3 Ways To Not Break The Bank and Stay On Budget While Being Sustainable
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Due to the influx of large corporations greenwashing their products, sustainability has come to mean costing more money. Large businesses have capitalized on making broad “sustainable” claims, promote it as true sustainability, and in turn increase the price on products that are oftentimes not that much more sustainable than their original product. All in an effort to gain more profits for themselves at the expense of their consumers and the planet.
However, the core of true sustainability is very much at odds with consumerism and everything these large corporations stand for. True sustainability is about using what we already have, not making more. It is about repurposing and upcycling to make new items from the old. And when it is about making new products that means products that do not harm the planet or its inhabitants.
In turn, sustainability really shouldn’t be breaking the bank. Sustainability isn’t about throwing everything you own out and buying the latest green sustainable product to replace it. And once you change the sustainability mindset big corporations handed you, you can begin to see how sustainability may in fact be more economical for you and your family.
In this post we outline 3 ways to not break the bank and help stay on budget all while being sustainable.
1. Keep A Budget
Oftentimes in modern society it is easy to get caught up in the latest and greatest, the newest trend, even when you go down the sustainability rabbit hole. We are constantly bombarded with ads telling us if we just bought X we could help save and reduce Y and Z. And while this may be helpful to see that there are sustainable products out there, it shouldn’t come at the expense of your wallet.
One of the best ways to stay on budget is to budget. Until you know exactly how much money is coming in every month, how much is going out, you won’t know what you can reasonably afford.
Everyone’s situation here is going to be different, but it is so important to put some type of budget in place. Once you have, you will be able to know exactly how much money you have to look into the more expensive sustainable products vs. what you currently use.
2. Buy Useful New Products
Even when you steer away from overpriced expensive sustainable products the price can still be initially daunting. One example of this are paper towels.
Over the course of the past 75+ years, paper towels have become a household staple, there is almost no home in the US that you can’t go into that won’t have paper towels. Which is wild, when you realize there are over 330 Million people living in the USA. That’s a lot of paper towels!
Paper towels are used for many different purposes from cleaning, to meal prep, to drying hands. If we do some simple math we can quickly figure out how much we spend a year on paper towels. These numbers are rough estimates as there are a lot of different factors that may increase or decrease your own personal paper towel consumption.
Let’s Do Some Math
A single roll of paper towels averages roughly around $2.50 and you can get a pack of 8 rolls for about $20. And let's say a pack of 8 rolls can last you 3 months. That means, every 3 months you spend $20 on paper towels, which by the end of the year adds up to $80.
Before paper towels were invented though people simply used cloth towels. Just like a paper towel, you can use a cloth towel to dry your hands, wipe up spills, and clean with. Instead of throwing away the towel, like we do with paper towels, you simply washed it.
The amount of waste generated from paper towels alone is astonishing. Think about how many times you have used a paper towel, every single paper towel you’re using goes to the landfill.
Paper towels are commonly made from trees that are bleached with chemicals to make for the perfect white color. They’re extremely wasteful and yet they dominate our lives.
The sustainable solution here is to go back to cloth towels that can be thrown in with a load of wash and reused over and over again. But the barrier here if you go to buy reusable paper towels online or in stores is that they cost far more than a pack of paper towels.
The prices on reusable paper towels vary drastically, however lets say a roll of reusable paper towels roughly averages $40. For this price you get roughly 15 reusable paper towels. $40 for a roll is a lot more money than $20 for 8 rolls. At least up front.
In my personal life I bought one roll of reusable paper towels and roughly once a year I buy a $20 pack of paper towels for the really gross spills and things (slowly becoming more sustainable, by far not a perfect environmentalist).
This means in the first year I spent $40 on the reusable paper towels and $20 on common paper towels. I spent $60 total in year one compared to $80 in year one for our average common paper towel buyer. Year one is a $20 savings using reusable paper towels.
In year two though I already have the reusable paper towels and will only need to spend $20 on the common paper towels. However for the person who only buys common paper towels they will again spend $80. Meaning in year two I will save $60.
Again, paper towels are just one example out of many. Some people will look at this and say “so what, it’s only $80 you saved over two years”, but the point is not only are you saving money from this one switch, you’re also reducing the amount of waste that would normally go into the landfill.
Making the initial purchase though can be hard and that is why budgeting is so very important. The initial purchase of the reusable paper towels is roughly equivalent to half a year's worth of common paper towels. So be sure to have your budget in mind, set goals, and when you can, invest not only in your future but in the future of the planet too.
3. Reuse What You Already Have
Buying new products isn’t always the solution either. Reusing what you already have is one of the biggest aspects of sustainable living. And when you need to buy new, as in the example above, try to always buy new products that are reusable.
Reusing what you already have though can take some planning and active mindfulness. One step in reusing that I enjoy doing is instead of tossing or recycling your glass peanut butter or marinara sauce jars wash them out to reuse.
A clean class jar can have so many different uses.
You can use them to store food in, I’ve used mine for making pickles
You can use them to store homemade cleaners
You can turn them into vases to hold flowers
You can use them in a workshop for organizing screws and nails
You may be surprised when you take stock of your own life where reusing glass jars can fit.
Another example here is oftentimes we buy ziploc storage bags for snacks and sandwiches. These are marketed as single use but can be washed out and reused many more times. If you only wash your ziploc bag once, meaning you reuse it once then you’re cutting down the number of times you’re buying new ones.
Say you usually use one ziploc bag a day, be it for meal prepping, bringing lunch to work/school, crafting, or however you use a ziploc bag. But you use one a day (a fun idea could be to start noticing how many ziploc bags you actually do use each day).
Let’s Do Some Math
At one ziploc bag a day, that is 365 ziploc bags a year. Roughly that adds up to $25 a year for you alone. Again these are rough numbers due to price differences in size, quantity, and quality. Is this a huge expense, no not really. It is a big impact on the environment though, not only do all these plastic bags end up in the landfill they also take a ton of resources to make, oil being one of them.
So if you washed every bag once that would cut your ziploc bag consumption in half over the course of the year, meaning you’d only be paying $12.50 for a year worth of ziploc bags. Less money while also being more sustainable.
These are small ideas but they really truly do add up not just for the environment but also your wallet. Plus ziploc bags can be reused over and over again. Every time you wash a ziploc bag just imagine a little more money coming back to you.
Does washing them out and drying them take more time than simply throwing it away and grabbing a new one, yes. But the idea of “single use” is not only bad for our planet but also is just lining big corporation pockets while hurting your wallet.
Becoming a mindful environmentalist is all about starting to notice where in your life you can begin to bring in more sustainable practices. And through planning and budgeting, buying useful new products, and reusing what you already have you will be well on your way.
