Sustainable Photography Lincoln | Life Lived Photography
Menu

Eco-Photography: Is that a thing?

The short answer is YES! And I am doing my best to get there! Anyone who has been following me for some time knows that I absolutely love photographing outdoors. We have so many beautiful spaces surrounding us, and spending time in nature is one of the most important things to me. I try and teach this to my girls, and know that a lot of you are doing the same with your children.

So, as a lover of nature and our planet, I am very vested in sustainability and in trying to reduce my carbon footprint. I started in my personal life, reducing plastic, trying to walk or cycle more, reusing things, reducing water, planting wildflowers etc. But then I sat down to think about how I could make my photography business more sustainable.

Reducing Plastic

plastic_free_lincolnI took the first step by working with Plastic Free Lincoln, the local branch of Surfers against Sewage, in order to obtain my Plastic Free Approved Status. This took a little longer than originally thought thanks to Covid, but I am proud to say that last week I was officially approved!

In order to get this approval I had to prove that I was conscious of the plastic produced by my business and share what changes I made in order to reduce plastic.

Some of the things I have done are to:

 

  • Replace cellotape with paper tape
  • Swap plastic ribbon for paper ribbon
  • Choose plastic free suppliers for my gift bags (the sweets in my Christmas goodie bags)
  • I recycle packaging from suppliers, and, when packaging items on my own, use recycled paper and string, recycled paper bags.
  • I am choosing products that are made from reclaimed wood, like the photo boxes
  • Leaflets and brochures are printed on recycled paper using eco-friendly inks.

Plant a Tree

national_trust_lincolnI have also been in touch with the National Trust and signed up for their Plant a Tree Scheme as a small business.

This means that with every full family session I sell starting July 1st 2021, I will donate to the National Trust in order to plant a tree in the UK.

In my correspondence with the National Trust I have been informed of the following:

 

“All donations benefit our national tree planting fund, which we use to plant trees according to the areas in most need as identified by our Head of Trees and Woodland and regional countryside teams.  We will be planting a mix of deciduous tree and shrub species including Blackthorn, Hawthorn, Spindle, Hazel, Holly, Oak, Beech, Dog Rose, Sweet Chestnut and Crab Apple.  The species mix has been chosen to be appropriate for the property where they will be planted and will benefit a wide variety of native wildlife.

Trees are planted throughout winter and this past winter we planted trees across two properties – Sherborne Park in Gloucestershire and Kingston Lacy in Dorset.  We are yet to finalise our planting locations for winter 2021/22, but please do keep an eye on our website where we hope to provide further updates.”

 

Who knows, one day you can visit one of these locations and know that you have helped plant a tree!

Website Carbon

In addition to reducing plastic and helping improve our natural habitat, I also discovered that our websites can also produce a carbon footprint!

 

“The internet consumes a lot of electricity. 416.2TWh per year to be precise. To give you some perspective, that’s more than the entire United Kingdom.

From data centres to transmission networks to the devices that we hold in our hands, it is all consuming electricity, and in turn producing carbon emissions.” -websitecarbon.com

 

I didn’t know this at all so have been working on streamlining and improving my website, and am proud to say that the site is officially sustainable! You can also keep tabs on how much CO2 is being produced by the site by looking at the footer on each page – and if i miss something you can let me know!

sustainable_website lifelivedphoto_sustainable

I really hope this has given you some insight on how I am trying to work behind the scenes to make my business as eco-friendly as possible – I know there is still room for improvement, but I will slowly get there, if you have any other ideas on what I could do, let me know – and to all those other small businesses who may be following me or reading this post – get in touch with these associations, and see what you can do to help our beautiful planet. We only have one, after all.