Are there things you try to practice daily to live a more sustainable lifestyle?

This isn’t as simple as it might seem when you’re disabled.

A lot of sustainability seems to ignore accessibility. Straws are a brilliant example of this.

In the grand scheme of using less plastic, not using plastic straws only saves about 0.025% of the plastic being used.

While saving any plastic is obviously good, the importance of not using plastic straws was blown out of proportion, as if it could change the planet. I don’t know if you saw the campaign?

But straws are an accessibility aid to others. There are to me. And paper straws which are often the replacement for plastic straws currently, are not as good of an accessibility aid for lots of people as plastic straws. They break easily so people need more, people can have allergic reactions to metal which is sometimes used instead, or straws may not be available at a venue altogether.

And I often forget until I use them, just how much I benefit from using them. Which is perhaps some form of internalised ableism, in convincing myself that I don’t need to use a straw. Or maybe it’s the difficulty of having to clean plastic straws, which is part of the thought process involved in my carrying one.

The same applies to reusable cups. I want to use them. But reusable cups need to be given to the person filling them clean, and it’s not always possible for me as a disabled person to clean them in between.

But anyway, the point of this post is don’t judge people who can’t act sustainability. They might want to, but it simply might not be a possibility.