Category: sustainability

Categories
sustainability

New(ish) year’s habits

Open diary showing January and February calendars

Is your new year’s resolution still on track?

According to research undertaken by running app Strava, by now – the second week in February – 8 out of 10 people will already have abandoned their new year’s resolution/s. 

I’m not really one for new year’s resolutions. I can see that the idea of a ‘new year, new start’ has a certain draw. But, equally, I feel that if you want to make some positive changes to your life, why wait until 1 January?

And, if there’s a high probability that you’ll abandon that change, because it’s too hard to incorporate into everyday life, then, maybe it’s time to start looking at channelling your best intentions into something that’s a bit more realistic – ideally something that’s habit-forming. 

Let’s build some good habits 

It takes an average of 66 days for a new behaviour to become a habit – something that’s so automatic, it’s done with little or no thought. 

Remember the time before we all had food waste caddies under our sinks? Those first few weeks of scraping plates into these new plastic boxes felt alien. It’s now so much part of the routine for so many of us that it feels strange when you end up somewhere where peels and scraps are routinely binned along with general waste. The introduction of these things drove new habit-forming behaviours. 

There’s a real link between effort and habits. Unsurprisingly, we’re much more likely to change our habits if the effort required is relatively low. Ramp it up and the habit either takes longer to form, or it simply doesn’t. 

So, if you’re feeling a bit flat having abandoned your new year’s resolution, why not pick up a new, planet-friendly habit? Here’s 5 ideas. 

  1. Recycle more Even the best intentioned of us could probably do that little bit more. And home recycling schemes make this an easy habit to get into. The bathroom might well be the best place to start. Stats show that, while 90% of packaging is recycled in our kitchens, only 50% is being recycled in the bathroom.
  2. Eat all the food you buy That might mean buying less food. Planning a weekly menu could be the answer. You may need to stop giving in to the takeaway that’s calling, whilst there’s still some food in the fridge. Or you could cook up and freeze some extra portions if you’ve fresh food in surplus. All ways up, it’s likely to save you money, and reduce your carbon footprint. 
  3. Never leave home without…a drinks bottle Just add ‘bottle’ to your usual leaving the house checklist – keys, phone, wallet/purse, BOTTLE. Having a bottle in your bag or car means you can avoid buying bottled water or other drinks when you’re out. And, if it’s an insulated one, you can also say goodbye to single-use coffee cups.
  4. …or a reusable shopping bag A foldaway bag is easily stuffed into a bag or coat pocket and can see off hundreds of plastic bags in its lifetime. So, check ‘keys, phone, wallet/purse, bottle, BAG before you open that door.
  5. Think before you buy Ok, so maybe it’s a bit of an old cliché, but just taking a bit more time to think about a purchase is a really good idea. Is the object of your desires something you definitely need, and will it get enough use? Can you borrow instead, or maybe buy the same thing second hand? Can you stretch to a higher quality item, which might cost more, but last longer. Just keeping a check on impulsive consumption will be good for your pocket and the planet. 

If you’re habitually doing all of this already, brilliant – maybe see if you can find some further green inspiration here. If you ebb and flow (like most of us!), aim to be on it more, to give those good, green habits the best chance of taking root in 2024. 

Categories
copywriting sustainability

Decarbonist Manifesto of a homeworking copywriter

Image of desk with computer

I work mostly on my own. I work from home. I travel very little. My raw materials are words (and occasionally numbers). So what does carbon reduction look like for me?

Prior to recent Carbon Literacy Training, I wasn’t entirely sure what more I could do to drive down the emissions of my business. 

My place of work (aka my house) has been signed up to a green energy tariff for years. The thermostat is at a level just above tolerable. I’ve chosen a green web host, a 1% For The Planet accountant and a niche in supporting purpose-led organisations, that hopefully makes my climate shadow a more positive one. 

