As with Steffee – the average UK footprint is, apparently, 9.8 tonnes. Mine is about 5.627. I don't drive or ride a motorcycle. I do fly – it'll probably be twice this year, to Barcelona in August for my main holiday and to Glasgow for a wedding in late September, because I am absolutely not spending most of a day on a train just to get there and another to get back. Other breaks, though, will be by train (Paris is just over two hours away, thank goodness
).
We've bought new white goods in the last few years, after having our previous washing machine, fridge-freezer and oven for about 12 years. We've bought new and looked in detail at the environmental factors when deciding on what to choose. Our electricity bills are quite low, at around £450 per annum and we have no our power sources.
Recycling makes so much sense – not just from an environmental perspective, but because of landfill issues and also simply because I can't see waste as a good thing. We have a crate from the council that they come around and empty weekly. I put card and paper in there, plus cans and bottles/jars (all washed out). The only plastic they currently take is plastic milk bottles. They also take old clothes and sheets, towels etc, if you bag them up. Unfortunately, because we live in flats, they won't give us another box for our compostible waste: people in houses get those too.
I have no problem with the plastic bag issue – again, it's such a ridiculous waste. In terms of food, I mostly buy seasonal food – partly because flying asparagus from Peru to the UK is ridiculous (although not as crazy as flying fresh herbs from Israel and watercress from the US – both of which are all year round UK crops), but mostly because seasonal food tastes better. I live in the middle of a big city, so there are huge limits on what foodstuffs I can source locally, but I do a lot of my shopping at a weekly farmers' market, so although most of the stalls are not run by local people, they are the producers (or know the producers) and it means that I can discuss things such as sustainability with my fishmonger and see pictures of the conditions in which the chickens that produce my eggs – and occasional roasting bird – are kept. I also do things like return my empty egg boxes to the relevant stall every week – they're clean, so it's crazy to throw them away, even into the recycling crate.
I do make an effort to grow a small amount of my own herbs and things in my tiny back garden, but it's not big enough for anything more than a few pots. Once we get some decent weather (Hah!) this year I'll be putting more herbs in, plus raddishes, some salad leaves, some tomatoes and some chillies. And then later, some garlic and baby turnips and possibly a few other things.
It's less about global warming for me, on a personal level, and more about just not wasting things and doing other things that are better.
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