Quick climate fixes
There are many actions ordinary people can take to reduce carbon emissions. Here, we highlight just four - chosen because they are fast, simple, cheap and effective ways to combine climate action with help for wildlife.
Quick Fix #1: Gardening and Wildlife
Creating more havens for wildlife
Quick Fix # 2: Take a walk
Go by foot instead of by car
Quick Fix # 3: Local, seasonal food
Putting local, organically grown, seasonal food on the menu is good for wildlife, a really useful carbon emissions-buster, and most people think it tastes better, too.
Quick Fix #4: Home composting
Re-think your rubbish - see it as a resource temporarily in the wrong place.
Quick Fix #1: Gardening for Wildlife
Creating more havens for wildlife
What's involved?
Managing household gardens so that they provide shelter, water and food for wildlife. For example, by choosing plants which provide nectar (e.g. grape hyacinth, flowering currants), or seeds (e.g. sunflowers and yarrow), or nuts/ berries (such as barberry and pyracantha) and/or creating a wildlife pond.
Why do it?
Gardens cover more land in the UK than all of our nature reserves put together so if they are tended with wildlife in mind, we will massively increase the number of wildlife havens and make it easier for species to find or move to new habitats.
Did you know?
A long-term study of one suburban garden in Leicester found that it supported more than 2,200 plant and animal species.
A survey of 61 ordinary gardens by the University of Sheffield concluded that non-native plants are just as valuable as native ones when it comes to encouraging wildlife - what is most important is diversity.
Large gardens support a broader range of wildlife than small gardens - but only because they cover a bigger space. In terms of quality, size doesn't matter.
Linked actions
Become a wildlife monitor and help to build a picture of how local wildlife is faring/changing. Join a conservation gang, helping to coppice woodlands, clear ponds or plant trees. For both, contact your local Wildlife Trust for more details.
Find out more
Wild about Gardens is a joint initiative by the Wildlife Trusts and the Royal Horticultural Society. Fact-sheets can be downloaded free of charge from Wild About Gardens website.
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Quick Fix #2: Take a walk
Go by foot instead of by car
What's involved?
Replace at least one regular car trip a week by walking instead, to cut down carbon emissions from traffic and boost your fitness and general well-being.
Why do it?
About one fifth of our individual carbon emissions come from cars. And we're getting fatter and unhealthier because our use of cars, even for very short journeys, is increasing year on year.
Did you know?
About a quarter of all car trips are under 2 miles.
Almost a quarter of the adult UK population is classified as obese. This has a major impact on people's health and can lead to diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke and cancer.
In 2002/03, one in five British children, aged from five to 16, had not taken a walk lasting 20 minutes or more within the past year.
Linked actions
Car share, especially for regular journeys like commuting to work. Don't travel at all - can you work from home, order your shopping online or organise a teleconference instead of a face-to-face meeting?
Find out more:
Transport Direct: www.transportdirect.info suggests journey options and lets you estimate how long a trip will take on foot, by public transport or bike. Explore car sharing (e.g. for Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire & Wiltshire, www.liftshare.org or for Bristol www.2carshare.com
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Quick Fix #3: Local, seasonal food
Putting local, organically grown, seasonal food on the menu is good for wildlife, a really useful carbon emissions-buster, and most people think it tastes better, too.
What's involved?
Buying from local growers, or growing your own, and making good use of it.
Why do it?
Seasonal food makes sense because out-of-season foods either need transporting or have to be grown in energy-wasteful greenhouses. Buying from local suppliers is important because, even in season, food is often transported miles from a farm for packaging or processing, then sent on another long journey to reach its point of sale, so adding greatly to traffic and carbon dioxide emissions. Food imports are another source of high carbon emissions, especially air freight. And no matter where or how food is grown, it's all a total waste if the food isn't used.
Did you know?
25% of the lorries on our roads are transporting food.
Flying 1 kilo of asparagus from California to the UK uses 900 times more energy than the home-grown equivalent.
Imports account for 95% of the fruit and half the vegetables bought in the UK.
Linked actions
Don't buy it to bin it! Around one sixth of all the food we buy ends up in the bin (that's 15p wasted on every £1 spent). From the bin, the food goes to a landfill site where it produces methane as it rots - a very unhelpful greenhouse gas. So, it pays to plan meals before shopping, resist two-for-one offers and to find recipes that will make use of what's in the kitchen.
Buy local organic food if you can. The production of artificial fertilisers is very energy intensive and their use releases the greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide. Organic farming methods tend to be better for wildlife too.
Find out more
The Farmers Market movement began in the South West and most SW towns now host one. See also the Soil Association or Big Barn to find out about other local food outlets, including farm shops and veggie box schemes.
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Quick Fix #4: Home composting
Re-think your rubbish - see it as a resource temporarily in the wrong place.
What's involved?
Converting kitchen waste into a mulch that will encourage your garden to grow. Closing the loop so that potato peelings are turned back into potatoes, via your own compost heap. It's so easy to do - all vegetable matter will rot down eventually, whatever you do. And wildlife will thank you - from the minibeasts which break down the compost (no charge) to the robin watching for grubs as the compost is spread.
Why do it?
Well over a third of household rubbish can be composted at home. If you don't have a garden, the next best thing is to use your local green bin collection, but remember we're still clocking up the carbon with all those rubbish collection lorries on the roads. And when compostable rubbish rots down in landfill, it produces methane, one of the most powerful greenhouse gases.
Did you know?
The average person in the UK generates about half a tonne of rubbish every year - an increase of 15% over the ten years to 2005.
Well over a third of household rubbish can be composted at home, saving on transport and the powerful greenhouse gas, methane, that's produced as rubbish rots down in landfill sites.
Every tonne of rubbish sent to landfill represents a further 25 tonnes of waste at the manufacturing and extraction stages.
Linked action
Compost your cardboard too. Old cereal packets can be added to the heap, along with any other paper you can't recycle. If possible, let it soak in a bucket or rain first, or scrunch/tear it up.
Say no to plastic. Plastic costs a lot to recycle and may be transported a long way to recycling facilities. It may even go to China, where it's made into more plastic toys for export to the West... Use a cloth bag for shopping. And check out the shampoos and laundry liquid, etc, that come in refillable containers.
Find out more
Subsidised composting bins, composting tips, a newsletter, and even composting games are available from the Government-funded Recycle Now programme www.recyclenow.com
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