To get things started off, I hope that we can give people a few ideas and pointers as to what they can do to make some differences in not just their own lives but in the lives of people around them in their communities and in the wider world.
THE ENVIRONMENT
Individual action
This is one of the big ones that has a way of seeming to be completely out of our control, and that often leaves us thinking, how much impact can one person have on making a change and difference.
And that’s an understandable reaction, but here are a few things that we can do to help out.
Water conservation
Over the next few years the issue of fresh clean water and water scarcity will become increasingly important to all of us. Here are a few simple tips that many of you may already be using.
If you’re one of those people who still wash your cups, plates and cutlery the old fashioned way, by hand (yes this is what we did before the advent of the washing machine), then this is a great quick one to save water.
You can do this by using a bowl in the sink, and washing your plates, etc in the bowl. If you’re fortunate to have a double sink then another bowl placed in the second sink can be used to rinse off your plates.
Once you’ve finished your washing, don’t throw the water away. If possible try to reuse the water in the bowls to wash the next load of plates, etc. Use your judgement as to when it’s no longer possible to do do so.
Next if you have any plants, use the water to water your plants. If you have buckets, and room to store the water outside, pour the water from your bowls into the buckets to store them for use in your garden or house plants when needed. The water can also be used for cleaning your car. Now the last thing you want is for bits of food to be all over your car if you’re using it to wash your car so, you can try to filter out and food residuals by using a funnel to pour out the water from the bowl, or just pour the water slowly into your bucket, which will allow you to make sure that you take out the bits of food that may be in the last bits of water before you empty them into the bucket.
Another one for recycling water is if you have a dehumidifier. Rather than throwing the water away put it into a bucket or directly onto plants in the garden or pots.
We need to find more and better ways to capture water.
If you don’t already have one, for those people who have gardens, water butts are good ways to store water. They can be connected up to drainage pipes from the guttering, or used as just open stand alone storage containers that you can use to capture rain and also store water and reuse water from the home.
Electrity
We can all do our bit here. From turning the tv or other electronic appliances off when we’re leaving the room for more than a few minutes, to plugging out or turning off equipment from the socket last thing at night when we’ve finished using them. There’s the temptation especially when it’s hot to leave fans and other cooling devices on when we step out of the room, but if there’s no one left in the room, then please turn it off until you return.
Another temptation during the hot weather is to stop off at the fridge to get a nice cold drink. If you do so, resist the temptation to enjoy the cool refreshing beverage whilst standing with the fridge door kept open (as I never have done in the past..) as this also takes a lot of energy. The fridge will burn more energy trying to regulate the temperature whilst the fridge door is open so, make that cool drink one to go, and close the door until you need to open the fridge door again.
Another simple one is kettles, If you’re a constant tea or coffee drinker and you still make your drinks the old fashioned way, then think about how much water you need to use in order to make your tea or coffee. Once again the energy needed in order to boil the water will increase depending upon how much water is being boiled (plus it takes longer to boil the kettle if you use way too much water).
This next one is one that I’ll be covering in the companies section and it’s an idea which I hope will catch on with your help. It’s called ‘take one hour’. The concept behind it is quite simple. Turn the lights off for one hour a day. So if we could all turn our lights off for one hour, of one day, that would amount to an incredible saving.
If we could designate 8’oclock to the ‘take one hour’ idea, and people turned their lights off for just one hour whilst they were watching Tv or listening to music, this would not only have a great environmental impact in terms of reducing energy usage, but what an inspiring sight it would be for us all to be doing something together to make a difference.
The idea doesn’t have to be done at the same designated hour (although it really would be a stunning sight of mass co-operation if it happened), or limited to one hour a day where you turn out the lights. If you were really keen you could designate one hour where you turn off all your (plugged in) electronic equipment (where it’s safe to do so). Even if people adopted this concept for just one hour of one day of the week, the savings would still be significant.
Car Journey’s
For people in the UK and in a awful lot of places this can be the equivalent of talking to some American’s about ‘gun controls’. The right to drive your car and not have any kind of ‘penalties’ or restrictions imposed has been a tenet of many British drivers. The UK has experienced protests, and many other actions when the Government has tried to impose fuel taxes or tried to implement ‘green’ restrictions.
But the world is changing. As the problems with the American war in Iran, and before that the Russian war with Ukraine have shown, the dependence upon oil has left many people facing uncertainty, and the unpredictability that comes with a volatile and often unstable world.
So if the idea of changing your car usage habits for environmental reasons doesn’t appeal, then hopefully economic considerations will play a factor.
For this one this one, I call it ‘one less car journey’.
This could be just taking one less Journey that you would normally do in a car, where you instead go by public transportation, walk or cycle. The ideal would be for you to have one day where you decide not to use your car for any journeys, and you just leave the car at home for the entire day, but a starting point would be leaving the car behind for a journey that you would normally do by car, (at least) once a week.
Helping Hand
The last few years have hit all of us hard. From the banking crisis back in 2008, to more recent financial downturns bought about by various problems around the world. Most people have taken a big hit in the pocket and have been having to make do with a little bit less than they had before.
But whilst some of us have been fortunate enough to recover, to less or greater extents, others have not been so fortunate. There are many people who for just the most basic necessities are still dependent on food banks and help from others.
