You’ve kicked off your day with a plant-based latte in a reusable cup, and boldly chosen to take the train instead of driving to work. They’re small steps in the right direction, and you’re doing your bit to save the planet – right?
Don’t panic. The short answer is almost yes. The long answer though… well, it’s complicated.
In fact, some popular sustainability efforts may not be as impactful as they seem – and in certain cases, they might even have unintended consequences.
And, let’s face it, when we hear about a new thing we should be doing it’s easy to feel guilt or fatigue.
After all, there’s a lot of overwhelming and conflicting advice out there when it comes to your carbon footprint and how much of a difference you can actually make.
But don’t give up just yet. Here’s what experts say are the top five things you’re probably getting wrong, and the easy ways switches you can make instead.
1. Don't focus on food miles
Food production makes up over a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. You’ve probably had the message that you should eat locally lasered into your brain.
It reduces food miles and shrinks your carbon footprint – but, surprisingly, new research has found that this isn’t always true.
In fact, food products that travel thousands of miles can actually have a lower carbon footprint than local produce, especially if you’re eating them out of season.
For example, research from Bangor University found that eating tomatoes and lettuce grown in the UK during winter is worse than importing them from Spain.
That’s because growing tomatoes in the cooler UK climate requires heated greenhouses, which uses more energy than flying in tomatoes from a warmer region where no artificial heating is needed.
Generally, eating foods typically grown in the summer all year round forces the production system to work harder, using more energy and generating more emissions.
There are plenty of ways to check out what’s in season in your region – if you’re in the UK, the National Trust has an online guide to choosing seasonal fruit and vegetables, while in the US you can use the Seasonal Food Guide to check the best produce for your state.
There’s also good news if you’ve been forcing yourself to live off of the carrots from your back garden for years.
According to Dr Alice Garvey, researcher at the Climate Evidence Unit at the University of Leeds, eating a variety of food makes a much bigger difference than focusing on food miles.
In other words, it’s less about how far our food travels and more about what we’re eating and how it’s produced.
Garvey, who specialises in climate change policy and sustainable food systems, says that the research backs up the importance of diets that reduce the amount of meat and dairy in your diet “even if just by a little bit. You don’t have to necessarily go vegan or vegetarian completely.”
Even if vegetables or grains are imported from far away, their overall carbon footprint may be lower than locally produced meat. That’s because beef and dairy production requires significantly more water, land and energy.
Calculating the exact environmental impact of specific foods can be complex, but there are nifty tools that can help you.
You can input everything you eat – or would like to eat – into the Our World in Data Environmental Impacts of Food Data Explorer to see how each food product compares in emissions.
2. Buy (less) eco
Your wardrobe is bursting with tote bags, and judging by the number of keep cups in your kitchen, you’ll never need a takeaway coffee again. We understand: you’re doing your bit.
With good intentions, we buy reusable bottles, biodegradable cosmetics (more on that later…) and sustainable clothes, thinking we’re helping – but how much difference does it really make?
“Buying less but better is generally a good rule across most areas,” says Garvey. She also suggests buying things that can be repaired.
But not everything we call eco, natural or ‘green’ actually is better for the environment, and sometimes we might be lured into a greenwashing trap by a brand’s packaging.
Even small things, like a green leaf symbol or words like ‘eco-friendly’, are likely to make you believe a product is more sustainable than it really is.
Psychologists call this the environmental halo effect, a cognitive bias that leads people to assume that if there’s even a small nod to sustainability on a product, then the product must be entirely environmentally friendly.
Plus, sustainable products are no longer sustainable if we chuck them out or replace them without a second thought.
Sure, reusable things are generally the better choice if we want to reduce plastic waste. But their effectiveness depends on how many times they’re actually used.
As a Danish report shows, one reusable cotton bag needs to be used a whopping 7,100 times to offset the CO2 emissions involved in its production (bump that up to 20,000 times if it’s organic cotton).
