My passion since a small child has always involved caring for animals and the environment. My parents live on a small-holding and growing up there, I was always rescuing wildlife, running around barefoot and having adventures with my sister in the Warwickshire countryside that we call home. This unsurprisingly, led to my career as a small animal veterinary surgeon and to a general unease at the state of the world we live in.

It is absolutely overwhelming to think of the scale of climate change, pollution and destruction of habitats that human beings are responsible for. Honestly, are the small changes that I am trying to do going to make a difference to this terrifying picture? Probably not, but i am a big believer in being responsible for my own actions and hopefully encouraging others to do the same. We don’t need a hundred eco-warriors living the perfect zero-waste zero-carbon footprint lifestyles, we need a million normal people doing their best to live in a less wasteful way.

Over the last couple of years, I have worked hard to make more conscious decisions about the products I buy and looking into reducing and better disposal of the waste we create at home.

I have to be honest though, it’s not been easy.

I have found this journey to living “an eco-friendly lifestyle” requires hours of research and a lot of commitment… and not necessarily that achievable for the normal working person. The ideal zero-waste lifestyle has so far alluded me, every sustainable living blog I’ve read has been written by someone who appears to have lots of time to achieve these great things, unlike myself. I’ve come across a lot of hurdles; time being the biggest- for example unable to get down to the pop-up shops to buy the plastic-free food shop I wanted to due to being called into work or finding a brilliant-sounding alternative product to the one i’ve been using but with an associated “brilliant” price tag that has made me reconsider.

Maybe by recording my journey to sustainability, the background work for other busy people will have already been done, and I can find a way to make this kind of lifestyle fit in better for working families.

I will be addressing all areas of my own life; from plastic use, trialling some eco-friendly products and working out better ways to reduce how much waste we have; whilst recording my absolute failures and (hopefully!) successes.