When you take the Eco-lifestyle quiz you will have an idea of some of the things you do which are more eco-friendly and of some further actions you might take in order to live a more ‘sustainable lifestyle’. Of course, we may not always be able to live a totally sustainable lifestyle because of the busyness of everyday life, the demands on our family life, and the way we may need to organise our lives around convenience. The socio-economic infrastructure is not always there to support us. We would not wish to suggest here that the issues are stark or simple, and that you are either a human pollutant or a green goddess. In fact, even when we consciously try to be ‘eco-friendly’ our actions can have unintended negative consequences for the environment, known as rebound effects.

Rebound Effects

The following ‘rebound effects’ show that it is not always easy to make positive environmental lifestyle choices. For instance:

• You could reduce the impacts associated with your use of transport and energy by purchasing energy-efficient cars and electrical appliances, but if that requires replacing your old car and appliances early on in their life-cycle, then the rebound effect is a negative waste impact;
• If you spend the money you save on your new energy-efficient appliances on an extra holiday, then your actions have led to a negative transport impact;
• If you become a volunteer for a conservation charity and you have to drive great distances to do the work then the negative transport impact may mean that your positive volunteering has an overall negative impact;
• You may think that you are reducing the pesticides in the environment by eating organic foods, but these are flown in then the rebound effect associated with the carbon emissions linked to transport is probably worse overall for the environment;
• If you wash glass jars, food tins and dirty plastics before recycling then you are using valuable water resources. To this can be added the rebound impact of the energy required for recycling the waste materials;
• If you take an extra journey to bring your waste to the tidy tip for recycling in a ‘gas guzzling’ car, then the rebound effects associated with transport may cancel out the environmental benefits of your recycling actions.

Quality of life depends on a quality environment

We should try to take environmental actions and avoid unintentional rebound effects if possible; after all a sustainable environment is necessary for a good quality of life. The Environment Agency has presented ‘quality of lifestyle’ indicators which demonstrate that a good quality of life is contingent on good environmental standards (See www.environment-agency.gov.uk/yourenv/). The quality of our lifestyle depends on: the effective management of climate change related impacts; water supplies; sewage debris, litter and waste issues; air, water and soil pollution; and our natural leisure resources including, coastal areas, waterways, forests and areas of natural beauty.

Limited Resources for Sustainable Development

Now and in future, there may not be the resources to protect the environment to the standards we have come to expect. The costs and benefits associated with environmental protection are constantly being weighed, and there are already some signs that we are sacrificing parts of our environment. Not just because of costs but also because environmental protection may not be sustainable in the long term. For examples:

• The need for economic and regional development in the South-East of England and the London Thames Corridor are leading to increased pressures upon the soil and water resources here, and there are doubts about the sustainability of these proposed developments.
• The recognition that it can be too costly, risky or unsustainable to protect the environment is evidenced by the withdrawal of building insurers’ interest in providing insurance for properties located in areas of environmental jeopardy, such as flood plains or coastal regions.
• It has also long been felt that the British Isles should be defended from the sea, through the use of sea walls, breakwaters, groynes or massive rocks placed offshore to break the power of the waves -often undertaken at great financial cost. Increasingly land owners such as the National Trust are adopting the approach of ‘managed retreat’, or allowing the sea to breach coastal defences.

Resource limitations and reluctance to pursue policies that cannot be sustainable in the long term, demonstrate the importance of all of us doing what we can to protect the environment for our own pleasure, and for the generations to come.