Understanding interrelated practices and their climate-related consequences: exploring food, mobility and housing in everyday life

Abstract

Everyday lives are made of many practices, often more intricately intertwined than recognised. Fundamental practices, like how we eat, move around and live, have profound impacts on the climate and adaptability towards sustainable societies. While the impacts of these practices in isolation may be well understood, the interrelatedness of how these practices foster, constrain or change one another has been scarcely examined. In response, this paper serves a dual purpose. First, to empirically demonstrate a relationship between food-, mobility- and housing-related consumption. It does this by investigating shared practices among young adults living in Denmark. Findings reveal that home location plays a significant role in prefiguring mobility- and food-related practices. Mobility-related practices, like the daily route or mobility mode, adapt to the home’s location, while grocery shopping is conveniently integrated into daily commuting routes. Hence, this study offers empirical evidence of how certain practices not only influence but often prefigure other practices within the context of everyday life. The second purpose of this paper is to reflect on the climate-related consequences of these interdependent practices. The location of the home creates a locked-in situation for various daily practices, such as commuting and grocery shopping, influencing the degree of climate-friendly consumption. For instance, longer commutes resulting from housing relocation may lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions, or the availability of climate-friendly food products is contingent on the grocery stores near the home’s location. This empirical knowledge highlights how policies targeting food, mobility or housing can have far-reaching effects in multiple consumption domains.