• >
  • Sustainable Living Calculator
Illustration of a green calculator with images of cars, lightbulbs, reusable coffee cups and water bottles

The Sustainable Living Calculator

With our oceans overflowing with plastic, wild fires raging across the globe and fossil fuel use continuing to be a major energy source, the environment and our impact on it is high on the agenda.

The way we treat our planet now could change the face of it for decades to come.

Find out what you could save, and the environmental impact you could have, by living more sustainably with our new Sustainable Living Calculator.

Compare 0% credit cards to spread the cost of your sustainable shop.

As we discovered in our sustainable living survey, approximately 43% of British adults are happy to spend more money on greener goods, while 42% of us worry about the impact our own shopping habits are having on the environment. This is where our sustainable living calculator comes in - find out more about a sustainable lifestyle for you and your family.

The changes you make to live a greener lifestyle needn't cost the earth and could have a hugely positive effect on the future of our world.

For example:

  • Disposable coffee cups are free to use, but they take around a litre of water to make. We throw away 2.5 billion used coffee cups every year in the UK. That's enough to stretch around the world over 5 times

  • Replacing single-use plastic bags or 'bags for life' with a reusable bag would save a kilogram of plastic every year, and £42 in bag fees

  • Did you know that by remembering to switch off your lights when not in use you can help to reduce carbon emissions by as much as 0.15 pounds each year? With 44% respondents of adults confirming that they make the conscious effort to switch off household technology when not in use, this shows that the little acts can make a huge difference

  • Choosing unwrapped, less expensive goods instead of plastic-wrapped organic produce, could save you over £2,700 and still have a positive environmental impact. Did you know that paying by card is between 1.3 and 1.5 times greener than paying with cash?

According to the Institute of Faculty and Actuaries, becoming a cashless society would: "save the physical resources and materials used in the making and distribution of notes and coins, as well as wasted or destroyed coins and notes. It would also save on transportation of notes and coins to and from banks, and ATMs’ power consumption."

Spread the cost of your sustainable purchases and save on interest with a 0% purchase credit card.

About James Andrews 

James is our senior personal finance editor and has spent the past 15 years writing and editing personal finance news. He has previously written for ReachPLC, was money editor of Mirror Online and Yahoo Finance UK, and has recently been quoted in City AM, Liverpool Echo and Daily Record as well as featured on national radio shows TalkRadio and the BBC

View James Andrews’ full biography here or visit the money.co.uk press centre for our latest news.