Climate change: reducing your impact on the planet

Joe Morton explains how we can make simple changes to protect our environment.

An incinerator would burn 100,000 tonnes of rubbish a year A recycled bag from naturalcollection.com

Tony Blair has called climate change "the biggest long-term challenge facing the world." Considering that the average household in the UK produces more than 6 tonnes of CO2 a year and the UK wastes £5 billion of energy a year, we need to do more protect the environment. It is especially important to try and prevent climate change as the countries that pollute the environment the least will be hit the hardest by the effects of climate change. There are a number of ways everyone can be more eco-friendly.

If you’re a home owner or can influence the owners of the house you live in, switching your energy supply to a renewable energy programme can help the environment. Many energy companies now offer a renewable energy programme where they will match the power that you use with power from a renewable source such as wind power. Most of them won’t cost you anything more than what you already pay. Also, even if the power isn’t, at first, directly coming from renewable sources then it will prove to companies that people have an interest in climate change. You can find out how to change here.

If you are planning to travel by plane soon then you can now make your trip carbon neutral. Check out Rhodri Davies’ article on transport and how, through organisations like the Carbon Neutral Company, you can offset your flight’s CO2 emissions by buying trees or energy-saving light bulbs.

On a local level, recycling is probably the most significant thing that will help prevent climate change. Nearly 60 per cent of our bins can be recycled. If everyone can recycle this amount then controversial incinerators like this one won't need to be set up and the amount in the already overflowing landfills will be reduced. New items will not have to be produced and energy will be saved. Recycle Now has a great site that explains every possible way of recycling you could think of, and where your local recycling site is.

Although plastic can be recyclable, many items are not required in the first place. Plastic bags take 500 years to degrade, during which time they will give off methane and pollute soil and water with toxins. They have an unsettling amount of drawbacks to the environment. Production requires the use of non-renewable resources like oil and many fragile ecosystems have become littered with harmful plastic bags. When you are at the checkout, assess whether you really need a bag, and if you do, keep it and re-use it. Alternatively you could buy a “Bag for Life”. Most supermarkets now offer these and they cost very little and save resources.

Finally, as we go into 2006, if we can keep the concept of ‘reuse, recycle and conserve’ in our minds then we can workout how to make our lives more eco-friendly and reduce our individual impact on the planet.