In other words, you’d need several people’s lifetimes to make that collection of totes you’re hoarding worth it – sustainability speaking, anyway.
Other studies suggest reusable water bottles, lunch boxes and straws also need to be used hundreds of times to offset the amount of carbon emissions and toxic materials used to produce them.
And not all of these reusable products are created equal. Polypropylene takeaway containers, for example – the clear plastic kind often used for restaurant leftovers – are durable, dishwasher-safe and more widely recyclable.
They’re designed for reuse, but need to be reused between 16 and 208 times to be environmentally efficient.
Polystyrene containers, on the other hand, which have a more foamy feel, only need to be re-used between 3 and 39 times – yet they’re not built for repeated use and are generally not accepted in recycling systems.
The long and the short of it: the material matters, but it’s more important that you only buy the containers you’ll actually use (and that fit in your tote bag).
Read more:
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- No, our ancestors weren't carnivores. Here's what they really ate and why it matters
3. Stop wishcycling
Recycling has become so second nature that you can probably sort your rubbish into the right bins with your eyes closed.
It’s almost become a license to consume – and that’s where ‘wishcycling’ creeps in: the hopeful (but often misguided) act of recycling items that aren’t actually recyclable. The intention is good, but the impact… not so much.
For one, not everything that looks recyclable is recyclable. Take supermarket receipts, for example – they’re actually supposed to go in with the regular waste, but lots of us still toss them in the paper recycling.
And then there’s disposable coffee cups: they look like paper, but most of the time they’ve got a thin plastic lining, excluding them from regular paper bins.
As a result of these mishaps, the US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 75 per cent of the waste produced in the US is recyclable, but only about 32 per cent of total municipal solid waste is actually recycled each year.
This isn’t because of a lack of recycling effort, it’s because we often recycle incorrectly.
In fact, sampling at UK recycling plants has revealed that 16.6 per cent of items are either contaminated with food residue or aren’t recyclable at all – and this can cause entire batches of otherwise recyclable material to be rejected and sent to landfill.
Between 2019 and 2020, 525,000 tonnes of collected household recycling had to be rejected at the point of sorting.
That’s the other issue – even if the packaging is entirely recyclable, it mustn’t be soiled. Half-full yogurt pots or greasy pizza boxes shouldn’t be recycled because the system can’t separate out the food waste. If you put these items in the recycling, they’ll likely end up in the landfill.
What’s worse, they risk contaminating the rest of the recyclable material: the food residue can soak into paper or cardboard from other products in the same bin, causing those to need to head to the landfill too.
All that said, it’s hard to blame folks at home for this. Wherever you are in the world, packaging is often confusing and a huge part of the problem. That’s why environmental experts call for more clarity on recycling symbols and information.
“Packaging design plays an important role, but we need more awareness because marketing often misleads consumers,” says Nicolao Bonini, a professor at the University of Trento, in Italy, who led a study on how product packaging design can influence recycling behaviours.
Check the guidelines for your local area, he says, as what’s accepted in one town might be rejected in another.
Products with biodegradable packaging are also meant to be greener choices when it comes to what you throw away.
They’re often made from natural materials like paper, wood or cornstarch, or from bioplastics, which come from plants like corn or sugarcane instead of fossil fuels. The problem is, they can still take years to break down, during which they may leave behind toxic residues.
What you’re looking for instead are products labelled as ‘compostable’, with specific labels like EN 13432 or OK Compost, according to Dr Filippo Marchelli, also a researcher at the University of Trento.
Even then, compostable products rarely decompose out in the wild of their own volition.
To fully break down, compostable bioplastics in everyday items like takeaway containers, magazine wrappers, or biodegradable wet wipes need to be sent to industrial composting facilities with specific conditions: temperatures of 55–70°C (131–158°F), high humidity, constant aeration and microbial activity for 90 days.
