A friend of mine come to visit over the Christmas break with her family. While she was here, in between the catch up and the food prep and the washing up, we managed to have a few conversations about the state of the world and our hopes for the future. These conversations included the current climate breakdown, the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere and how we were adapting our life to try and reduce our personal carbon footprint (Carbon Conversations does that to you!).
As a family they were already doing a lot, they have a well insulated house, a renewable electricity supplier, buy local food in season from the farm shop nearby, and help the local biodiversity by growing native plants in their garden.
My friend is back home now, and she told me that as a result of our conversations they had decided to make some more changes to their lifestyle to reduce their own family footprint.
They are biking more, car sharing with other families to get the kids to sports clubs. Planning meetings with friends that don’t rely on using a car to get there.
They are even spending a month without using a car to see how they get on!
They have renewable energy so have bought an electric steamer to cook food without using gas, and have planted the flower pots with herbs and salad to grow a bit more of their own food. They have also cut the amount of red meat the family eats by more than half.
They are also planning on making more of their own bread and cakes instead of buying shop bought.
And maybe best of all, she’s talking with her friends and neighbours about why she is doing all this, who knows where that will lead?
I think it must be true, the best thing you can do about climate change is to talk about it.
If you feel you would like to try one thing to start here’s a list of 103 options, maybe one or two of them will suit you to start with?
And if you feel like doing more, you can join PLANT’s Carbon Conversations workshops yourself. The next group starts in Newport on the 10th of March and they still have a couple of places left. Get in touch with Kaska on blog@tayportgarden.org or 07446231073 for more information and booking.
