Hopefully, you are already doing most of the things on our earlier blog post to help the environment, so here are 5 more you may not have already taken into consideration.
- Eating less meat and dairy. In the UK, the average amount of meat eaten per person is almost double the world average at 220 grams per day compared to 117 grams on average. The most commonly consumed meat is beef. Cows have to be raised and fed, which requires space, food and shelter. These all require the production of carbon in some form, which as you know will only slow the recovery of the environment. The average person consumes approximately 7,000 animals in a lifetime! This is something that you can easily change with vegan or vegetarian alternatives or eating something else entirely. More here
- Switching banks. It is often unknown that many of the main banks invest money in fossil fuel extractions. This means that they are supporting the mining of coal, oil and gas from the ground. The amount of carbon emissions financed by Britain's banks and asset managers is nearly double the UK's annual carbon emissions, according to a new report. HSBC put an estimated $8.7bn (£6.4bn) into new oil and gas in 2021, while Barclays put in $4.5bn, and Deutsche Bank loaned $5.7bn. These are colossal amounts and gaining any more support from the public will only further increase these. Read more here
- Reduce your food waste. About a third of all the world's food goes to waste, and producing, transporting and letting that food rot releases 8-10% of global greenhouse gases. That's because in landfills, organic materials, like food scraps, are broken down by bacteria to produce methane. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and it has a warming potential of 21 times that of carbon dioxide!
- Don’t buy into fast fashion. Often when clothes are in demand, they are made cheaply and not in the best of ways. About 53 million tonnes of fibre is produced by the fashion industry every year, of which 70 percent is wasted. Currently in the world, there are more than enough clothes already made for no new ones to be made for a long time. Buying into fast fashion supports large brands to continue not only the mass production of cheap clothes, but the dreadful working conditions that people go through to make the clothes that we wear today. Also, textile dyes are the world's second-largest polluter of water, while pesticides, widely used in cotton cultivation, contaminate soil and groundwater. With inadequate environmental safeguards, these chemicals can leak into waterways and pose health risks to farmers and workers, and their communities. Buy second hand!
- Find other ways to reduce your carbon footprint. There are many additional mechanisms for reducing carbon emissions. For example, Ecologi is a website which can offset your emissions. For however much you emit, Ecologi will fund tree-planting or support carbon-reduction schemese across the globe.