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How to help combat climate change at home

Guest blogger John Box explains how everyone can make a difference in helping to tackle the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis.

We can all play a part in tackling climate change. Another ten years of incremental changes will not tackle the inter-related climate and biodiversity crises. “No one is too small to make a difference.”

Each month over the next year try one of these twelve ideas for actions

1. Using less oil, gas and coal is the most vital action we can all take. These fossil fuels were formed over millions of years from dead plants and animals, they are not renewable and burning them generates CO2. Green energy sources - the wind, the sun and the tides - generate no CO2 emissions once operational and are renewable.

2. Simple carbon calculators are online to work out your own carbon footprint. Aim to reduce or eliminate your main sources of CO2.

3. Insulating the house starting with the roof spaces and attics will save money each year on heating costs and reduce CO2 emissions. There’s lots of advice available online, including on our website here.

Shady garden

John Box

4. Gardens with lots of bushes and shrubs and trees are much shadier and cooler. Think about how refreshing woodlands are. Allow gardens to grow upwards to create cool and shady places. Shrubs and trees will also give perches and nesting places for birds and lots of insects for them to feed on. Adding a pond helps to create a cooler microclimate and provides water and habitats for frogs, newts and dragonflies. Window boxes full of luxuriant flowers will do their bit for absorbing CO2, will brighten up houses and attract butterflies.

5. Make your own compost. Compost heaps are good for dealing with all the garden cuttings and weedings. The resultant compost improves soil structure and organic content, especially on sandy or clay soils. Mulching with a layer of compost on the soil at any time of year reduces water loss from the soil in hot weather and is good for the soil. There is more and more compost available that does not contain peat but is made from excellent alternatives. Peat is a wonderful natural resource that stores huge amounts of carbon. Adding peat to compost means that a peatland somewhere is being dug up. If you buy a bag of compost, check that it does not contain peat.

Insect and wildlife shelters

Odds and ends of brick, stones and broken pottery hidden away in corners make wildlife shelters. Photo credit John Box.

6. Microhabitats for minibeasts. Small piles of odd brick ends and stones can be hidden away in the corners of a garden creating ideal places for snails, beetles and all sorts of invertebrates to live and overwinter. Bug houses are great fun to build from odds and ends and can be filled with all sorts of things - short pieces of bamboo, bits of brick, hair brushed from the dog, dried leaves and pinecones, feathers and more to encourage bugs and creepy crawlies.

7. Eating food, vegetables and fruit grown locally helps support Shropshire agriculture and the countryside. Food grown in Europe or further afield and flown or shipped here will have a much larger carbon footprint.

Planting sphagnum

Volunteers planting plugs of Sphagnum moss as part of the restoration from plantation conifers to bog on Fenn’s Moss, part of the Marches Mosses NNR in north Shropshire. Photo credit Robert Duff.

8. Volunteer to help the SWT and its local branches. Getting involved with practical activities will help to improve the capacity of wildlife habitats to absorb CO2, increase their biodiversity and is great fun. For example, helping to restore the raised bogs at Fenn’s & Whixall Mosses and Wem Moss nature reserves in north Shropshire is absolutely vital to improving these fantastic peatlands that store so much carbon.

9. Try taking out a subscription to British Wildlife, a magazine which is such a rich source of up to date articles about natural history, or Conservation Land Management, a great source of information for anyone doing practical work with habitats. Other conservation organisations also provide a great amount of information.

10. Your local authority councillors are really useful contacts - whether parish or town council or Shropshire Council or Telford & Wrekin Council. Can your council do more to reduce its CO2 emissions? Can they do more to help biodiversity?

11. Hopefully your MP supports net zero and green issues. Find out if they do. What are they doing locally to help us all tackle these hot summers? Reach out to them and ask for a meeting.

12. Track down the policies - climate change and biodiversity - of the organisations that you work for and belong to. How do the actions being taken match up? They will be keen to hear ideas of how they can improve their environmental performance.

John Box is a member of the SWT Carbon and Climate Group.

 

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