I may have ended up on a huge life tangent recently, for which my life has been completely taken over by YouTube where I have been researching wellness, sustainability, FIRE, minimalism, veaganism and permaculture. (Help! I really think I need help!)
Anyway... So I ended up down a rabbit hole of a world whilst watching YouTube and now I can't get out of it. This may be a rant. I'm sorry if it is. I plan to simply explain why I want to do each of these movements and life choices and what I like and dislike about all of them. (But as I start typing that may change)
First and foremost wellness, this is definitely a movement and lifestyle I want to persue as it's about living a healthy and fulfilling life by loving yourself, others and the world we live on. What's not to like about that!
Honestly, I think all of these link together in some way (minus 2 maybe) so I may overlap. But mainly for me I think that I don't necessarily look after myself as well as I should, I drink and smoke and eat shite sometimes too; I just think I could do better. But not only myself, I think I could do better at looking after the planet and others too as sometimes with my life choices (financial diet as an example) I forget the last 2 definitely. A video blogger said "you cannot do all the good that the world needs, but the world needs all the good that you can do" and it's definitely stuck.
Which kind of takes me onto sustainability, veaganism and permaculture. These are all interlinked into wellness and definitely will improve my quality of life and help the planet in the same way. So, I have always had an interest in sustainability, being the energy efficiency coordinate for the UK at Trelleborg and the sustainability champion at JCB, but I haven't necessarily carried this over into my own personal life. I guess because I don't use that much energy, don't produce that much waste and actually have a small impact I haven't really felt the need to delve into it too deeply. I do think with my job roles over the last few years I have made far more of an impact within industry than I will ever make in my own personal life. I mean, the amount of emissions saved within a facility is probably all I'll ever use in my lifetime at home. (I haven't done the math and am probably talking cack here, but I do know that in 2017 I saved nearly £100,000 worth of electricity at Trelleborg, and that's not including the carbon dioxide, emissions, water etc. that I saved and the average uk adult household spends £77,000 in their lifetime on water, gas and electricity. So i think I might be right in my guestimation.)
I digress though... my point is that I'm going to remove single use plastic from my life (in regards to purchases) and be far more concious about my life choices and the impact they have on the world we live on. As a rule I am pretty good at this already, I do use a menstral cup, a compost bin, use little water and electricity, I don't use plastic bags not even for my bin, I don't use throw away items like paper towels and do recycle everything; but if I really ask myself I think that's more to do with my finances rather than the planet and that I'm just tight.
This does link pretty well to veaganism and permaculture. When I was a child I once told my mum that I wanted to be a vegetarian, her response was "well I'm not cooking vegetarian food for you", which kind of meant at that age I wouldn't eat. I have since grown to love meat, dairy, eggs etc. and they are staples in my diet. I'm not necessarily saying I'm going to go hard and cut out overything and become a preacher, but I have been drastically cutting down all animal products from my life and have also been researching the products I put on my body and bring into my home... A lot have animal products in, are full of chemicals or are tested on animals. This is going to change.
Which I guess finally leads me onto permaculture - being the principle of caring for the planet, people and ensuring fair share. There are lost of aspects to this principle but that kind of sums it up. Obviously with my small bit of land in the middle of an estate there isn't a huge amount I can do about this, but I can and have been growing my own food (as you can see from my other blog) both in my garden and in our allotment and I have been buying my fruit and vegetables from a local vegan derbyshire store who only sells derbyshire produce. So I am trying, and I will keep trying.
Then of course there's the FIRE movement. Which is the finacially independent retire early movement. Of course I want to be part of this. If you know anything about me you'll know that this is definitely something I would become obsessed with. I mean, over the last few years I have realised that I'm not an entrepreneur and everything I try fails, no matter now strongly I want to do it I just can't seem to get the momentum and motivation to. I have tried furniture businesses, a dropshipping business, crafting, printing, you name it I've tried it... I've probably spent so much on these business venutres I could have a pretty decent amount in a savings account right now, so I need to stop trying I think. The only way this is going to happen for me is if I grow my income and invest. So that's what I'm going to do. I've been over paying on my mortgage for the last 2 years anyway, I already pay into a employer match pension, and have been attempting a finacial diet since I started this blog... So I have a rough idea of what I'm doing, I'm just not so good at saving! But with my new pay raise coming from my new job, and the voluntary redundancy I am to recieve I think now is a great time to start. At the begining of the pandemic I did set up a stocks and shares ISA, which I have been putting into every month and I'm thinking about putting my VR into a fixed or easy access account (not sure yet but I'm not going to spend it). And so my FIRE movement begins. I think I need like £1,200,000 to retire early though... So I'm definitely a long way off!
