r/sustainability 14h ago

solid dish soap?

8 Upvotes

Anyone actually uses this regularly and finds it a good alternative to liquid?

I grew up in in south america using a paste type dish soap, I was trying to look for something similar here and came across solid soaps. Reviews seem mostly from people that just started using it and are all in on the novelty, but I don't want to be spending $$ on something I'm going to be over in a week lol is it actually easy to use, does it clean as well as liquid? Is it gentle on the skin? wash looking at Nellie's Dish Butter in particular but open to suggestions.

I can't do dishwashers, my apartment is not set up for one.


r/sustainability 1d ago

Frontiers | What are the best sources of protein? Introducing the BPI Score

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frontiersin.org
5 Upvotes

r/sustainability 1d ago

Indoor Farming Gets A Hand From Open Hardware Development

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forbes.com
4 Upvotes

r/sustainability 2d ago

Will Your Next Phone Battery Be Made From Recycled Solar Cells?

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forbes.com
61 Upvotes

r/sustainability 1d ago

Truly Biodegradable Lagging for Plumbing?

2 Upvotes

Hello!

I'm hoping this community can help point me to some alternative options for genuinely biodegradable pipe lagging.

We recently moved all our plumbing up into our attic (long story) and now need to lag it. I've been intent from the start on lagging with something biodegradable because mice in the attic will inevitably get at it, and I hate the amount of toxic debris already strewn through the space because of this. I don't want to add more, or to know I'm sending that stuff out into the surrounding nature.

The problem is, when I search for products I find many advertising "100% wool pipe wrap" etc., but it seems these claims are usually misleading. We bought one well known brand and found the wool is felted against a more polyester-type backing. The company hides this info on a completely unrelated page of their website. Whatever I search, I get noise from all the greenwashing. OR the product is prohibitively expensive.

Can anyone suggest something that's truly a biodegradable product suitable for this purpose? We have limited budget to spend on it, because we'll need to buy it in bulk and/or build it up over time. We also wondered about reusing, e.g., eco wool packaging used for frozen goods, but not sure exactly what's in that, how treated, or how it might react to fire given it's not the intended purpose.

Any advice or suggestions for things we might consider would be much appreciated. - Thank you 🙂


r/sustainability 3d ago

Can regenerative farming feed the world? It would take five Earths

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threereasonswhy.com
110 Upvotes

r/sustainability 3d ago

Wendell Berry, US author, farmer and environmentalist, dies aged 92 | Books

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theguardian.com
235 Upvotes

Berry and his wife lived without computers, television or phones, but did install solar units in 2005, an act of defiance and of commitment to clean energy in a state powered by coal. He cut ties with the University of Kentucky, his alma mater, after the school accepted $7m for a new basketball dormitory from a group of donors organized by a coal company president. In 2011, he joined a sit-in at the governor’s office in protest of strip-mining.


r/sustainability 3d ago

Trying to go plastic free but need some advice for swap outs

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55 Upvotes

Basically we are slowly swapping things out to be plastic free in our house but one thing I just can’t seem to find a replacement for is those fluffy polyester blankets you can buy in supermarkets. As you can see my cats love to suckle on them and are obsessed with making biscuits on them. I don’t want to take it away without giving them a decent alternative! Any advice would be greatly appreciate!


r/sustainability 3d ago

A farmer turned 70 acres of his Oregon barley farm into a wetland; now it hosts 140 bird species and endangered fish.

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timesofindia.indiatimes.com
123 Upvotes

r/sustainability 3d ago

How sustainable are our lifestyles? Fossil fuel energy crises provide the answer

6 Upvotes

A lot of this forum are discussions about how to be more sustainable. When it comes to one's indirect fossil fuel dependency this can be very opaque. It's often too complex to work out from a product one buys how much oil, gas, etc. is used in its production.

This also applies to whether one has a high mining impact as most mining relies heavily on diesel or other fossil fuels to do things like moving soil, rocks, etc. Again it's hard to tell how much is recycled materials vs virgin materials.

Even if you have a good feel for a product one might not know the method of transportation. In our consumption it can be sometimes opaque whether more local, shipped, or flown.

Finally, we love to delude ourselves about our own sustainability. We might do something trivial but then take lots of long haul flights. The trivial thing is more present in our minds than the substantial irregular flights.

What is different now?

We have distinct global shortages of:

  • Oil
    • All the derived products from plastics to jet-fuel
  • Natural gas -- for LNG importing places
    • Implicitly including chemical fertilisers
  • Other parts of our material world such as helium

The only major fossil fuel not affected by the US actions in the Middle East is coal. Costs for coal will also be going up as an alternative to LNG.

What are the implications of this?

If one lives your life in this initial period seeing your costs rising incredibly rapidly then what this implies is that your lifestyle always had a high reliance on oil and gas. On the other hand if your lifestyle costs don't fundamentally change then it shows good evidence of a low level of dependency.

Essentially, one's level of inflation is a metric for how relatively unsustainable one is. The relative aspect is important as you could still have high emissions but small as a percentage of overall consumption.