But what I learned through my training is that I could be making some small, simple changes that will help drive down the carbon footprint of my business. I’m bundling these all up, along with some rather more obvious commitments, into what I’m tongue-in-cheekily calling my ‘Decarbonist Manifesto‘ (still a political theorist at heart). 

Desk-based carbon reduction

For me, it’s the smaller stuff that’s perhaps the most interesting. That’s probably because I’d not previously been thinking about it. I’m talking about little changes that can broadly be captured by the commitment to ‘adopting more carbon-conscious desk habits’. Most of these centre around better email practices to reduce my demands on energy-using networks and data centres – things like:

  • regularly clearing down inboxes (there is a cost to poor housekeeping)
  • sending fewer unnecessary ‘thank you’ emails
  • reducing the size of emails by being succinct and removing logos and other images (estimates for the carbon footprint of emails– range from around 0.3g for the smallest for instance to 17g for the kind of laptop-generated email that I might typically send).
  • not replying to long email chains without first cutting out the unnecessary bits
  • not ‘replying to all’ before considering whether ‘all’ actually need a reply
  • unsubscribing from mailings I no longer read

but they also touch on finding lower carbon ways of working with clients:

  • texting rather than emailing, if appropriate
  • using the phone rather than video calls, if that works for everyone. And, if it has to be a video call, discussing turning off cameras (since that apparently reduces the call’s energy use by over 90%!).

In the game of carbon reduction, these things are small fry, admittedly, but they’re so easily doable, so why wouldn’t you? 

In the slightly bigger picture, I’ve signed up to ecologi to offset the carbon emissions of my business. I’m also trying to talk more about climate change and carbon reduction – and this post is part of that commitment. And I’m trying not to agonise too much over the carbon impact of more posts and socials – but will use them sparingly – (whilst fighting the urge to use my agony to justify silence!).

Categories
sustainability

The climate impact of excessive politeness

It never struck me before that the climate was paying the price for my excessive politeness (sorry climate!).

Every ‘thanks so much’, ‘that’s brilliant, thank you’ and ‘cheers’ email that I send as a matter of principle and good manners has been responsible for releasing its own little bit of carbon into the atmosphere. My laptop, the network, the Cloud (ahem, getting a bit sketchy now) and the machine on which it is read are all implicated in these minor acts of climate terrorism; each using little bits of energy in the conveyance of my most sincere gratitude. 

The research, conducted by energy company, OVO, has been around a while, so many people may have already been encouraged by it to adopt ‘think, before you thank’ email habits (sorry I judged you rude, I now understand!). 

But it was news to me, so I imagine it’s still news to others too. 

It found that us Brits send more than 64 million unnecessary emails every day and suggested that, if every adult in the UK were to send one fewer ‘thank you’ emails a day, we would, collectively, save more than 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year. That’s the equivalent carbon generated by over 80,000 flights to Madrid (or at least it was in 2019).

Granted, my individual contribution to this is pretty small. But I can’t unknow this now. So, the question is, how do I reconcile my innate mannerliness with my commitment to doing what I can to reduce my carbon footprint? 

To thank or not to thank

I could go cold turkey and simply stop doing it. As a communicator, this just feels inherently wrong. I could start texting my thanks – since a text message provides a lower carbon option. But responding to an email message through a completely different medium doesn’t sit quite right with me either. So, I’ve alighted on adding a short footer to my emails. There’s room for improvement, I’m sure, but for now I’m thinking something along these lines:

“This email has a carbon footprint. It’s tiny, but it’s there. I’m trying to reduce the number of emails I send, so please don’t think me rude if I don’t respond with a ‘thank you’. Just consider yourself well and truly thanked.”

halo copy

And, following an incredible day’s Carbon Literacy training last week, led by Better Not Stop’s unstoppable Hannah Cox, I’m now even more aware of the impact that some of my other email habits are having on my carbon footprint. I’m feeling a Decarbonist Manifesto coming on…