What is eco-living? The ideas behind being green.

Eco-living and green-living have become common phrases, so much so that it's often easy to forget that it's not always obvious what exactly we mean by them. So now seems like as good a time as any to sit down and think, well, what do they mean?

First of all the two terms seem to be essentially interchangeable - I've never really heard anyone draw a clear distinction between the two (which makes life a little simpler!). Eco-living has the clue right there in it's name. Eco, derived from ecological, suggests that it's based on living in tune with the ecology and eco-systems around us - plant, animals and the environment we all live in. And that really is what eco and green living are about in a nutshell: trying to live in balance with the world around us.

A key concept that links in with eco-living is that of sustainability. Living sustainably, again as the name implies, refers to living in a way which can be kept up indefinitely. This means not relying heavily on fossil fuels, which will eventually run out, not farming so intensively that the soil becomes infertile and not causing any catastrophic changes to the environment that will irrevocably change the world we live in.

The ways of doing this are many and varied (check out these guides for some ideas) but all result in us trying to reduce the impact that we have on the world around us in one way or another, whether it's by buying local food instead of food transported thousands of miles or whether it's reusing shopping bags to reduce the amount of plastics we use. It's really very simple to take the first steps towards a greener, more eco-friendly lifestyle!