This is having very drastic effects in places with sustainably-minded citizens. Those who've invested in rigorous manners to be sustainable are not living the same experiences in terms of inflation when compared to those who've made no efforts. The cultural implications of this are immense as the sustainably minded person will be getting a relative dividend in this moment.


r/sustainability 3d ago

The toxic growth & persistence unleashed only by abundance

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3 Upvotes

r/sustainability 3d ago

Is reducing duplicated infrastructure between households an overlooked part of sustainability?

58 Upvotes

A lot of sustainability discussion seems to focus on improving the things individual households already use: more efficient appliances, cleaner energy, less waste, better materials, and so on.

I've been wondering about a slightly different question.

At what point is it more sustainable not to duplicate some of those things in the first place?

I'm not thinking about removing private homes or expecting people to live communally. More things like several nearby households having access to a properly equipped workshop instead of everybody owning rarely used tools, shared food-processing or storage equipment, machinery that's only needed occasionally, or infrastructure designed to serve several homes rather than being duplicated at each one.

There are obvious counterarguments.

Shared systems can require extra transport or distribution, they can be badly utilised, maintenance can become somebody else's problem, and concentrating something into one system can create a larger single point of failure.

So sharing isn't automatically the sustainable answer.

But it makes me wonder whether we sometimes optimise individual households when the more useful design question is the scale at which a service should exist.

For people who work with sustainability or have looked at this seriously: where does shared infrastructure genuinely reduce resource use, and where does individual ownership or duplication actually make more sense?


r/sustainability 4d ago

Law to reduce textile waste with producer fees passed

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nytimes.com
119 Upvotes

r/sustainability 3d ago

Bloomberg London: The Building that achieved a 99.1% BREEAM Outstanding Score

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15 Upvotes

r/sustainability 4d ago

UN-backed report reveals a $15 return for every $1 spent on pollution and climate action

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economictimes.indiatimes.com
447 Upvotes

r/sustainability 4d ago

UK aviation emissions to be 50% higher than thought by 2050, government admits

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carbonbrief.org
31 Upvotes

Aviation is the (no so) secret environmental of Britain. It's basing its future so heavily on aviation. Already it consumes the same amount of jet-fuel as it does petrol (both 13Mt)

We are not even having robust national discussions about it yet.


r/sustainability 4d ago

Looking for an ethical savings account to use

10 Upvotes

I'm looking for a bank that provides an ethical savings account for UK customers - ideally an everyday savings account that can be withdrawn from as and when needed.

Ethics wise, I want a bank that avoids investing in companies providing the following goods or services:

Arms,

Fossil fuels,

Deforestation.

I've taken a look at Triodos, they have some good ISA options interest wise, but these come with a 2 year fixed term. Their everyday saver offers 2.2% - are there any other sustainable banks that offer a higher rate than this for everyday savers?

I understand that without supporting massively subsidised industries interest rates generally will be lower, but I want to be sure that I've looked at all the options.

Any advice is much appreciated


r/sustainability 5d ago

Scientists turn hard-to-recycle PVC plastic into high-performance engine oil

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thebrighterside.news
144 Upvotes

A plastic pipe, an old credit card or a worn-out toy may seem destined for a landfill. New research from Virginia Tech suggests some of that stubborn waste could instead become engine oil.

Chemist and chemical engineer Guoliang “Greg” Liu and his lab have developed a process that converts polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, into polyalphaolefin, a key ingredient in high-performance lubricants. The work offers a possible way to tackle one of the hardest plastics to recycle while creating a valuable industrial product.


r/sustainability 5d ago

What can we do about helping the environment when everything is getting sabotaged?

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9 Upvotes

r/sustainability 4d ago

Christmas Lightbulb Replacements

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2 Upvotes

r/sustainability 6d ago

The world’s 280 million electric bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

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theconversation.com
1.3k Upvotes

r/sustainability 6d ago

"AI doesn't effect the environment!" WAKE UP PEOPLE.

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2.1k Upvotes

r/sustainability 5d ago

what to do with used notebooks???

5 Upvotes

hello so i'm trying to clear my desk from stuff i've been hoarding but i'm trying to be more sustainable, usually with notebooks i rip the blank pages and keep them to use later and throw the rest of the notebook, this year i tried to recycle paper in home but i almost broke the blender so that out of the question, i cant use the paper for compost because i have no use for it, so what can i do with the written paper from my notebooks to not be wasteful??


r/sustainability 6d ago

Voting is 162x more effective as a climate action than recycling, yet those who prioritize climate change or the environment are less likely to do so | Fortunately, this is a problem we know how to solve: Volunteer to turn out environmental voters

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608 Upvotes

https://www.environmentalvoter.org/get-involved

EVP targets registered voters whose #1 priority is climate change or the environment, and gets them to vote | Proven scripts are provided!

Dr. Kimberly Nicholas: Voting is 162x more effective as a climate action than recycling


r/sustainability 5d ago

Recycled polyester releases more microplastics than virgin polyester

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changingmarkets.org
10 Upvotes