There’s a great deal of advice out there about all the changes we need for net-zero: electric cars, renewable energy, insulated boilers – but what sort of things can you do that won’t require investing a small fortune or completely rearranging your lifestyle?
At Switch2Zero we’re big believers in taking action, however small those first steps might be.
We know that change doesn’t happen overnight, and sometimes it’s not particularly helpful to focus on the ultimate extremes when we could be doing all sorts of little (yet very significant) things right now.
With that in mind, here are five of our top tips to reduce your carbon footprint (and your expenses) today – quickly, easily and effectively.
1. Eat less meat
You don’t have to become a vegetarian to make a big difference. Simply reducing or replacing some of your meat intake is a great start. According to Our World In Data, eating less meat or just switching out beef for alternatives like poultry, pork, eggs or pulses, is the single most effective way for individuals to reduce their carbon footprint.1 Recent studies even suggest cutting our beef consumption by 20% could actually halve deforestation and carbon emissions.2 Now that is impressive!
Try making your spag bol or chilli with half-and-half beef mince and Quorn mince. If you don’t tell anyone at your dining table, they are unlikely to notice any difference! Or try using turkey mince where you would normally use beef and just see what you think. And there are loads of meat alternatives in the supermarkets, from sausage rolls to sandwich slices and scotch eggs, lentil lasagnes to meat-free burgers and sausages. Keep an open mind and don’t knock them till you’ve tried them … many are really delicious!
2. Eat less dairy
Don’t worry – you don’t need to go fully vegan either. In 2021, dairy emissions were estimated to be double those of the aviation industry, and it’s estimated to account for over a quarter of the average EU diet’s carbon footprint.3
So maybe you cut back a bit on the grated cheese, or use an olive spread instead of butter, or try a milk alternative on your breakfast – oat milk, soya milk and almond milk are all very popular. Maybe you will never want to give up cheese, but could cut out milk completely. Or maybe you just have one serving a day. Just being mindful of when you consume dairy, how much, and whether it’s always necessary, can make a big difference. 4
3. Wash your dishes in a bowl
It actually turns out that running a full dishwasher once a day might be the most eco-friendly way to wash the pots, but for those of us who don’t own a dishwasher, fill a plugged sink, bucket or bowl with a few inches of water instead of cleaning dishes under a running tap. And if you do buy a dishwasher, go for as energy efficient a model as you can find: A+, A++ or A+++.
You also don’t need the water to be really hot since the temperature needed to kill germs would scald your hands anyway!5 Trust your washing-up liquid to kill off the bad stuff, and soak dishes with tough grease and dirt marks before attacking them.
4. Cool wash and/or air dry your clothes
Almost 6% of CO2 emissions in US households are from laundry drying machines, while over 1.5% is from heating water for the wash. Statistics suggest that if each load of laundry switched from a 60-degree wash and tumble dry to a 30-degree wash and air dry, its footprint would drop from 3.3kg of CO2 to just 0.6kg.5 That’s huge! And modern detergents will clean your clothes perfectly well at 30°.
Just remember to open a window if you’re drying clothes inside to keep damp spores at bay.
5. Take a shorter shower
It’s estimated that a daily ten-minute shower increases a person’s carbon footprint by 220kg a year.6
Many of us really love our showers though! What else will wake us up in the morning?!
How about starting to make them a bit shorter? Work your way down timewise gradually, aiming for a shower of between two and five minutes, or take fewer full showers, making some of them short ones, or invest in a low-flow showerhead that spreads the water, so you still feel just as wet but using a lot less water and energy.
Also try switching to soap, shampoo and conditioner in bars as opposed to bottles – that’s another effective way to reduce your carbon footprint.
Here are a few (slightly more inconvenient) footprint-cutting tips:
- Going less than a mile? Walk it.
- Need to go a bit further? Take the train.
- Shop more in person, less online.
- Cut down on takeaways.
- Seek out fruit and veg not wrapped in plastic.
Every Little Helps
If you make even just one or two of these changes, your energy footprint will decrease massively. These steps are all easy to implement, and they’ll also save you money!
Even the 5 ‘slightly more inconvenient’ tips listed here will be great money savers, incurring less fuel, fewer delivery fees, and less splurging on a takeaway – better for your pocket, your waistline AND the planet!
Small changes add up to big results!
1 https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
2 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/04/swapping-20-of-beef-for-quorn-could-halve-global-deforestation
3 https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/the-dairymen/how-is-the-dairy-industry-addressing-climate-change/659387.article
4 https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks
5 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200326-the-hidden-impact-of-your-daily-water-use
6 https://www.pawprint.eco/eco-guides/how-to-reduce-carbon-footprint-morning
