Judith Proctor's Journal

 We are now at a stage where the effects of climate change are starting to be really noticeable. In the UK: we have regular summer droughts, winter storms and floods causing serious damage, plus excess heat in summer reduces people's ability to work (and increases the death rate, especially among the elderly).  

The damage to our food supplies, our natural world, our health is massive and continues to increase. In short, things are bad, and are going to get worse - how much worse depends very much on what we do here and now.

Apart from voting for the political party most willing to tackle the issue of climate change, the only things we can do are to reduce our own carbon emissions.

Society as  whole needs to halve it's carbon footprint by 2030...

We all need to look at what we can do personally.  There are many things we can do, and hopefully, you'll try something for yourself as a New Year Resolution.

The plus side of doing this is that people we know are more likely to go green if we do.  For instance, two people I know have installed heat pumps after seeing how well our system was working. (one of my friends regularly comments on how warm the house is, and how even the warmth is - because heat pumps deliver a lower temperature heat, you don't fry next to the radiator and freeze on the far side of the room - the warm air circulates more)

What can you do that makes a difference?

There is a real lack of awareness of what is helpful and what is not:

I was recently talking to an acquaintance in Swanage.  We were drinking tea and she offered oat milk (which I accepted, as I use it at home). I asked, out of curiosity if she ever use soy milk.

Oh, no!  She'd been on a cruise down the Amazon and seen all the deforestation caused by soy plantations.

I mentioned gently that most of the soy in the Amazon region is grown for cattle feed, and that eating beef is far, far more environmentally damaging. 

 Ah, she wasn't aware of that, and was far from certain that she actually believed it, and didn't really want to eat less meat anyway.

I decided not to mention that her cruise, and the flights to get there and back (and she goes on  a cruise holiday every year - I could see the photos on her wall) were MASSIVELY damaging to the environment.

A cruise holiday is probably the single most damaging activity that anyone can do in their lives (unless they own a private jet...)

The next most damaging activity is flying - even short distance flights carry a surprisingly high cost, as take off and landing are particularly bad.  I get that some people need to fly on occasion. I have two friends with elderly relatives overseas who genuinely need help from their children. Also, some people will need to travel for work on occasion.  But when someone tells me they are going to the Canaries for Christmas, it's very hard to just politely say nothing.... (I do as  rule, but it's still hard)

After travel, it's heat and meat. Reducing your meat consumption, especially beef and lamb, makes a surprisingly big reduction in CO2 emissions.  Bonus points for vegetarians (though cheese should be eaten in moderation, as that can rack up quite a score over time - if you're cooking cheese, blend in nutritional yeast, which is delicious and very nutritious as well).

Heat - anything you can do to insulate the house better is good.  Also, if your gas boiler is getting near the end of its life, check out current government grants for heat pumps.  They're expensive to install, but grants help with that.  Operating costs are similar to gas at present, but as renewables increase (resulting in cheaper electricity) they should become cheaper to run than gas.  (They were cheaper before the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed up all energy prices.)

An oddity - if you're in a position to rent out a room, then this reduces your personal carbon footprint, as the costs of heating are spread between more people.  (It's not for everyone, and it's not the reason we chose to rent a room - that was the Ukrainian war - but we're opting to keep our lodger long term, as he's no trouble at all - we have some very interesting conversations now and then - and the income is handy.)

Enough of me waffling! 

What are you doing in your own lives? (I know some of you are already doing masses)

What would you like to do, but are currently unable to do?

Do you have useful tips to share?

I'm going to cover Banks, Investments, Insurance Companies and Pensions.  All are important, and some are very easy to change. 

Much of the information in this post comes from Ethical Consumer Magazine  https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ They've done some excellent articles on ethical investments, and if you're a subscriber you get full access to the stuff on their website which has all the information from previous issues in a very useful format.  

They're a useful resource for a lot of information and I highly recommend getting a subscription.  

So, where do you start?

You have several areas:

1.  Change your bank.

2.  Change your insurance company (Insurance companies have very large fossil fuel investments)

3.  See if you can change your pension to a greener option. (best to do this BEFORE you retire, as you may not be able to do so afterwards)

4.  Move your savings and investments.

BANKS

The very worst offenders are Barclays, followed by HSBC (First Direct is part of HSBC and M&S Money is 50% HSBC - so avoid those too) Citigroup, Lloyds Banking Group (Lloyds, Halifax, Bank of Scotland), NatWest Group (NatWest, RBS, Coutts) and Santander (Santander, Carter Allen) are all financing of fossil fuels - but they're not quite as bad as Barclays and HSBC..

