Can you imagine that SAVING MONEY and LIVING SUSTAINABLY go together?
It does! And Dr. Erlijn van Genuchten proves it to you. Because: she didn’t just go through it theoretically, she tested everything in her own life – for well over a year.
How everything started …
In 2019, Dr. Erlijn van Genuchten started a 365 Sustainable Decisions Challenge aiming at making her own daily life more environmentally friendly. Ever since, she has gathered new ideas and shares these on social media and her blog to inspire others to adapt a more sustainable lifestyle too.
Her motto:
A better world starts with yourself.
And interestingly – more than 460 ideas later – she realizes that her daily life has become a lot more environmentally friendly, but that she can live in pretty much the same way as she was used to. And what she didn’t expect when she started her journey:
it saved her a lot of money – worth 3 months working for her previous employer as an ethical hacker!
Here are two glimpses of what she did in bringing together “saving money“ and “living sustainably“:
Glimpse #1: Car sharing
One example that is more environmentally friendly and saves her several thousand euros a year, is signing up for car-sharing instead of buying her own car. This means she can still drive a car whenever necessary, but saves one car being produced, shipped, eventually disposed, etc. And it has other advantages:
“When I book my car, I pick one that has just the right size and that is not too big. This saves me petrol.” And she also can rent an electric car without having to worry about her own recharging station.
Glimpse #2: Reducing food waste
She has also come up with several ways to reduce her food waste, which means she also has to buy less. For example, she always brings a shopping list, written on paper waste, which lists what she needs. By planning properly, there are hardly any leftovers that go off. And when she goes to a restaurant and couldn’t eat everything, she takes the leftovers home. This saves a meal – or at least part of a meal – the next day.
“I also check whether my food is still edible after the expiry date, as this is often the case.”
And YOU can do that as well. You don’t have to change your complete life in one turn. More important is continuity. Making one change at a time – step by step. And being enthusiastic about a small idea that makes the world a little bit better, which makes you proud. Proud of your own curiosity and of what difference you can make.
In her videos, Dr. Erlijn van Genuchten shares how you can make this work in your daily life too. Here you can start your own journey that will result in – besides a healthier planet – a colorful bouquet of good feelings:
FULL COURSE INFO HERE
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