New Year's Resolution for the Climate

We recently interviewed a local resident who was inspired to reduce his carbon footprint after looking at Climate Action Wendover’s website, www.climateactionwendover.org. This is part of our conversation.

CLAW: How did you find your own Carbon Footprint?

Resident: I used several publicly available carbon calculators to find out that ours was a concerning 10 tonnes per year!

CLAW: What did you do next?

Resident: I wanted to start without spending money, so I looked at our energy consumption and made some simple lifestyle changes like reducing heating a little, stopping draughts, being more careful with lighting, cookers and washing machines. We also moved to a green energy supplier.

CLAW: Did you change your diet at all?

Resident: Yes, we did but quite gradually and now we have 3 vegetarian main meals weekly and we source more food locally and seasonally.

CLAW: What about travel?

Resident: We were taking 3 European flights each year. We now take 2 of those by train which has proved less stressful and more satisfying.

CLAW: What else have you done?

Resident: The last big thing was to move all our banking and savings to an environmentally friendly bank. We’ve also worked with CLAW to plant trees. Overall, we’ve reduced our carbon footprint by 30% down to 7 tonnes per year so we are very pleased. We’ve also saved money on our energy bills.

CLAW: What are your plans going forward?

Resident: We are budgeting to invest in solar panels and to buy an electric car in the future, perhaps a second hand one. We also plan to reduce our car mileage, to gradually increase our vegetarian meals and keep planting trees.

CLAW: Thank you for demonstrating how you can reduce your Carbon Footprint at little cost. Maybe it’s inspired others into New Year resolutions.