It was very encouraging to see that both Scottish, and UK governments, have declared climate emergency this Spring, and that they followed up by formally committing to meet a zero carbon emission target by 2050 (2045 for Scotland). We now wait to see how they will put these ambitious plans into action as the Parliaments discuss an update to the existing Climate Change Bill.
While such government support plays a crucial role in tackling our planet’s climate emergency, we need all hands on deck now to make the necessary changes happen in time to prevent catastrophic overheating of the planet. As David Attenborough said in his testimony to the UK parliament this week:
We cannot be radical enough
That’s why we are so very proud of our local families grabbing the carbon bull by the horns and succesfully reducing their own family carbon footprints, with support from PLANT’s Carbon Conversation workshops.
Since Autumn 2018, we have had 4 groups of 28 local residents completing the 5-step programme, focusing on imagining a low carbon future and tackling emissions from their home energy, travel, diet, consumption and waste over the next 5 years.
We have now crunched the figures from the two groups who finished Carbon Conversations before Christmas 2018, and those eleven families already made emission savings of 23.1 tonnes within only the first 6 months! This easily doubles previous Tayport’s carbon footprint reductions from growing more food locally at the Community Garden and making Tayport Apple Juice over 2016-2017. The infographic below shows more details on how these savings were achieved.
Our Carbon Conversation facilitator team, Kaska, Jessie and Helena, have found the sessions very inspiring. We also had great feedback from all of our participants so far – they found the sessions informative and motivating, and felt encouraged by support from their group and facilitators. They all had said that they would recommend Carbon Conversations to their friends and family.
Would you like to give a greener you a go too? We are starting our last Carbon Conversation group for 2019 in October. You can sign up for an introductory chat with Kaska now by emailing her at blog@tayportgarden.org or calling her mobile 07446231073.
You can also see the full size infographic here.
