Achieving Goals for Household Sustainability

As an environmental champion, you‘re always taking steps toward sustainability. In this week’s action guide, I encourage you to plan your pathways to sustainability, write down specific goals, and share them with a friend or this online community.

Taking the time to set goals for your impact on our planet makes it much more likely you’re taking effective action that makes a positive difference. I’ll share several ideas for measurable goals; choose ones that resonate most strongly with you.

Here at Sustainable Practice, we’ve developed seven pathways to sustainability. The community pathway plays a central role in this action guide. Our friends, families, and neighbors make our actions meaningful. I’ll share ideas for goals along the other six pathways to sustainability — energy, food, water, movement, habitat, and goods — but the key aspect of setting goals and holding yourself accountable is the seventh pathway: community. Research shows that “ writing down your goals, committing to action steps, and developing a support network dramatically increases success in attaining them.”

Give yourself a better chance for success by working on your sustainable community: who do you know who shares your love for our environment and would be willing to join you in taking action steps to protect our planet?

Thanks to the progress of technology, every year we can take little (or big!) steps toward sustainable energy. Here are three trails on the energy pathway that could yield meaningful goals:

1. Electrify. Do you currently own and operate any fuel-burning appliances, equipment, or vehicles? Replace at least one with an all-electric version.
2. Optimize. Do you know how much energy you use per year? If not, implement a system to record how much energy you buy (fuel plus electricity) so you can calculate your annual energy use. If you do know how much energy you used last year, could you improve your efficiency and use less energy this year?
3. Solarize. Where does your electricity come from? If you can, switch to a 100% clean and renewable supply. Or install some solar power so you can generate your own. You can start with something as small as a solar charger for your cell phone.

The pathway to sustainable food is another one where new opportunities arise every year. Here are three trails you can take this year:

1. Eat it all. Are you able to eat all of the food you buy? This is a constant struggle for everyone: how to plan meals and store food so that we don’t waste it. If you haven’t calculated a baseline for how much food you use, that is a great place to start. Keep careful track of any food you intended to eat that you ended up not eating after all, then consider why that happened so you can fix it.
2. Eat more plants. Are you eating a plant-based diet? Depending on where you are on your food journey, you might be ready for meat-free Mondays, or you might already be past that milestone and ready to tackle more adventurous culinary options that feature more plants and less meat.
3. Support organic farmers. Are you able to support organic farmers? Make it a goal to visit your local farmers market more often or increase the percentage of your food budget that goes toward organic fruits and vegetables.

Fresh water is a precious resource that most of us can take for granted. Here are three trails to keep this resource available for future generations:

1. Keep it clean. Are you using 100% biodegradable and non-toxic cleaning and washing supplies? Make it a goal to put nothing down the drain that your backyard septic or local wastewater treatment plant can’t handle. Have a plan for all your household hazardous wastes.
2. Optimize efficiency. Do all your fixtures meet the newest EPA WaterSense criteria? Is it time to replace an old toilet that uses more than 1.28 gallons per flush? Have you checked your water bill to see how much water you used last year, and have a plan to use less water this year? Do you have a plan for reducing water for your landscape or garden?
3. Refill your bottles. Do you have a water filter so you can refill your own bottles from tap water rather than buying bottled water?

Electric vehicles are becoming mainstream, but we still have one or two years before EVs become more affordable than internal combustion engine vehicles. Here are three trails to keep us moving in a sustainable way while driving electric is still at a price premium:

1. Move under your own power. Can you take more trips by walking or bicycling? If you have public transit as an option, is that something you can try this year?
2. Take a friend. Can you find a way to carpool or offer to bring along a friend for shopping trips?
3. Combine trips. How many engine starts per day did you average last year? Could you reduce that this year by combining trips so you’re not starting and stopping your engine so often?

The pathway to sustainable goods starts with the old mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle.” Here are ideas along each of those trails:

1. Reduce. What could you avoid buying this year? Would it be possible for you to reduce how much plastic you buy?
2. Reuse. Just when I thought I’d seen everything, I’m always amazed to learn about some new way an environmental champion has figured out to reuse a container or a material. Could you make it a goal to discover a new way to reuse items that have found their way into your home?
3. Recycle. If you’ve been reading my series on recycling, you’ll be aware of my encouragement for everyone to compost as much as possible. How much of your solid waste could you compost this year?

Our human habitat is our home, yard, and areas we use for agriculture and recreation. Here are three trails on the pathway to a sustainable habitat:

1. Backyard habitat. Familiarize yourself with the National Wildlife Federation’s certified wildlife habitat program. If you can provide habitat for birds, butterflies, and native plants, make it a goal to create a certified wildlife habitat garden.
2. Organic landscaping. Make a plan to manage your yard and garden using organic practices, avoiding the use of fossil fuel and chemicals that damage the environment.
3. Maximize occupancy. Find a way to provide more housing to people using your property, such as by renting out an apartment or building an accessory dwelling unit if local codes allow. Make it a goal to help solve the affordable housing crisis.

To wrap up this week’s action guide, here are three trails to explore on the pathway to a sustainable community:

1. Find a friend for sustainability. Who do you know who shares your love for our environment? Reach out to them to see if they’d be interested in joining you on the journey to sustainability.
2. Build a network. Invite your friends to explore pathways to sustainability with you. Schedule time to learn what your friends are doing to protect our environment and have a discussion about your ideas.
3. Write down goals, schedule to meet with your friends, and discuss your progress toward your goals. Once you’ve found a network of people who are committed to the idea of taking action to protect our environment, share your goals with them. Find ways to support and keep each other on track.

Peggy and I would love to know what goals resonate with you. Does our archive of action guides on Substack help you choose your goals and plan how you’ll achieve them? Please let us know how we can support you. We’re all on this journey together!

Further Reading and References

• Achieving your goals: An evidence-based approach, MSU Extension
• Preventing Wasted Food At Home, EPA
• The Beginner’s Guide to a Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet, Forks over Knives
• WaterSense, EPA
• Composting can help fight climate change. Get started in 5 easy steps, NPR
• Certify Your Habitat, The National Wildlife Federation

Originally published at https://sustainablepractice.substack.com.