Minimalism is something I have been reading a lot about, in short it's about finding freedom from worry, being overwhelmed, guilt and depression. Which sounds great. A lot of people do take it to the extreme though and literally have all their worldly possessions in a bag. I cannot do that. I like stuff to much. But all these tiny homes and minimalist lifestyles have sucked me in and I cannot get enough! So my theory is that I'm going to be more conscious and deliberate with my decision making when it comes to purchases and my belongings. Do I need the printer I bought myself, probably not, but does it make me happy... Yes. Do I need the denby I bought from the antique place, probably not, does it make me happy... Probably not really. Difference. And I'm going to try really hard with this one because it will also help with FIRE and saving the planet. I have deleted amazon from my phone and have a new list in my phone for "purchases I want" for which I have been adding things I want rather than buying them straight away with the intention to buy second hand, and if when I get to a carboot or charity shop or ebay and I don't want that thing on the list anymore I won't buy it.
Of course all of these movements and principles do have their downside and do frustrate me in many ways. The plastic free and sustainability movement seems to focus on the aesthetics of these issues in my opinion rather than the impact of the whole lifecycle of a product. Many people don't even consider manufacture and logistics, nevermind the fact none of them ever talk about where their food comes from or what energy they waste using their swanky electrical devices. We're encourages to throw away all our plastic such as tupperware and jars to replace with glass jars that are purchased from amazon, shipped from China and probably made for minimum wage in a sweat shop. Minimum wage in china is around £2.32. And when we put our perfectly good quality and resulable plastic in the recycling bin what we all seem to fail to realise is that we are then shipping it back to China, Malaysia, Turkey, Poland, Indonesia or the Netherlands to be "recycled" but it ends up in the ocean or landfill. Not to mention the plastic we've thrown away is perfectly good and can be reused for many many years. Reduce, reuse, recycle lets not forget. Not only considering that glass is more expensive to ship, costs more to produce due to the heat required to produce it and that the melting point of plastic is much lower than glass. None of this is every talked about and it infuriates me!
Then we all talk about renewable energy. Yes using solar energy reduces emissions as an end product, but it also requires manufacture which is a huge carbon footprint and waste stream in itself. A solar panel for example lasts 30 years on average, but requires quartz to be chemically processed to produce the polycrystalline silicone. Just that manufacturing process alone is up to 13% of what the system will produce in a year. Then there's production of all the other elements, transport, installation, maintenance, dismantling, disposal etc. Not to mention the fact that half of the worlds panels are manufactured in China, again, where hydrofluoric acid has been found in rivers 10 x the permitted limit. So although better than the dirtier alternatives it's still not great.
Also recently we've had a huge hype about equality and living in a better world (which is great) yet within a week of the BLM protests there were thousands of people queuing outside Primark in the middle of a pandemic! A company that made over £7.5 billion in 2019 but has the clothes made in countries like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and China! Countries where minimum wage is substantially lower than Europe and the USA where Primark distribution is. These countries have poor H&S practices and poor human rights. Not to mention the logistics of the transportation and the fact that their environmental regualtions are non-existent. The polyester, for example, that's within the cotton t-shirts of cheap brands is made from carbon intensive non-renewable sources. so we may be paying less, but none of this is equality for people or the planet. Is it? Or am I getting it all wrong...
And my final frustration of recent is with the FIRE, minimalism and finance world. Which kind of goes against all the saving the planet lark I've been ranting on about, if I'm honest. The minimalism trend is very popular in developed countries due to us living beyond our means with more than we need, in turn people are cutting back to reduce their impact and live a cleaner more thoughful life. Fine, I get that and actually want to take on some of the principles, but throwing away all the items you did have is a bit hypocritical to say the least, nevermind all the ridiculously expensive furniture and gadgets that all these minimalists seem to have in their sparse houses pisses me right off. Why do you have to be super trendy to live by the principles. Who needs a £800 lamp shade?! Surely it all just goes against the ideologies of living with what you need and not being such a greedy shit bag. Again, I may be getting it all wrong but from what I've seen this is how it is coming across. And then we have FIRE and financial diets, which are great but in my opinion very selfish. In order to live on these £20 a week food swaps and cut back as much as you need to be become FIRE not only are you purchasing the worst foods ever for your body, and by the time you hit FIRE you'll be wasting away with scurvy but you're also buying cheap crappy products that aren't going to last anywhere near as long and are so bad for the environment and the other people on this planet. Very selfish.
