Sustainability in the real world

Being sustainable doesn’t have to be as daunting as it sounds…

It won’t have escaped your attention that sustainability has shot to the top of the agenda.

This shouldn’t perhaps come as a surprise. Extreme weather events leading to flooding and wildfires have occurred regularly. What’s more, we live in a world where the UN expects the population to grow from about 8 billion today to 9.7 billion people in 2050¹.

As the global population and wealth grow, so does our need for limited resources. This means everyone, from governments and multi-nationals to individuals and small business, are looking at ways to be more sustainable.

What we do already

While progress will never be quick enough for some, governments and business around the world are taking great strides in the right direction. The question for us as individuals is, what can we practically do on a day-today basis?

Let’s not beat ourselves up too much – we’re consumers, we always have been and always will be. We’re also already doing a lot to help. We recycle, buy more fuel-efficient cars, buy electricity which is increasingly generated by renewable energy and generally live in well-insulated houses.

We’ve also reduced our reliance on single use plastics and recognised it’s important to buy local.

According to research by Deloitte², UK consumers are on balance adopting more sustainable lifestyles in 2023 than they did in 2022.

They identified UK consumers top seven sustainable actions in 2023:

Recycled or composted household waste – 76%
Reduced food waste – 68%
Limited their use of single-use plastic – 64%
Reduced the amount of new goods they’ve bought – 61%
Buying more seasonal produce – 57%
Repaired an item rather than buy new – 55%
Reducing the number of new products they buy – 39%

What can we all do better?

We’re all frustrated by companies that talk-the-talk but don’t deliver on sustainability. We can encourage companies to adapt by choosing sustainable products and services.

At Zurich, we’re always looking at ways to improve sustainability. We support customers in dealing with the effects of climate change and to make sustainable choices. For example, each life protection policy sold in the UK helps to fund the planting of more than a million trees in West Africa and we offer a digital communication option through your online account.