2017 - a year of living more sustainably

2017 is going to be a year of living more sustainably with the Ikea Live LAGOM project - a year long challenge to live more sustainably with help from the team at Ikea Leeds and some fantastic products to help us on our journey.

Living with my husband and our landlord, I already try my best to be sustainable, recycling where possible, turning off lights and taps, putting on a jumper rather than the heating and stopping buying new clothing for 12 months. But I knew that we could be more sustainable, as we still have bins full of rubbish, wasted resources and a home full of unsustainable products. Thats where Live LAGOM comes in. 

Every year Ikea select a group of people to start living LAGOM, and back in November I was chosen as a representative for Ikea Leeds to take part in the project! This blog will follow our progress through the year and hopefully, show the positive changes we’ve been able to make in our home to achieve this.

To start the project, in December I had a home visit with our LAGOM leaders to see what we could be doing better.It turns out that we actually are quite sustainable to start with - recycling anything that isn't nailed down, wasting very little food and with a good understanding of things we can do to save energy - but theres always more! We identified our New Year's Resolutions' as wasting less - less food, less energy, less water, less heat, less resources. 

To kick start the project, I was given £300 to spend on Ikea products to help me on the sustainability journey. Helped by the lovely Helen, I filled a trolley full of fantastic things, ready to get started on achieving my sustainable goals. This was split into 2 main areas, Saving Energy & Recycling, and we chose the following products to help with these areas:

Energy

- Insulated curtains

- LED lightbulbs

- Rechargeable batteries 

- Floor standing lamp

- Clip lamps

- Faster boiling pans

- Steamer inserts for pans

Recycling

- food waste caddy

- large bins

- bathroom sorting bin

- storage jars

- seed propagation kit

I'll be documenting how I get on over the next 12 months in the project, and see if I can make an impact on how much we waste. With a projected house move in the spring, I'm keener than ever to save money & resources, and hope that we can reduce our monthly outgoings, reduce the amount of rubbish that goes into our black bin and save as much food as possible from landfill.