First, What is Global Warming?

Basically, the Climate Crisis is the result of the warming effect of all the greenhouse gases (Carbon Dioxide etc) that are in the atmosphere. It’s considered that the increase in greenhouse gases started at the time of the industrial revolution. C02 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years and the rate of increase is exponential. The goals therefore are to slow or stop the increase. Governments and innovative businesses are working on initiatives and inventions to help to reduce the global average temperature increase. However, the scale of the problem is such that we all need to think about how we utilise the planet’s finite resources and consider what we can all do to change how we live, and how we can live sustainably.

What Can We Do?

Sometimes it seems that there’s no point in individual small change, but it truly all adds up. For instance, if we all turn our central heating down by just 1 degree, we can not only save money but also each save 300kg of C02. It doesn’t seem much, but multiplying that up by the whole UK population creates a significant impact. Truly, we won’t notice the difference. Look here to see the United Nations 10 simple easy steps to help climate change.

What Else?

Avoid taking information for granted. We are constantly being bombarded by misinformation. It all serves to confuse and frequently leads to learned helplesness and feeling hopeless. It can be truly difficult to pick up from that but talking about it with like minded folks will help to build and support our understanding of what steps to take for personal and community health and wellbeing.

Where Do I Start?

The hardest thing to grasp with such a huge, complex and difficult problem is where to start. So many aspects are interrelated and there are literally hundreds of things we could do. Talking about climate change can help, but then we frequently run into disagreement or feel that some changes are too hard to bear – and – the overall topic is too much to bare!

So, where and how do we actually move forward? Simply by Taking-One-Step. Making one small change and feeling good about that, can help us move on to the next step, and the next. Turn the heating down, take a walk outside, plant some lettuce, read about one topic. In short, doing something, makes us feel better.

Watch our Take One Step Movie to find our more. (Yeah, it's a wee bit out of date now, but the sentiments hold.)

And here are six steps to help.

There are many carbon foot print calculators. This one is the best we've found, with no gimmicky graphics etc, and allow really detailed information to be entered on amounts of fuel used etc. You can answer the questions by guess work or you can have a look at your bills and answer the questions more accurately.
https://www.carbonindependent.org/index.html

And now, what can we do to reduce our carbon foot print?

Take One Step!
That's where we need to start. Trying to do too much all at the one time is much much harder. We're talking about changing our habits that have set in over many many years. Trying to do too much all at the one time can feel overwhelming, It's much easier to pick one thing, do that, work on it til you're happy and then pick another topic.

Switch to a Green Energy Company - Although this is the easiest change we can all make, it seems this is actually hard to do in H&I. It seems that many companies are happy to take our money, but it seems, anecdotally / allegedly, that they have troubles sending service engineers up here. We are not recommending anyone in particular - but if you can highly recommend a company, please do let us know. In the mean time, perhaps web sites like money supermarket are the best place to start - https://www.moneysupermarket.com/gas-and-electricity/green-energy/

Wear More Clothes!! Indoors!! - And therefore be able to turn the heating down by 1 degree. According to the Energy Savings Trust, we can save £60 a year and 310kg of carbon dioxide by doing this simple thing. Two pairs of socks? Why not! 

Get Out More! Well, yes this is hard just now, but actually the suggesting is to wrap up and go our for a walk. You'll find that when you come back inside, you'll feel much warmer and not need the heating up quite so much

• Eat More Veg - Apparently the average fruit & veg consumption in Scotland is 2.5 portions a day - way short of the 5/day or 7/day recommendations. The more veg and fruit we eat, the healthier we'll all be. And ofcourse, the more we can grow locally the better that is for the planet. From growing more veg in our own gardens to community gardening and joining farmers and crofters in Community Supported Agriculture ventures.

• Eat Less Meat and Eat it Local - we all want to support our local farmers and butchers and keep but most of us can probably accept that we can eat less meat and dairy - and make sure that what we do buy has less food miles. We may think it more expensive than cheap supermarket meat, but it's way, way tastier and many of our local farmers and crofters are investing heavily in regenerative farming and carbon capture improvements.

• Reduce food Waste - Some of you will read this and think this is a rude thing to say, but actually, many of us do throw out too much. So much so that the average family can save  £60/month by reducing food waste! Wow! It's interesting to read too that our food waste sent for recycling is up. This is good in a way - it's not in our grey bins. But - really  - we should be aiming for zero food waste. Of course, I'm not talking here about tattie peelings etc - nor is it right to buy pre-prepared mash so that we don't have that food waste ? Have a look here on the Love Food Hate Waste web site for loads of ideas on how to reduce food waste. Please do share your top tips on our Planet Sutherland Facebook Page.

• Community Growing - Start growing your own veg or join a community growing group. There are so many benefits to be had from growing socially. Community Growing can start with just 2 people - talk with your neighbour or friend and decide on what each of you should grow and then share the food later. Then, next year you can change what you grow allowing for crop rotation in a smaller space. It's hard to do anything more with all the covid restrictions right now.

• Packaging - making home made bread and making more food from scratch reduces packaging - or rather it should. Again, it's difficult right now because even our local baker (Spar / Kyle Bakery in Bonar Bridge) has to keep fresh made bread and rolls and tattie scones packaged. 

On the one hand, we're all travelling much less just now. Is there a way we can continue this after lock down? Car sharing and public transport is something that is perhaps not safe to do until we're all vaccinated properly. But perhaps we can think ahead a little more, shop less often, use e-bikes or walk instead of always nipping into the car. Perhaps we can talk with neigbours about some shopping. For instance, if we want local milk, then perhaps a group of local folks can rotate the travelling for that (or papers or bread etc).
Flying is perhaps something that many folks will be keen to get back to, but it's the biggest carbon producer of all. So, if you have enjoyed several flights a year, please just cut back on some, either for holidays or for business travel. If covid has proved anything, it's that on line meetings and on line networking work pretty effectively.