THE SUSTAINABILITY STARTER KIT

Written By Jan Boroff Miller

​10 terms you need to know when opting for a greener lifestyle.

I am a dabbler. While some people find meaning mastering a hobby, I love to go on kicks, like learning the four chords necessary to play a few songs on the ukulele, making perogies from scratch, or doing just enough research to keep my house plants from completely turning to dust.

But every once in a while, I find an activity that really piques my interest, and it shifts from a casual dabble to a full-blown pastime. Lite Foot Company wants sustainable living to be a hobby that sticks for its customers. That means equipping you with the products you need to keep your home eco-friendly and the knowledge to understand why your individual impact really does make a difference in keeping the earth healthy for generations to come.

So, I’ve compiled a basic “top ten” list of buzz words and terms commonly used within sustainable living spaces to help you navigate the green landscape. This is by no means an all-inclusive list, but it’s enough to get you acquainted and comfortable with terminology you’ll encounter on this blog and in environmental spheres.

1. START WITH WHAT YOU KNOW: RECYCLING 

Reduce, reuse, recycle. This mantra from childhood still buzzes around my brain to this day, and it’s often the first step many of us take when shifting to a sustainable lifestyle. Recycling truly is an amazing process. Essentially, humans have come up with a system to collect waste, process specific items into manufactured goods and sell them as raw materials to make new products. More and more, you can find many products made from recycled materials, such as aluminum cans, carpeting, egg cartons, nails and more.

​However, Lite Foot founder, Katie, would be the first to remind you that recycling is not the end-all-be-all in a sustainability journey. Many items that are recycled still end up in landfills or the oceans. In the Recycling Partnership’s 2020 Report on curbside recycling in the United States, they determined that only 32 percent of the total possible recyclable materials are being captured by the current system. They also refer to the U.S.’s curbside recycling process as a “system,” specifically in quotation marks (ouch), because there is such a wide variance of protocols in curbside recycling programs used across the country.

If you really want to nerd out, there are loads of resources on the benefits and deficiencies of recycling, including downcycling and off-loading (trashing) low-quality recycled product. We’ll take a deep dive into recycling research in a later post, but definitely check out this link to the report cited above.

The takeaway—keep on recycling while implementing additional green lifestyle changes in your home.

2. CARBON FOOTPRINT

Carbon Footprints are a measure of greenhouse gases emitted by a person or business. With quality products from Lite Foot Company, you can take charge of reducing the carbon footprint of your entire household quickly and effectively.

3. NATURAL RESOURCES

I’m sure almost everyone learned about natural resources in third-grade science. But let’s be honest—that was at least 20 years ago, and I can’t even remember what I had for lunch yesterday. So, here’s a refresher!

Natural resources are materials provided from the earth or grown to produce commodities we need and desire. They can be renewable, like wind or solar resources, or finite, like coal.

4. ZERO WASTE

Zero Waste products are basically the dream. They take into consideration all aspects of a product’s lifecycle, from production and shipping materials to the utilization of the product by customers and how/when they are disposed. A lot of times the product packaging will be reusable, refillable, recyclable or compostable.

This is why we love Hillary the Refillery! She helps reduce so much unnecessary waste when you refill your current jars and receptacles with quality soaps, cleaners and other home goods.

5. GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE

These terms are technically different, but in my head, they live in the same family. So, we’ll make number five a delightful two-for-one deal.

I’m pretty sure millennials all learned about Global Warming from former VP Al Gore, and it refers to the gradual warming of the planet due to greenhouse gasses.

Climate Change refers to shifts in the earth’s climate because of changes in the atmosphere. While the planet does this on its own, scientists are increasingly worried about the current rate of change because the planet has seen rapid shifts in a very short time period. That’s why it is more important than ever for individual households to invest in ways to reduce their carbon footprints.

6. CLOSE LOOP SYSTEMS​

Closed Loop systems focus on an even input and output. A company will use the same product multiple times to create a new commodity. Once the item has served its purpose, it will be reused to produce a new product again, and the loop continues.

