The Top Four Things you Must Do Today!
I once did a study of the environmental impact of a typical UK household, which quantified that actual amount of materials used and pollution caused in a one year period. The conclusions were a little startling, as it suggested that there were only four things you really, really needed to do:
· Make a quick call to switch your electricity supplier
· Change your holiday plans
· Fill up your car with biodiesel
· Revise your shopping list
With these four simple steps you can take an absolutely massive bite out of your environmental impacts -- it took me one day to implement my plan. I found that by mass, a typical household consumes materials in these ratios:
Fuel 40%
Food 40%
Everything else 20%
Do your own sums and I'm sure you'll come to roughly the same numbers. What this means is that if you could sort out fuel and food, you could be 80% sustainable. We really should not let the other 20% of stuff distract us -- things like plastic shopping bags (0.1% of annual mass consumption), nappies (0.4%), and so on.
So focusing on the fuel and food, it's not so much about using less (we all have to eat and keep warm), but about changing the TYPE of food and fuel we consume -- making it 100% cyclic, solar and safe.
Fuel
About a third of my fuel use is for heating and lighting my house. So all I do is sign up to a 'green electron' supplier. The best deal in the UK at the moment is RSPB Energy by Southern&Scottish Electric. A 5 minute phone call was all it took. Now all my electricity is from Scottish hydroelectric sources, a solar supply, and I pay the same as I did before.
That leaves the gas, which is of course a fossil fuel and tough to replace. Just remember that you can save huge amounts of energy -- 20% with ease and 50% with some effort, with better insulation and other energy saving routes. See our other Tips for more on this.
Another third of my fuel use is jet fuel. Yes, that's a surprising one. As there is currently no solar-powered air travel, I have to eliminate flight entirely which I do by holidaying in the UK.
The final third of my fuel use is transport -- car and train and bus. Train and bus have to go because they are all fossil-driven, however efficient they may claim to be. Now all I need to do is make my car solar-powered. There are two options:
1. Get an electric car and charge it at home with your new hydroelectric power supply. While amazingly cheap to run, selling my car and buying an electric one is a hassle and I’m not keen on the toxicity implied by the big batteries the car will have, although there are now many practical and available EVs.
2. Use my existing turbodiesel car and run it on biodiesel. Yes! This is simple, just fill up from a different pump. Works with almost all turbodiesel cars, no modifications required. Cheaper fuel as well. 100% solar grown from rapeseed. This is the only fictional part of my story, as I would need to be living in France or Germany to do this. However, with a bit more effort I could also purchase 100% biodiesel in bulk a tonne at a time and keep it in a suitably-bunded container in my garden. See also
http://www.biodieselfillingstations.co.uk for details of the 110 filling stations around the UK which sell 5% biodiesel. If I want to make a minor modifcation to my car, I could run on vegetable oil, which requires less processing to make than biodiesel.
Food
To get the 40% figure I have naturally included the mass of the fuel needed to grow, process, chill, distribute and retail food, as well as packaging, too. So it's just a question of buying food that is 100% cyclic, solar and safe. I can buy low energy food and also make a significant improvement in food performance by being vegetarian.
I just have to buy food that is 1. Local and 2. Organic. This means local non-organic in preference to overseas organic. Farmers markets are best for avoiding food miles, but supermarkets will do if necessary. I could also look at the ultimate -- growing my own -- but that is too much hassle for this exercise.
So that's it! I have become 80% more sustainable in one day by:
· Making a quick call to switch my electricity supplier
· Changing my holiday plans
· Filling up the car from a different pump
· Revising my shopping list
Is it really is that easy? I have skated over many issues, but the essence of this approach has a lot of common sense. Let us know how you get on!
Edwin Datschefski,
Environmental Adviser to the Natural Collection