Without these conditions, bioplastics can fragment into tiny particles and stick around just like regular microplastics, carrying pollutants into the environment like heavy metals and pesticides.
The answer? Again, check your region’s disposal guidelines, but – generally – don’t put biodegradable products into your compost bin, says Marchelli, and avoid any that can only be used once.
4. Plant trees in the right places
Plant more trees, save the planet. It’s a message that’s inspired everything from fundraising drives to volunteer projects.
And while most of us aren’t out planting trees in our own gardens, many support these efforts through donations or volunteering locally. But here’s the surprising twist: planting trees isn’t always the climate fix it’s made out to be.
In fact, as a recent study published in Nature Geoscience showed, doing it in the wrong places can actually make global warming worse.
The unique characteristics of Arctic and sub-Arctic ecosystems make these areas a poor choice for carbon offsetting projects, for example, but so far this hasn’t stopped large-scale tree-planting projects there.
Arctic soils store a significant amount of carbon, and introducing trees in these areas can disrupt that balance, releasing the carbon and thereby increasing greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, the opposite of what those projects set out to do.
Best save the trees for our cities, then. In recent research, Ronita Bardhan, professor of sustainable built environment and health at the University of Cambridge, and her colleagues found that trees can reduce urban temperatures by as much as a whopping 12°C (22°F), especially in very arid regions where it’s extremely hot and dry.
“We came up with an answer that startled and amazed us,” Bardhan says. But it needs to be the right tree, in the right place.
Well-ventilated spaces such as boulevards, wide avenues, parks, campuses, or areas with low-rise buildings provide give trees enough space for a lot of foliage and large canopies, which provide more shade. As such, these areas benefit most from tree planting.
Surprisingly, in compact areas of the city with poor airflow, especially in hot and humid cities, dense tree cover can actually have the opposite effect – trapping heat at night and actually boosting warming effects.
If you live in this part of the city, it’s better to plant sparse and small, narrow, columnar trees that allow air to move freely. (Where tree planting isn’t possible, having a green roof or terrace can help instead, Bardhan says.)
The species matters too – deciduous trees (like oaks, maples and lime trees), which lose their leaves in winter, cool more effectively in summer and allow better nighttime cooling than evergreen species with dense canopies.
Planting a mix of trees is better, providing about 0.5 °C (0.9°F) more cooling than using just one type of tree.
If you’re looking to support a tree-planting project, it’s worth doing a bit of research first. The most effective initiatives tend to use native species, working closely with ecological experts and involving local communities in the process.
They’re also transparent about where, what and how they’re planting, and they don’t just count trees. Instead, they focus on long-term impact, making sure those trees actually survive and benefit the local ecosystem.
5. Think beyond your own footprint
You may be overwhelmed from being constantly urged to eat less meat, cut down on flights and generally lower your personal carbon footprint – especially after reading this article.
While these are important steps, focusing only on personal choices can make us lose sight of the bigger picture.
Studies show that the majority of global greenhouse gas emissions aren’t generated by individuals but by industries and large-scale commercial activities – and while companies talk about ethics and sustainability, they often act in the opposite way.
“We see the need for companies to appreciate and acknowledge their moral responsibility if they’re to engage in genuine action,” says Dr Jarrod Ormiston, of the University of Technology Sydney, in Australia.
Ormiston led a study that analysed how the ten largest European energy companies talk about climate change over time, and what concrete steps they’ve taken to change their business practices.
“The more unsustainable companies, which offered empty rhetoric in their sustainability reports that didn’t match their actions, tended to defer responsibilities to others or broader society and not view themselves as responsible for leading the fight against climate change,” says Ormiston.
Our individual actions are less meaningful if the broader system isn’t operating sustainably. That means adopting a two-fold approach is crucial: work on your sustainability, and work on your community’s sustainability, says Ormiston.
Join a community garden, support renewable energy co-ops or take part in workshops and public conversations about sustainability – the planet really will thank you for it.
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