A great example of closed loop products can be found at Lite Foot Company! Check out their offerings of Plaine Product shampoos, conditioners, body washes and lotions! These items are specifically packaged in aluminum, a metal that can be recycled over and over again, unlike plastics that can only be downcycled once or twice. Alternatively, you can ship the bottle back to LFC for a refill of these quality products while reusing the aluminum bottle indefinitely. If you want to learn more about this type of system, check out Plaine Product’s website for the extensive measures they take to keep their loop closed. ​

7. FAIRTRADE AND ETHICAL TRADE

I’ve got another two-for-one special for you regarding these next two terms as they are often linked and attempt to reach a shared goal.

Fairtrade refers to equitable exchanges between producers and manufactures. I typically encounter this term most when looking at clothing or coffee, but it’s widely used to refer to many different types of textiles that offer fair prices to growers or farmers for their products.

Ethical Trade focuses on the workers throughout the supply chain to ensure they have good operating conditions and fair compensation.

A company implementing both of these practices would be sure to procure raw materials for a fair price from the producer or farmer (fairtrade). Then, they would create a good working environment and provide fair wages to the workers employed in their facilities to refine that raw material into a product you want to buy (ethical trade).

8. FAST FASHION

​Fast fashion is the quick and cheap production of mass amounts of clothing to sell to consumers. This industry is a mess. She wastes water. She uses plastic microfibers in many of the materials produced, which end up polluting the oceans. Plus, 80 percent of discarded clothing ends up in a landfill or incinerated. Who’s making many of those clothes? Lots of fast fashion brands.
 
The good news is there are many alternatives to fast fashion purchases, so stay tuned for more information on this topic in the future.

9. GREENWASHING

Greenwashing is a real bummer because I know I have been sucked into this branding strategy more than once without knowing better. Plus, it’s a term that has apparently been around since the 1980’s, and I am must just now learning about it.

Greenwashing is a marketing strategy that implies a product is good for the environment to increase sales. It can be very subtle, like a product using green packaging and eco-friendly buzz words to mislead consumers. Beware of products that casually throw verbiage like “natural,” “bio,” or “eco” onto their labels. They can be tricky! But greenwashing takes on many forms, so we will definitely explore this concept further in a later blog post.

10. COMPOSTING

Remember when I talked about dabbling? Well, composting was one of those weird kicks that I went on and ended a life-long convert to the compost pile.

Composting is essentially recycling for organic matter. You can throw out food scraps (fruits and veggies), leaves from your yard, eggshells, coffee grounds, tea bags and much more, and they will break down into a rich soil that your house plants or garden beds will LOVE.

Biodegradable waste, like apple cores, carrot tops or that lettuce you forgot was sitting in your fridge, need lots of oxygen for microorganisms to break them down. They cannot receive enough O2 when tossed in a landfill to go through the decomposition process, and they end up emitting harmful greenhouse gasses. While there are limits to what items can be composted, this process helps to cut down on methane emissions in landfills by allowing the organic waste to decompose naturally.

I have been lucky enough to live in homes with yards for most of my adult life, and we’ve had a cinder block compost bin for the last six years. We typically compile waste into a large container that we keep in our freezer to help alleviate smell issues. Once the bin is full, we take out the scraps and dump it on our compost pile. We occasionally turn the pile to aid in the decomposition process. Eventually, the scraps break down, and the compost is added to our garden beds to enrich the soil. The pile is big enough that several of our neighbors can also add their scraps to the pile, making it a true community project!

If you don’t have a yard or convenient outdoor space to compost, it can still be available to you! Many cities have composting programs (Compost Nashville or Code of Return in Savannah), and Lite Foot Company sells a compact compost bucket to help you make the jump to composting whenever you are ready.

Lite Foot Company believes that the actions of individuals can create change on a larger scale. Whether you are looking to dip your toe in the waters of a sustainable lifestyle or you’re already knee-deep in your very own compost pile, LFC is here to support you on your journey to creating an eco-friendly home.

Jan Boroff Miller
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