How to live a sustainable life and what you should be doing now
Over 35 years since its took the UK by storm, a ‘Good Life’ revival is sweeping the nation with millions of us now growing our own vegetables, rearing our own chickens and composting everything we can.
The recent popularity of the BBC’s ‘Giles and Sue Live the Good Life’, where the pair recreated the life lived by Felicity Kendall and Richard Briers all those years ago, is also backed up by new research released today that shows almost 80% of us now grow our own fruit or veg, or would like to. But while there’s no doubt there are huge environmental benefits to living a more sustainable life, many of us are often more concerned with saving money.
However, the research commissioned by Whole Earth Foods found that a surprisingly positive 14% of us consider it more important to save the environment than to save money. Luckily living a sustainable life is one of the best ways to not only help the environment but cut down on food bills and energy consumption at the same time.
But for those of us who work, have children and busy lives, how easy is it to create our own ‘Good Life’? And what if you don’t have a garden, or you are one of the thousands of Brits on the waiting list for a precious allotment? Well, luckily you can live the ‘Good Life’ by ‘growing your own’ in even the smallest of flats and there are plenty of other sustainable measures you can take to cultivate a back to basics lifestyle.
One woman who knows all about embracing the lifestyle so loved by Tom and Barbara Good is sustainability champion Juliet Wilson who unlike the TV pair, who often got it comically wrong, has now been recognised as Britain’s most self sufficient resident.
Juliet grows her own food, recycles everything she can and turns waste into art and crafts. She also volunteers for a conservation group and teaches bird watching and environmental writing amongst other things.