The best bank for ethics by a fair margin is Triodos (not just climate change -other ethical issues too). (you have to pay a small monthly fee for a current account, but you are far less likely to get charged large fees for things like accidental overdrafts, etc)

Other good ones include: 

Cumberland BS current accounts, Monzo app-based bank, Nationwide current accounts, Starling Bank current accounts

 Food waste is a surprisingly big hitter on Climate Change.  Whenever we grow unused food, we're wasting all the carbon cost of growing it, and also losing the advantages that could be gained if the land was restored to nature.

• In the UK 7 million tonnes of food is thrown away by households every year, that’s around a third of all the food we buy. If we stopped wasting food it would have the same impact on carbon emissions as taking 1.8 million cars off UK roads.

But food waste is also hard one to reduce.  There are many different causes of food waste, and each of them requires a different approach.  It requires many small changes in habits and it's easy to forget, or not want to take the extra  time to write out a shopping list - but there's more than one motivator.  Imagine if you could reduce your food bill by a third....

See the12daysofcop.wordpress.com/cut-food-waste/ for additional tips to those given here.

There are things that we can do.  None of them are easy as it tends to take time and effort to change habits, especially when they're things we do regularly.

Use leftovers rather than throwing them away.

- this one is always hard for me to wrap my brain around.  Apparently, there are people who don't eat leftovers for supper/breakfast/lunch the next day.  All I can say is that there weren't any in the family I grew up in, and there aren't any in my family either.  My mother would have been horrified, and so would I.

Make a shopping list so you don't buy things you don't need - my husband does the two-weekly main  shop, and he always goes round the kitchen beforehand checking what we're short of, and makes a list.  Has done so for many years.  It makes financial sense, and saves trying to cram too much into cupboards.  (and yet, the odd thing, is that we're never short when people are out panic-buying.  People don't panic buy tins of haricot beans, and they don't go off either...  Same goes for nuts and other veggie staples.)

• Get in the habit of freezing milk, bread or leftovers that you won’t use straight away.
• Milk is surprisingly the most significant contributor to avoidable carbon emissions, followed by bread.

We don't do this one.  (Well apart from surplus allotment produce). That's because we don't buy more than we need in the first place, so we don't end up with stuff running close to its use-by date.  And we eat the leftovers....
(If your find your milk regularly goes off, check your fridge temperature - According to the UK food standards agency, the ideal fridge temperature for food is 8°C and below. Taking into account the temperature drop from the opening and closing of the fridge door, the fridge should be set at a temperature between 1-5°C.)
 

• I'd also suggest having a small fridge (unless you have a lot of people in the house).  The bigger the fridge, the more likely you are to have stuff tucked away at the back that gets forgotten and goes past its date.




Challenge - Can you eat everything you buy for a week?  Two weeks? How long can you go without throwing away any food?

Challenge 2 - Can you buy the food that would normally be wasted before it ever gets to you?  How about those wonky spuds, undersized pears, etc.?  (We get our fruit and veg from Riverford, and they include these as part of their normal supply. The tiny Conference pears this week are very tasty.)

 I enjoyed weaving these.  All second-hand yarn, but I really love working with the greenish self-patterning yarn. I don't know what it's made of, but it feels a bit like cotton, and the colours really come to life with the right lighting.  (which I never seem to have when taking photos!)

I made three in the end -  because the patterns were pretty and I really liked the way the yarns worked together.

Bugshaw, when picking which one you want, the chain  one us 21cm excluding fringe; the cross/diamond pattern is also 21cm excluding fringe, and the little bookworm (which I know is too short for you, is 13cm excluding fringe.

Fringe can be trimmed to suit, thought I wouldn't cut all of it off.   It can also be twisted or plaited, etc.

All of them have different patterns on the back, which can be seen here - www.ravelry.com/projects/JudithProctor/rug-for-bug

The ones Bugshaw doesn't choose are available to anyone willing to make a donation to either www.clientearth.org/ or www.worldlandtrust.org/

As usual, I'm open to requests for belts, bagstraps, decorative bands for clothing, dog leads, bookmarks, etc.  (Tablet weaving is very strong)

All I ask in return is that you support my favourite environmental charities and help make the world a tiny bit safer for when my beloved granddaughter is an adult.  

By the time she's old enough to vote, we will either have managed to rein back carbon emissions, or we will have screwed it up so badly that nothing her generation can do will be enough to stop catastrophic changes to the climate.

Actually, I'll also take environmental pledges. eg. If you fly regularly, I'll happily take giving up aviation for a trip you would normally take.  If you're a regular meat eater, I'd take a pledge to have a meat free day every week, etc.