Greener Living

It's not easy to change your lifestyle overnight, but making some simple changes to your daily routine can have a major impact.  While we need policy changes by the government to tackle the bigger issues, making a start on achieving a more sustainable life on a personal level by taking responsbility for our own actions, will go a long way to helping ensure a future for our planet.

The key things to bear in mind are to consume less and to become more energy and resource-efficient.

• Turn off the tap when you clean your teeth – you don’t need to run the water while you are brushing. The amount you save will be small but it does add up over time. More importantly this is one of those habit-busters – you are training yourself to think differently about resources, using only what you need and wasting less. Once learnt, you can apply this to every area of your life.

• Bin the plastic bag – next time you go shopping, take your own carrier bag and refuse the ones offered at the checkout. If you need a bag, buy a ‘bag for life’ that you can reus

• Turn your heating down by one degree – you won’t notice the difference but you will save energy and cut your bills.

• Boil less – when you make a hot drink, don’t fill the kettle to the top but just boil what you need. It’s much quicker, too. Overfilling kettles wastes £1million of energy in the UK every week – see www.ecokettle.com

• Turn off all electronic machines left on stand-by – like TVs, videos, hi-fis, DVD players and anything else with a stand-by function. It’s estimated that if everyone in the UK did this we could shut down two power stations with the reduction in required energy. Unplug your mobile phone charger when not being used to charge your phone – the charger still consumes energy if plugged in.

• Start to compost. All your organic waste can be composted - either in a heap in your garden or in a special container like a wormery. You could buy one these or make your own. Many councils now provide a brown bin for organic waste which is then collected and composted on municipal sites.

• Buy local, seasonal food – and purchase items with less packaging. Start with a few items – it’s not difficult and might make shopping less of a chore. You’ll be surprised how much nice, fresh stuff you discover!

• Recycle more! – you may already be recycling your bottles and newspapers, but contact your local council to find out about all the other items they can recycle at their recycling depots. You can also take your unwanted clothes, books and toys to charity shops. They can raise money, you clear clutter and your unused items find new homes and purposes.

• Walk rather than drive on short journeys – next time you need to go somewhere less than a mile away – walk there. It’s healthier, cheaper, probably not that much slower once you’ve had to find somewhere to park, much less stressful and will reduce your carbon footprint immediately.

• Flush less – fit a Hippo water saver in your cistern and save around 3 litres a flush or around 6,000 litres per year per person. Available from www.hippo-the-watersaver.co.uk – but you can also put a brick in your cistern instead.

• Buy planet-friendly, biodegradable detergent for all your household cleaning needs – including laundry, dishwasher, kitchen, bathroom and even your toilet. Ecover (www.ecover.com) is widely available in supermarkets and organic stores or try mail order suppliers like WWF’s Earthly Good catalogue – visit www.wwf.org.uk/shop

• Hang your clothes out to dry and try to stop using the tumble dryer. Your clothes will smell fresher if you dry them outside and you will save both money and energy.

• Buy energy-saving light bulbs and replace your most often used conventional ones. It costs a bit more upfront but each light bulb can save you up to £7 per year and make 75% energy savings.

• Switch to a green and renewable electricity supplier. If you do it online it will take you no more than 10 minutes. Find out more at www.greenelectricity.org which provides consumers with up-to-date and independent information on all of the green electricity tariffs available in the UK.

Ethical Living

Some ideas to help you achieve a more ethical lifestyle from Alex Wallace Dunlop, founder of Small is All (www.smallisall.com):

• Shop less. Or at least try using second hand shops, antique/flea markets and the good old jumble sale. Buying new things uses the world’s resources and creates a market in which vulnerable people, children and the poor, are easily exploited when the WI ladies would love to make more cakes for you.

• Travel more. Walk, cycle, run, skateboard, sail and dream your way through life. If you have to get somewhere far away in a hurry, try car sharing with people like liftshare.com. Check out bus and train timetables which can be faster than cars and internal flights with long check-ins and are cheapest if you book in advance which is unfair for the disorganised among us but that’s life. Enjoy the journey because wherever you’re going won’t have all the answers

• Eat better.  Locally produced, organic food maintains the soil’s health for next season’s crop and has less distance to travel so provides more nutrients for you meaning your body could resist more of the annual germs we all encounter which in turn saves time and money for the NHS. Giving up meat is the single best thing most people can do to reduce their carbon footprint. It’s complicated so just trust me on that.

• Laugh more. Laughing does your body the world of good by releasing endorphins and such and makes you enjoyable to be around which is one less sad thing in the world for the rest of us to worry about. Being miserable doesn’t help anything and having a positive, problem-solving, can-do approach to life could inspire the people you meet to stop combative arguments which builds to hatred which creates seemingly huge global problems like the arms trade. If all the people at those events thought more, ate better and so on they may think twice about making and selling things to kill other people’s children.

• Be realistic. Instead of bemoaning the fact that you haven’t thrown yourself in front of a whaling ship this year, do whatever you can. Write down all the causes you care about on the back of the envelope you got your last mobile phone bill in and tear them into individual strips, put the strips into your recycling bag and go and ask your next door neighbour to pick just one. That’s your cause for as long as you want. While they’re yours, sign all their petitions, write to you MP about the issue, adopt just one of the children or animals, buy your Christmas cards from a related charity, leave a donation to them in your will or call them and ask how you can help.

• Live locally.  Supporting local services and amenities means they will be around for longer. Instead of meeting your now jolly friends in an American coffee chain, have a cup of tea and stale cake in an oppressively quite tea shop, get a stained book from the library, buy fruit and vegetables from a green grocer, newspapers from a newsagent and books from a book shop. That way, when corporations fail to take over the world, you can rejoice that you had a small, but vital part in the victory.

• Watch TV.   Although the world is breathtaking to look at, if we all try to look at all of it, there will be a lot more problems. Enjoy all the fantastic images of Antarctica without feeling the cold, or contributing to their destruction.

• Give up smoking, but not for your health…

  Tobacco plantation workers are usually poorly paid and frequently suffer health problems as a result of the pesticides used on the crops. Cigarette manufacturers spend billions ‘lobbying’ governments all over the world to do things that are not in the long-term interests of citizens, the environment or economies. In the UK, the smoking ban means more pubs are filling heaters to the outsides of their buildings expelling huge amounts of heat and energy in an attempt to make standing out in the cold and rain more possible for smokers. Its just silliness.

• Consider the impact of everything you do.   A little bit of though about your actions goes a long way. What you do matters because its all you have, and you matter.

• And finally… stop communicating through digital networks and talk to a stranger in the shop/café/pub….unless you recognise the only person in there from the news, when you should call the police and don’t go straight home in case they’re following you!!