This is Ms. Aristea. She is Greek, she lives in Athens and she was recently introduced to the term “sustainability” by her daughter and she realized that most examples of sustainable habits are things she already practices in her everyday life.
When washing for example: She makes sure the washing machine is full, temperature at 40 degrees and drying happens outside, under the sun.

She usually goes once to the super market and once to the flee market to buy the supplies of each week. She cooks what she plans and when she is out of plans she improvises with what she has in her fridge and her cupboards. She doesn’t like throwing things away, so when she has too much of something she is either giving it away to friends and relatives or she invites people to eat it together. Within the week she tries to cook legumes, also a plain pasta, vegetables, fish,… and in general not meat every day!
Carpets, warm clothes & blankets are a “must” during the winter. She doesn’t turn on the heating in order to be in the house in a T-Shirt during winter. Heating turns on a couple of hours during the day and a couple of hours during the evening. This is also the agreement with the rest of the residents of the block of flats she lives since all residents need to share costs. During summer air conditioning machine operates mostly during the evening. During the day the balcony doors are usually open and leveraging every little sense of breeze.
She recycles, she buys unpacked cereals and other products, she walks a lot and uses the public means of transport (even though she would never say no to a friend or her son if they come to pick her up by car 😉 ), she sews clothes and socks that have holes and she makes sure that clothes in general are used and worn as much as possible. For exmpale a friend’s blouse Ms Aristea liked and kept, and when she also didn’t want it any more, she gave it to a relative or friend of hers who did like it. Her son’s trousers when he was a kid, that didn’t fit him any more but were not thrown away. They were kept for the daughter to wear them when she grows a bit older and after her, the cousin of theirs who grew old enough as well.

She is saying all these are just “common sense”! BUT…
What’s this BUT?!? Ms. Aristea uses a big number of plastic bags…
Her daughter tries to convince her to give up on them or at least to use less. Up to now she hasn’t managed it… We hope she will be convinced though because it’s something easy for her to do. She already has the spirit, she just needs to see the point as with everything else she does already.

Wanna know more about Ms. Aristea? She gave us her permission to reach out to her if anyone has a question or a remark. So if anything… just comment below!

You can see the original version of this text in greek here.