A lot of supermarkets do a food donation programme, where you’re able donate an item of food after you pay for your goods at the till. And I would ask people to see if each time they do a shop, or even the weekly shop, that they think about donating an extra item of food, or any item that they think would be useful for a struggling family or individual.
The next one on the helping hand theme is what I hope is a simple one. It’s something that could fall into the category of community. It’s keeping an eye out to see if our neighbours need any help. We all have busy lives and it’s sometimes easy to get the blinkers on and not see too much outside of your own ‘line of sight’. But Covid showed us that the idea of helping each other, and the concept of human contact, and help and support is massively important.
So the next time you see your neighbour ask how they’re doing, and ask if they need anything. I know that it sounds strange, and in a day and age where we are so used to being in our own space, and valuing our privacy (which weirdly we don’t seem to do so much online, where we constantly share way too much information about ourselves) we’re reluctant to intrude into other peoples spaces.
But sometimes just making the offer of help can go a long way.
This is especially true of keeping an eye out on older neighbours and letting them know that if they need anything that they can ask you to lend them a hand.
A word of caution of course, is that by all means please do try to help and offer help, but don’t put yourself in danger or at risk, by undertaking tasks that you may not be qualified or able to do, or by putting yourself in unsafe situations.
PLAY IT FORWARD
This is inspired by the same principle in the book by Catherine Ryan Hyde, and her book that would later be adapted into a film ‘Pay it forward’.
The idea in the book and the film of the same name, is that of doing something ‘nice’ for someone, with no expectation of getting a personal reward in return, all that you ask in turn for your good deed, is that you ask that person whom you’ve helped, to do the same thing for someone else.
For this you don’t have to ask someone to ‘pay it forward’ or ‘Play it forward’, the idea is that hopefully they’ll be inspired themselves to do something good for others themselves.
We have a way of sometimes remembering the negative things that happen to us, and forgetting those simple acts of kindness that someone does for us. So we remember the person who pushes in front in a queue, the driver who doesn’t let us out at a junction, or the driver who keeps going when you’re at the zebra crossing rather than stopping to let you cross the road.
But those simple acts of kindness, politeness and being civil can also start to have a lasting effect on us. The difference between a ‘good day’ and a ‘bad day’ can start with something as simple as a ‘thank you’.
So when you get on or off the bus, a thank you to the driver. When you’ve been to the checkout, a thank you and ‘goodbye’ to the person who’s served you. Holding the door open to the person who’s following you through the doors, or opening the doors and allowing them to go through first. Even a simple ‘smile’ and hello, in the morning to people that you see can make a world of difference to that person, who maybe going through lots of negative things in their lives.
Companies, authorities and organisations
Now the things that I’ve listed above have all been aimed at you as an individual, but some of the bigger changes can’t happen without the government at both central and local level, and companies and organisations doing their part.
The Environment
Companies can help by also doing their bit on water conservation, by making sure that their toilet facilities are efficient and don’t unnecessarily waste water.
Councils and local government bodies can make it easier for people to get the water butts that I spoke about earlier, either providing water butts to local constituents or by selling them at reduced prices, making them affordable to everyone.
We need to become more efficient in the way that we use water. To do this we need to make sure that we not only capture it, and store it but that we find a way to make the best use of what will become an increasingly limited and finite resource. In the UK we have hygiene standards which have dictated that ‘clean’ water be used to flush toilets. The UK has instead of using ‘grey’ water, opted for the use of toilets that use less water when they flush.
The time is soon approaching that this is no longer going to be enough.
The government in the UK and in other countries need to make it compulsory for new build houses/properties to be built, with ways of recycling grey water, and saving and storing grey water for use in the toilets and the garden.
They need to give house builders incentives for coming up with new and innovative ideas as to how to save, recycle and preserve water, whilst penalising those who do not take account of this critical part of house/property planning.
On the section above in relation to individuals, I spoke about the ‘1 hour a day’ idea. And this is something that I would like to see companies, and the government at local and central level looking at implementing.
In the exceptional cases where turning of the lights or ‘switching off’ would be dangerous, or would cause a risk to life, these could be exempted. But in cases where we see lights on in offices for seemingly no reason at all, or shop windows, fully lit up long after they’ve closed this would be an easy win.
On the one less car journey idea, we could have local authorities backing this scheme by making bus or train travel on one day of the week either half price, or even free.
To subsidise this you could have private companies sponsoring or funding this either regionally or nationally.
Helping hand Play it forward
For companies, they should be looking to expand upon some of the things that we touched upon in the section for individuals. The scheme offered by some supermarkets to allow people to donate items of food should be expanded to include all stores where it’s possible to do so, and these supermarkets should be looking to donate a percentage of their food or profits to food banks.
Large companies should be strongly encouraged to donate a percentage of their profits to charity. Whether these are local community charities or other organizations with a stated aim of helping people or of helping the environment.
In return for this they should receive tax incentives and tax breaks. For those companies that do not comply or participate they should be subject to higher taxes and named in a publicly available list showing their compliance or in some cases lack of compliance.
We can’t allow companies and the individuals who own these companies to feel that they have some special place above everyone else. They must be made to play their part in contributing to helping everyone.
I hope that this has helped you with some ideas on how to get started in making the world a better place for everyone and that you’ll share your own ideas and thoughts with others.