Why making small, green changes to your lifestyle
How can something as simple and homely as making raspberry juice in Peckham have anything to do with saving the planet? Many writers and environmental campaigners argue that greening our own lifestyles is a waste of time as we should be devoting all efforts on pressing for government action.
If changing our own lifestyles is all we do, then, of course, it won’t make a vast difference – but I am still doing it as best as I practically can, and so should you. Why? Because it builds the moral foundation from which we can insist that our governments, businesses and communities protect the climate and what is left of nature.
Gandhi understood the sense of personal empowerment that arises from being the change we wish to see in the world. If we all do the best we can in our own lives, it will make a collective difference, showing others that it is possible to live green, happy, healthy lives.
Making my life greener gives me little victories that bring me strength during the ups and downs that campaigning and protesting entail. It also helps to prevent burnout.
Over years, I have gradually made my life greener. I am now veggie, car-free and enjoy flight-free holidays. My home was the first London house to sell metered solar electricity to the national grid in and became its first net carbon-negative home six years later. My gas bills average about £ per year and I have produced on average only half of a wheelie bin of non-recycled household waste per annum for over a decade.
But often it is the very small changes that bring me joy – the latest being homemade raspberry juice.
For years, I bought organic apple juice to moisten and sweeten my muesli, which reduced my high-carbon milk consumption.
Using ml of milk for my daily cereal consumed litres per year, which emits a quarter of a ton of CO. If a family of four uses a litre of milk a day, it would emit the same amount of carbon from driving ,km, while the land used by the cow would span tennis courts. Imagine all the fruit and vegetables we could produce with an allotment of that size.
Five years ago, I realised I could make my own apple juice from the apples from some neglected local apple trees. I have been using this on my muesli ever since, from late July until February, when the stored apples run out.
I have also been building up the range of perennial soft fruit in my small south London garden. I now have apples, pears, raspberries, strawberries, plums, damsons, purple and golden gooseberries and black and red currants growing with varied success. As the weather impacts different fruits each year, having a variety helps ensure you have some fruit every summer. Together with foraged blackberries and apples, I supply over half my annual fruit locally; my ambition is to get to per cent.
Two portions of fruit a day equates to a year per person. This is more than my little garden could produce. Hence the dependency on additional foraging, especially for apples and blackberries.
This year I had too many raspberries for my daily two portions but not enough to make jam, so I hit on the idea of experimenting with juicing the excess and using that to moisten the muesli instead of shop-bought apple juice. It took just seconds in the liquidiser with some organic sugar and water to make it. As the raspberries were home-grown and the second-hand liquidiser was powered by my solar panels, juice production was almost zero-carbon, other than a couple of spoons of added sugar.
This involves a plethora of environmental damage including carbon emissions, water-consumption, packaging, fossil-fuelled electric refrigeration, pesticides, artificial fertilisers, flights, HGV road pollution, wildlife destruction, insect deaths and soil loss. Foraging or growing our own organic fruit using rain-water storage avoids almost all of these issues.
In this decade, humans have become ever more aware of climate change. Calls for leaders to act echo around the globe as the signs of a changing climate become ever more difficult to ignore
Fierce wildfires have flared up in numerous countries. The damage being caused is unprecedented: people were killed in wildfires last year in California, one of the places best prepared, best equipped to fight such blazes in the world
Entire towns have been razed. The towns of Redding and Paradise in California were all but eliminated in the season
While wildfires in Greece pictured, Australia, Indonesia and many other countries have wrought chaos to infrastructure, economies and cost lives
In Britain, flooding has become commonplace. Extreme downpours in Carlisle in the winter of saw the previous record flood level being eclipsed by two feet
Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire has flooded repeatedly in the past decade, with the worst coming on Christmas Day . Toby Smith of Climate Visuals, an organisation focused on improving how climate change is depicted in the media, says: Extreme weather and flooding, has and will become more frequent due to climate change. An increase in the severity and distribution of press images, reports and media coverage across the nation has localised the issue. It has raised our emotions, perception and personalised the effects and hazards of climate change.