Needless to say, after this massive rant, I still want to implement and have been implenting all of these into my life and to make it brief - I'm going to become a hippy dippy.
Anyway... So I ended up down a rabbit hole of a world whilst watching YouTube and now I can't get out of it. This may be a rant. I'm sorry if it is. I plan to simply explain why I want to do each of these movements and life choices and what I like and dislike about all of them. (But as I start typing that may change)
First and foremost wellness, this is definitely a movement and lifestyle I want to persue as it's about living a healthy and fulfilling life by loving yourself, others and the world we live on. What's not to like about that!
Honestly, I think all of these link together in some way (minus 2 maybe) so I may overlap. But mainly for me I think that I don't necessarily look after myself as well as I should, I drink and smoke and eat shite sometimes too; I just think I could do better. But not only myself, I think I could do better at looking after the planet and others too as sometimes with my life choices (financial diet as an example) I forget the last 2 definitely. A video blogger said "you cannot do all the good that the world needs, but the world needs all the good that you can do" and it's definitely stuck.
Which kind of takes me onto sustainability, veaganism and permaculture. These are all interlinked into wellness and definitely will improve my quality of life and help the planet in the same way. So, I have always had an interest in sustainability, being the energy efficiency coordinate for the UK at Trelleborg and the sustainability champion at JCB, but I haven't necessarily carried this over into my own personal life. I guess because I don't use that much energy, don't produce that much waste and actually have a small impact I haven't really felt the need to delve into it too deeply. I do think with my job roles over the last few years I have made far more of an impact within industry than I will ever make in my own personal life. I mean, the amount of emissions saved within a facility is probably all I'll ever use in my lifetime at home. (I haven't done the math and am probably talking cack here, but I do know that in 2017 I saved nearly £100,000 worth of electricity at Trelleborg, and that's not including the carbon dioxide, emissions, water etc. that I saved and the average uk adult household spends £77,000 in their lifetime on water, gas and electricity. So i think I might be right in my guestimation.)
I digress though... my point is that I'm going to remove single use plastic from my life (in regards to purchases) and be far more concious about my life choices and the impact they have on the world we live on. As a rule I am pretty good at this already, I do use a menstral cup, a compost bin, use little water and electricity, I don't use plastic bags not even for my bin, I don't use throw away items like paper towels and do recycle everything; but if I really ask myself I think that's more to do with my finances rather than the planet and that I'm just tight.
This does link pretty well to veaganism and permaculture. When I was a child I once told my mum that I wanted to be a vegetarian, her response was "well I'm not cooking vegetarian food for you", which kind of meant at that age I wouldn't eat. I have since grown to love meat, dairy, eggs etc. and they are staples in my diet. I'm not necessarily saying I'm going to go hard and cut out overything and become a preacher, but I have been drastically cutting down all animal products from my life and have also been researching the products I put on my body and bring into my home... A lot have animal products in, are full of chemicals or are tested on animals. This is going to change.
Which I guess finally leads me onto permaculture - being the principle of caring for the planet, people and ensuring fair share. There are lost of aspects to this principle but that kind of sums it up. Obviously with my small bit of land in the middle of an estate there isn't a huge amount I can do about this, but I can and have been growing my own food (as you can see from my other blog) both in my garden and in our allotment and I have been buying my fruit and vegetables from a local vegan derbyshire store who only sells derbyshire produce. So I am trying, and I will keep trying.
Then of course there's the FIRE movement. Which is the finacially independent retire early movement. Of course I want to be part of this. If you know anything about me you'll know that this is definitely something I would become obsessed with. I mean, over the last few years I have realised that I'm not an entrepreneur and everything I try fails, no matter now strongly I want to do it I just can't seem to get the momentum and motivation to. I have tried furniture businesses, a dropshipping business, crafting, printing, you name it I've tried it... I've probably spent so much on these business venutres I could have a pretty decent amount in a savings account right now, so I need to stop trying I think. The only way this is going to happen for me is if I grow my income and invest. So that's what I'm going to do. I've been over paying on my mortgage for the last 2 years anyway, I already pay into a employer match pension, and have been attempting a finacial diet since I started this blog... So I have a rough idea of what I'm doing, I'm just not so good at saving! But with my new pay raise coming from my new job, and the voluntary redundancy I am to recieve I think now is a great time to start. At the begining of the pandemic I did set up a stocks and shares ISA, which I have been putting into every month and I'm thinking about putting my VR into a fixed or easy access account (not sure yet but I'm not going to spend it). And so my FIRE movement begins. I think I need like £1,200,000 to retire early though... So I'm definitely a long way off!
