Sustainability

Recently, there has been a lot in the news about climate change, largely thanks to a plucky teenager named Greta Thunberg. Greta started the school strike for the climate last year and it has gone global. Well done Greta for proving that one person can make a difference. Her bravery is exceptionally humbling. There are not many adults who could give a speech to the EU but Greta nailed it. Go girl!

The symbol for the Extinction Rebellion.
The circle is the Earth and the
hourglass is time running out.

The other group in the headlines has been the Extinction Rebellion. Although, I have noticed a difference in the reporting with this group. The exposure has been less and also the emphasis on the reporting has been about Londoners being inconvenienced by them rather than actually reporting what the protest was about. Shame.

I believe that the difference in the reporting is primarily because the school strikes were by children, whereas the Extinction Rebellion is organised by adults. That said, even the children striking was criticised by many as irresponsible in the UK. Oh, the irony of that statement!

As an individual household, we have been making small changes for years towards reducing our carbon footprint. Missy was taught in infant school about climate change and was active in the school's Eco group for a while (until she realised that the other kids weren't particularly serious about it). Since, Missy has carried on her research independently at home and regularly discussed it with us around the dinner table.

Missy has also been regularly going around our neighbourhood picking up litter for the last 2 or more years. It breaks her heart when the following week she can see that there's even more litter everywhere. I'm very proud that she's sticking at it after so long. If only there were more people who thought about it. Several of Missy's friends will often join her for an organised litter pick up, so I do have hope that her generation will be better than ours.

That said, what school age children can do is limited as they don't have control over household decisions. They can't even vote yet so they can't influence officials easily. Greta did the only thing she thought that she could. She striked from school with the message that if we (the older generations) don't care about her future (on this planet), then why should she care? She has a really good point.

As the parents of these plucky kids, what can we do to help? 

The obvious thing is to vote for the party that best aligns with your values. The children can't vote, but we can. Take a look at each party's manifesto to determine if they are right for you. Interestingly, after our recent elections, the two major parties (Labour and Conservative) lost seats. The Independents and the Green Party picked up most of these seats. It looks like change might be around the corner in the UK and about time.

I've been tactically voting for years to keep out the worst party rather than voting for my first choice (Green), until recently. I couldn't see how they would ever get in when all my life (in my 40s now) it's been a two party race. I'm hoping that the two party race is now over and others with (hopefully) more progressive views have a chance to influence more.

As parents, we can also help our children to write to manufacturers and organisations expressing what we would like to see change. For example, supermarkets are slowly moving towards less plastic use thanks to public pressure. We can also write (or email) companies that we are impressed by and encourage them to lead the way for change. As a nation we are quick to complain but not so fast to tell someone that they are doing well. Letters of praise can help businesses to keep up momentum.

On the subject of consumption, adults have the power to vote with their money too. We don't have to buy products from companies that don't align with our values. We are trying to cut down on plastic packaging on foods for instance. Therefore, we choose to buy loose fruit and veg using our own reusable cloth veggie bags. (Affiliate link) We cook everything (just about) from scratch so we don't buy any processed and heavily packaged foods. Our weekly rubbish has halved with this one small change alone! We have the power to boycott businesses that need to do better and it doesn't always cost more money. We have reduced our food bill by about a third by cutting out processed foods as I discussed before.

Even better, reduce consumption all together.

Everything that we buy has some cost to the planet. All the resources to make consumer products start in a humble form, like metals mined from the ground, plastics made from crude oil, cotton grown in fields, and so on. Everything costs the Earth something. So why not be more intentional about what we buy (and already have) and make them last as long as possible? Reuse items before they are (hopefully) recycled. Recycling isn't the answer alone as the recycling process itself costs us energy resources. I believe it's better to fully use up what we have before buying again, preferably second hand. If we all reduced our consumption of goods by 10% imagine the difference we could make!

This is a journey that we, as a household, started about 9 years ago. It started because of lack of money but we quickly realised that many of these efforts were also helping to reduce our impact on the Earth by reducing our carbon footprint. Shortly after, Missy became passionate about Eco issues and we've carried on refining our habits each year since. Saving money and looking after the planet mostly seem to go hand in hand for us. It's a great incentive. I'll have to write a few posts about the changes that we've made as many were so easy that I kick myself for not doing it sooner.

The journey continues...





If you wonder what your carbon footprint is check out the Carbon Footprint Calculator on the WWF site. It was one of the easier ones to use and gives an idea of your impact. It is a little simplified for us as we do many things to reduce our impact that are not listed but it is a good starting point. My footprint is 87% of the UK target even without the other things that we do. (This is still about 150% of the global average however!) I'm very happy with that as some things are beyond my control with my ill health, such as not being able to walk or cycle and needing a car that can take a wheelchair. It does show however, that even I was able to make a significant change. Imagine if we all made small changes that are in our power. Wow!