Green Pea’s Director of Finance, Harry Stanger, talks about his top tips on how to become a more sustainable student.
Loughborough students are some of the best in the UK at being green and sustainable, but with new lockdown restrictions in place it can be easy to forget the importance of being a sustainable. So, here are my 5 top tips to be a more sustainable and greener student!
Switch Off
As a student it can be a constant hands-on experience; lectures on demand breathing down your neck and coursework deadlines creeping up, however, every student deserves a break. Giving yourself time to relax is an extremely important part of studies so why not switch off your screens and save some power. According to Nasa, polar ice caps are melting by 9% per decade – switching off your screens could make a huge difference in saving these ice caps.
Consider How You Travel
Loughborough offers many ways to get around, and the University is extremely committed to ensuring that students can get to their studies and place of residence without issues. For students living in the local Loughborough area and on campus, walking or cycling can be beneficial for many reasons:
- No waiting times for public transport
- Reduced costs for fuel or public transport costs
- Great for mental health
- Reduces greenhouse pollution
- More effective for COVID-19 social distancing
Cooking Bigger and Greener
You may not realise how much waste you are creating when you cook and purchase your food items. Food items are riddled with wasted plastics in supermarkets, and the food items you purchase each contribute to global warming. The Guardian (2014) found out that replacing beef produce with vegan alternatives can reduce carbon dioxide levels by around 4.3kg.
Other things you can do to help reduce waste when eating include:
- Not throwing away waste food; pot it for another day
- Cook in bulk
- Purchase fruit and vegetables with organic labelling
- Eat vegan alternatives when possible
- Only eat free range eggs
Fast Fashion and Fast Environmental Damage
The fashion industry changes over night which is why organisations such as ASOS and Boohoo change their products constantly. Online fashion retailers and cheap retailers such as Primark offer cheap fashion at a high cost: high levels of environmental damage and unethical practices using child labour. As a student you have many opportunities to change the way you look at fashion, epically at Loughborough. Loughborough offers 2nd hand fashion stores in the student union (subject to COVID-19 restrictions) which allow students to purchase clothes without causing any environmental damage. In addition to this, charity shops in town and online allow you to buy clothes while putting money to a good cause.
Green Pea
Green Pea is a sustainable and ethical store located in The Cube at Loughborough University to provide students an easy and cost-effective way to purchase ethically sourced and produced products for everyday life including toothbrushes, shampoo, female sanitary products, reusable cups and so much more.
At Green Pea we work tirelessly to allow students an easy way to obtain products which would otherwise be difficult to source. We do this because we believe that it should be easy for students to make ethical choices.
Green Pea stores are usually open in The Cube, however, currently we are working on ways to deliver our service following government guidelines. For more information and updates, follow Green Pea on Facebook and Instagram @greenpealboro.
Featured Header Image by Frankie Stevens.