In summer , intense rain flooded over properties. In , storms and coastal surges combined catastrophically with elevated sea levels whilst December , was the wettest month ever recorded. Major flooding events continued through the decade with the UK government declaring flooding as one of the nation s major threats in , says Mr Smith of Climate Visuals
Weather has been more extreme in Britain in recent years. The Beast from the East which arrived in February brought extraordinarily cold temperatures and high snowfall. Central London pictured, where the city bustle tends to mean that snow doesn t even settle, was covered in inches of snow for day
Months after the cold snap, a heatwave struck Britain, rendering the normally plush green of England s parks in Summer a parched brown for weeks
Worsening droughts in many countries have been disastrous for crop yields and have threatened livestock. In Australia, where a brutal drought persisted for months last year, farmers have suffered from mental health problems because of the threat to their livelihood
Even dedicated climate skeptic Jeremy Clarkson has come to recognise the threat of climate change after visiting the Tonle Sap lake system in Cambodia. Over a million people rely on the water of Tonle Sap for work and sustinence but, as Mr Clarkson witnessed, a drought has severley depleted the water level
In reaction to these harbingers of climate obliteration, some humans have taken measures to counter the impending disaster. Ethiopia recently planted a reported million trees in a single day
Morocco has undertaken the most ambitious solar power scheme in the world, recently completing a solar plant the size of San Francisco
Electric cars are taking off as a viable alternative to fossil fuel burning vehicles and major cities across the world are adding charging points to accomodate
Cities around the world are embracing cycling too, as a clean and healthy mode of transport. The Netherlands continues to lead the way with bikes far outnumbering people
Cycling infrastructure is taking over cities the world over, in the hope of reducing society s dependency on polluting vehicles
Despite positive steps being taken, humans continue to have a wildly adverse effect on the climate. There have been numerous major oil spills this decade, the most notable being the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in
More recently, large swathes of the Amazon rainforest were set alight by people to clear land for agriculture
This decade may have seen horrors but it has led to an understanding that the next decade must see change if human life is to continue
In this decade, humans have become ever more aware of climate change. Calls for leaders to act echo around the globe as the signs of a changing climate become ever more difficult to ignore
Fierce wildfires have flared up in numerous countries. The damage being caused is unprecedented: people were killed in wildfires last year in California, one of the places best prepared, best equipped to fight such blazes in the world
Entire towns have been razed. The towns of Redding and Paradise in California were all but eliminated in the season
While wildfires in Greece pictured, Australia, Indonesia and many other countries have wrought chaos to infrastructure, economies and cost lives
In Britain, flooding has become commonplace. Extreme downpours in Carlisle in the winter of saw the previous record flood level being eclipsed by two feet
Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire has flooded repeatedly in the past decade, with the worst coming on Christmas Day . Toby Smith of Climate Visuals, an organisation focused on improving how climate change is depicted in the media, says: Extreme weather and flooding, has and will become more frequent due to climate change. An increase in the severity and distribution of press images, reports and media coverage across the nation has localised the issue. It has raised our emotions, perception and personalised the effects and hazards of climate change.
In summer , intense rain flooded over properties. In , storms and coastal surges combined catastrophically with elevated sea levels whilst December , was the wettest month ever recorded. Major flooding events continued through the decade with the UK government declaring flooding as one of the nation s major threats in , says Mr Smith of Climate Visuals
Weather has been more extreme in Britain in recent years. The Beast from the East which arrived in February brought extraordinarily cold temperatures and high snowfall. Central London pictured, where the city bustle tends to mean that snow doesn t even settle, was covered in inches of snow for day
Months after the cold snap, a heatwave struck Britain, rendering the normally plush green of England s parks in Summer a parched brown for weeks
Worsening droughts in many countries have been disastrous for crop yields and have threatened livestock. In Australia, where a brutal drought persisted for months last year, farmers have suffered from mental health problems because of the threat to their livelihood
Even dedicated climate skeptic Jeremy Clarkson has come to recognise the threat of climate change after visiting the Tonle Sap lake system in Cambodia. Over a million people rely on the water of Tonle Sap for work and sustinence but, as Mr Clarkson witnessed, a drought has severley depleted the water level
In reaction to these harbingers of climate obliteration, some humans have taken measures to counter the impending disaster. Ethiopia recently planted a reported million trees in a single day
Morocco has undertaken the most ambitious solar power scheme in the world, recently completing a solar plant the size of San Francisco
Electric cars are taking off as a viable alternative to fossil fuel burning vehicles and major cities across the world are adding charging points to accomodate
Cities around the world are embracing cycling too, as a clean and healthy mode of transport. The Netherlands continues to lead the way with bikes far outnumbering people
Cycling infrastructure is taking over cities the world over, in the hope of reducing society s dependency on polluting vehicles
Despite positive steps being taken, humans continue to have a wildly adverse effect on the climate. There have been numerous major oil spills this decade, the most notable being the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in
More recently, large swathes of the Amazon rainforest were set alight by people to clear land for agriculture
This decade may have seen horrors but it has led to an understanding that the next decade must see change if human life is to continue
Providing my own two portions of organic fruit per day for over half the year saves me about £ and providing my own fresh fruit-juice daily saves about another £. My apples and raspberries have zero food-miles, while the , tonnes of apples the UK imports annually from New Zealand travel over ,km.
I cannot describe the simple joy of making little discoveries like these. They help maintain the inner strength needed to face the challenges of being an ecological campaigner, while recognising that green perfection is a process, not a destination.
Taking these steps and telling others what we are doing and why inspires others to do the same. This is how bottom-up social change often happens. It is slow at the beginning and then accelerates once over per cent of the population has transformed. It is also a way that politicians can be assured that changes are practical and safe to implement.
Of course, the climate and ecological emergencies are now so urgent, that they cannot wait for this process to play out. That is why practising what we preach as well as campaigning hard to get the media, banks, oil corporations and governments to change is so crucial.
Once we make the kinds of adjustments we need, it’s easier to then demand our governments practice what they preach on climate and protecting nature, comfortable in the knowledge that you are only asking of them what you have already asked of yourself.
Donnachadh McCarthy is an environmental auditor, campaigner and is the author of ‘The Prostitute State – How Britain’s Democracy was Hijacked’
