10 Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint.
Be a conscious consumer
1.Reduce or eliminate plastic from your shopping. Buy loose fruit and veg, drink tap water (can be filtered) not bottled water, use soap bars not bottled body-wash, use paper bags, re-use plastic bags. (See over for plastics you can and can’t recycle.)
2.Buy clothes made from biodegradable materials: cotton, linen, wool and silk. Don’t buy polyester or acrylic which are made from fossil fuel. Every time polyester fleece is washed it can release up to 25,000 microplastic fibres into the water supply.
3.Reduce or eliminate flying. Consider the train for European travel.
4.Walk, cycle or take the bus, rather than drive especially for journeys of less than 5 miles. Transport makes up 27% of average individual carbon footprint. If you have to drive, stick to the speed limit, accelerate gently and shift up early to a higher gear.
5.Reduce or eliminate meat and dairy (milk, cheese, eggs) from your diet. Shift to a plant-based diet. Food makes up one third of our carbon footprint. Manage your food shopping and cooking to reduce food waste.
6.Have a sustainable Christmas: reduce wrapping paper, reduce short-term and unwanted gifts, disposable packaging and food waste – but enjoy yourself!
7.Buy locally-grown seasonal fruit and vegetables. Hothouse strawberries grown in winter abroad and flown in can have 7 times the footprint of local berries.
8.Recycle plastic packaging and buy recycled products to create a circular economy. But better is to reduce plastic purchasing. Repurpose & repair what you already own. Ask about Repair Workshops in Hillingdon organised by Friends of the Earth.
9.Be a conscious consumer. Can you ask yourself: Do I really need it? Where does it come from? Can I buy better quality so it lasts longer.
10. Campaign for net-zero policies
Work together
Join Hillingdon FOE, lobby your MP for action at the upcoming COP26 Climate Conference, join a protest, promote sustainability at your place of work.
Hillingdon Council recycles plastics with these symbols:
1 = PET Polyethylene Terephthalate – water bottles and plastic trays
2 = HDPE High Density Polyethylene – milk cartoons and shampoo bottles
4 = LDPE Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) – food bags
So you can recycle;
plastic bottles and trays
bottle tops
triggers from household cleaners
shampoo and shower gel bottles
Incredibly hard to recycle plastics include crisp packets, salad bags, plastic wrap and more. Reduce or eliminate purchases of these.
For more information please see this link.
Please scroll down to see how our Big Green Week event 2021 went - 18th September, Uxbridge
Results fo the taste test.
At least 38 people did the taste test and the results for their preferred water, tap, filtered or bottled were:
6 – filtered
16 – bottled
16 – tap
We think this showed our visitors that the financial and environmental cost of bottled water isn’t justified and hopefully some will have been persuaded to buy less bottled water in future.
