I strive to adopt sustainable practices, which for me largely amounts to reduction and simplification. There seems to be an unfortunate tension between sustainability and consumerism which leads to implication that sustainability should be layered on top of existing consumption and messages around reduction being buried or spun. This can translate into not only a house of cards in the service of seeking to enable existing patterns but worse scenarios such as encouraging replacement of existing products with those that may be more efficient products without a path to amortize production impacts (not to say there aren’t cases where such amortization is evident). I tend to pursue such goals through tuning of my actions rather than anything more comprehensively aggressive.
I try to consume from companies that support this goal, both those that are local and aligned with many of the values. As a disclaimer most such assessments are done based on last mile assessments - there are certainly plenty of places where such assessments may not be accurate but I don’t have the expertise or capacity to perform more complete analysis of concerns like supply chains and adjust my purchasing accordingly. I do incorporate any such information I find out and expect such evident value alignment to translate up the chain at least insofar as misalignments are more likely to bubble up (i.e. it is far more likely that interesting information would be revealed if it is inconsistent with a vendor’s image).
One particular value I’m pursuing currently is plastic neutrality. While fields as medicine can likely benefit from plastics they are ubiquiotus and raise concerns both in the form of non-renewable materials for manufacturing (specific petroleum) and in degrading to microplastics.
While the prospect of recycling may be helpful, most statistics suggest that it may only help with the tip of the iceberg. It also unfortunately aligns supply chains with plastic materials which could incentivize additional plastic production, and even the attribution of something as being made from recycled materials may be less that straightforward. This reflects the larger sentiment that recycling is good practice, but only as the last resort after reduction and reuse (where in this case that could be focused on plastics and less renewable resources specifically).
Sustainability also helps inform my career path, and I seek to incorporate some practices into the software I use and design.