Why?

Reducing food waste is ranked as the 3rd best solution to solve climate change. This is because food requires huge amount of resources (water, energy, land, labour, and finances) to be produces. And when we don't eat it, all of it goes to waste. It is also important because food that ends up in landfill rotts and produces greenhouse gases that are causing global warming and climate change.

How?

Try to create a meal plan for a few days or a week ahead. By following recipes, you will know what to buy and won't need to throw the food away. This will also be good for your health by making a conscious decion about what you want to eat.

Why?

Switching to a plant-based diet or eating less meat is ranked as the 4th best solution to solve climate change. This is because plants require much less resources to produce (smaller land use and less water compared to animals) and also because cattle produce a very potent greenhouse gas, methane.

How?

This doesn't mean that you have to become vegan. Incorporating more plant-based meals in your diet is good for your health, good for animals, and good for the planet. It's a win-win-win. You can start by having vegetarian or vegan diet couple times a week. It may help you to feel less tired, to sleep better and to balance your digestion.

Why?

This solution goes hand in hand with Plant-Based Diet, but I wanted to include it anyway. Eating less meet and including plant-based meals in your diet doesn't mean everyone needs to go vegan (although, imagine all the happy animals 🙃). Meat-centric diets account for a fifht (!) of all global emissions.

How?

If you can't imagine your diet without meat, try to at least avoid red meet because that cattle produce methane, a very potent greenhouse gas (more so than carbon dioxide). Or better yet, try to reduce the amount of meat you buy and eat. You can also swap a steak for a nice seabass fillet.

Why?

The fact that we can have any dairy product—such as milk, cream, butter, cheese, etc.— anytime we want is a result of an industrial-scale dairy cattle farming. This is one of the factors that contributes to a fifth of all global emissions. Many people don't realise that cows do not produce milk all the time. They produce milk for the same reason human women do: to feed their babies. But calves are taken away from their cow mums and fed artificial milk because the real one is given to humans.

How?

We can now easily opt for a plant-based milk. My personal favourite is Oatly (oat milk). You can see the environmental impact of dairy milk compare to plant-based milk in the BBC Food Calculator.

Why?

There are many benefits of living by this rule.

It saves energy, therefore, reduces carbon emission of creating new products. It reduces waste which is good for us (less pollution) but also for wildlife. And it conserves natural resources.

How?

Follow the following three rules.

Reduce: minimise the amount of waste we create.

Reuse: use items more than once and avoid buying single-use items.

Recycle: put a product to a new use instead of throwing it away.

Why?

Our lifestyles require a lot of energy. Think about it for a second. We heat/cool our homes, we use many devices on a daily basis. We light all our buildings and our streets. We use the Internet. We cook/microwave/refrigerate/freeze our food. It takes a lot of energy to power all our demands. Unfortunately, majority of this energy is generated by burning fossil fuels, which is the single worst thing we can be doing to our planet. But we can do it differently.

How?

Check if your energy utility offers a green power plan. You can also switch to renewable energy provider, such as Octopus Energy. Prices are typically the same, or even cheaper. 💸

Why?

It will save you a bunch of money. Switching to LEDs could cut your emissions from lighting by 85%. That's approximately 1/2 a tonne of CO2 emissions per household every year. LEDs use 90% less energy that the incandescent lightbulbs. It's because three bright Japanese scientists converted electrons to photons, which means that they transferred their energy use into creating light rather than heat. This invention — (nerdy fact alert) for which the scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014 — reduces electricity consumption and air-conditioning.

How?

You can either visit your local shop or you can even buy LED lights on Amazon. Simple solution and some extra cash in your pocket. Happy days. 💡

Why?

Washing your clothes in a colder water uses five times less energy. Simply put, the hotter the water, the more energy is used to warm it up. Same applies for tumble dryers. They use a lot of energy to dry all your clothes in 2-3 hours. By letting your clothes airdry, you can reduce your carbon footprint and save some money as well. 💸

How?

Try to wash your clothes at temperatures no higher than 30°C. It will still do the job whilst reducing the amount of energy it needs.