Minimalism is something I have been reading a lot about, in short it's about finding freedom from worry, being overwhelmed, guilt and depression. Which sounds great. A lot of people do take it to the extreme though and literally have all their worldly possessions in a bag. I cannot do that. I like stuff to much. But all these tiny homes and minimalist lifestyles have sucked me in and I cannot get enough! So my theory is that I'm going to be more conscious and deliberate with my decision making when it comes to purchases and my belongings. Do I need the printer I bought myself, probably not, but does it make me happy... Yes. Do I need the denby I bought from the antique place, probably not, does it make me happy... Probably not really. Difference. And I'm going to try really hard with this one because it will also help with FIRE and saving the planet. I have deleted amazon from my phone and have a new list in my phone for "purchases I want" for which I have been adding things I want rather than buying them straight away with the intention to buy second hand, and if when I get to a carboot or charity shop or ebay and I don't want that thing on the list anymore I won't buy it.
Of course all of these movements and principles do have their downside and do frustrate me in many ways. The plastic free and sustainability movement seems to focus on the aesthetics of these issues in my opinion rather than the impact of the whole lifecycle of a product. Many people don't even consider manufacture and logistics, nevermind the fact none of them ever talk about where their food comes from or what energy they waste using their swanky electrical devices. We're encourages to throw away all our plastic such as tupperware and jars to replace with glass jars that are purchased from amazon, shipped from China and probably made for minimum wage in a sweat shop. Minimum wage in china is around £2.32. And when we put our perfectly good quality and resulable plastic in the recycling bin what we all seem to fail to realise is that we are then shipping it back to China, Malaysia, Turkey, Poland, Indonesia or the Netherlands to be "recycled" but it ends up in the ocean or landfill. Not to mention the plastic we've thrown away is perfectly good and can be reused for many many years. Reduce, reuse, recycle lets not forget. Not only considering that glass is more expensive to ship, costs more to produce due to the heat required to produce it and that the melting point of plastic is much lower than glass. None of this is every talked about and it infuriates me!
Then we all talk about renewable energy. Yes using solar energy reduces emissions as an end product, but it also requires manufacture which is a huge carbon footprint and waste stream in itself. A solar panel for example lasts 30 years on average, but requires quartz to be chemically processed to produce the polycrystalline silicone. Just that manufacturing process alone is up to 13% of what the system will produce in a year. Then there's production of all the other elements, transport, installation, maintenance, dismantling, disposal etc. Not to mention the fact that half of the worlds panels are manufactured in China, again, where hydrofluoric acid has been found in rivers 10 x the permitted limit. So although better than the dirtier alternatives it's still not great.
Also recently we've had a huge hype about equality and living in a better world (which is great) yet within a week of the BLM protests there were thousands of people queuing outside Primark in the middle of a pandemic! A company that made over £7.5 billion in 2019 but has the clothes made in countries like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and China! Countries where minimum wage is substantially lower than Europe and the USA where Primark distribution is. These countries have poor H&S practices and poor human rights. Not to mention the logistics of the transportation and the fact that their environmental regualtions are non-existent. The polyester, for example, that's within the cotton t-shirts of cheap brands is made from carbon intensive non-renewable sources. so we may be paying less, but none of this is equality for people or the planet. Is it? Or am I getting it all wrong...
And my final frustration of recent is with the FIRE, minimalism and finance world. Which kind of goes against all the saving the planet lark I've been ranting on about, if I'm honest. The minimalism trend is very popular in developed countries due to us living beyond our means with more than we need, in turn people are cutting back to reduce their impact and live a cleaner more thoughful life. Fine, I get that and actually want to take on some of the principles, but throwing away all the items you did have is a bit hypocritical to say the least, nevermind all the ridiculously expensive furniture and gadgets that all these minimalists seem to have in their sparse houses pisses me right off. Why do you have to be super trendy to live by the principles. Who needs a £800 lamp shade?! Surely it all just goes against the ideologies of living with what you need and not being such a greedy shit bag. Again, I may be getting it all wrong but from what I've seen this is how it is coming across. And then we have FIRE and financial diets, which are great but in my opinion very selfish. In order to live on these £20 a week food swaps and cut back as much as you need to be become FIRE not only are you purchasing the worst foods ever for your body, and by the time you hit FIRE you'll be wasting away with scurvy but you're also buying cheap crappy products that aren't going to last anywhere near as long and are so bad for the environment and the other people on this planet. Very selfish.
Needless to say, after this massive rant, I still want to implement and have been implenting all of these into my life and to make it brief - I'm going to become a hippy dippy.