when you think about buying a reusable bottle of water, think about what you are actually buying and what it’s for
Remember, water is free and the most natural thing to do is to keep it free and accessible for all, container included
#2 Fancy lunch box.
I love lunch boxes.
We have many lunch boxes of different shapes and materials, and we use them for various functions: storage, baking trays, plant beds and of course picnic lunch boxes.
However, none of them were originally a lunch box.
Again, why should I spend money (and often lots of) on something that I have already obtained and paid for?
You can obtain a free lunchbox from everywhere!
An example? Those take away plastic boxes that we obtain when we get our absolutely fantastic Jerk Chicken from our local carribean.
And we keep them.
And we bring them back to the shop and load them again with delicious jerk chicken.
Other example?
Glass oven trays, yogurt pots, jam or pickled jar.
Yes but they are not really for carrying lunch around, right?
Well, you will be surprise to know that they work even better!
Especially glass jars are amazing at avoid leakages. They are built for it!
Big olives or beetroot or pickled jar are the optimal solution if you want to carry your lunch with you and be absolutely sure that there will be no leakage.
They have a large capacity, are easy to clean after and cost almost nothing (you pay for what is inside, really!)
Go glass, sustain your pockets while sustaining the environment.
#3 Expensive “eco-friendly” cutleries
This is something I have been doing since the beginning and I really don’t understand why its not the universal solution.
Why should we buy fancy and expensive cutleries for your lunch box, sometimes even in plastic, when you can use your own home aluminium cutleries?
Ok, bamboo and reusable plastic is better than single use plastic.
I always carry my normal, home-looking but still very functional aluminium fork and spoon with me in my bag.
They are easily cleanable and guess what? They cost zero!
#4 Reusable coffee cups.
That’s another example of something that doesn’t need to be fancy and doesn’t need to be hyper expensive.
I believe the old purpose of reusable takeaway coffee cup is not only to reuse them and not send single use container to either landfill or to recycling, but also to enjoy a coffee on the go in a happy and uplifting way.
So, really, if I have to pay 15, 20 pounds for our usable coffee cup, plus coffee on top, I think it becomes quite unsustainable.
And that is, again, down to branding. Brands cost a lot with no porpose.
I do have a coffee cup, but despite being not branded, and with the sign of time (I have break it a few times and repaired as best as I can with glue) it is big enough and does the job of containing coffee.
And it costed 5 pounds.
Even better? Find a friend, order two coffee in ceramic cups, sit down, slow down, have a chat and enjoy the moment.
The word sustainable is often associated with a way of living that require a lot of no.
No to waste, no to certain product, no to certain food, no to certain habits.
This is all very good but it’s not necessarily what sustainable mean.
At least for us.
The word Sustainable come from Latin sub “from below” and tenere “to hold”, in the sense of support.
During the centuries its meaning has been transformed into different shades of meaning, but all revolving around the idea of “providing the necessities of life“, “giving support“, “enduring“, “holding from falling“, “keeping things in a good way“, “to nourish“.
That’s really what sustainable means for us and what we want to advocate.
Sustainability for us means being able to hold and maintain and provide not only for the wellbeing of the planet but also for the wellbeing of ourselves and our community.
It is often difficult to find a balance between doing actions that are sustainable for the planet but also sustainable for ourselves, our health, our mental well-being, our money and personal needs.
Embedded in our ethos is a belief in the power of “yes.”
We are all about promoting the habit of saying yes to sustainable alternatives doesn’t mean renouncing your pleasures, your roots, your traditions, and all of the things that make you feel good, for the sake of the environment.
This extreme approach, aside from not making for a very enjoyable life, is not very sustainable.
Thus, our goal here at Southstainable is to find the balance between what is good for you, and good for the environment.
Reaching this equilibrium is about saying yes to the least impactful actions you can take for the environment.
For example, sometimes instead of committing to being zero-waste, you can take steps towards less waste.
Instead of eliminating use of a product that comes in plastic, which is a restrictive approach, you can opt to use another product that is similar, but with less plastic, or one that can be recycled.
It all comes down to being at peace with the environment and with ourselves.
Sustainability starts within ourselves.
It is much harder to sustain something big as the planet than it is to sustain ourselves or our community.
Sustaining ourselves means being able to fulfil our basic physical and emotional needs, and so the first step to sustainability is identifying those individual needs and ensuring we are able to afford to sustain them, and then to find ways to continue fulfilling needs on a larger aspect, such as with your family, your community, and then the whole planet.
“Thinkglobal act local” is a common phrase repeated in the sustainability movement, and what is more local than your own selves?
Sometimes when we think about sustainability, we think about complicated and overpriced brands or items, and because of marketing, many have come to associate the words “sustainable living” with wealthy people that are able to afford the organic, expensive vegetables, or overpriced bamboo devices, or working while traveling.
But a sustainable lifestyle doesn’t mean that, or at least doesn’t have to!
None of these are things that are necessary for fulfilling those basic individual needs.
A sustainable lifestyle may mean that for some people but everyone’s journey should be tailored to themselves, which includes taking into account your own budget and the stage of life that you are in.
We can support something as big as the planet only if we can support ourselves.
