KAREN & THE CONSTABLES

Today marks the start of Scotland’s Climate Week, where the aim is to get everyone to play their part in ending our contribution to greenhouse gases within a generation.

Scotland has promised to “net zero for all greenhouse gases by 2045 to minimise the impact of the climate emergency on our society and the environment”, which is fantastic, so what can I do to play my part?

I took Greener Scotland’s How Green Are You? quiz and am happy to know that I’m a Shoot, someone who is aware and trying but could do a little better.

TRAVEL – I live in a rural location with a real lack of public transport options, so there are few options for me to improve the way I travel. I’d love an electric car but they’re not exactly cheap, and I usually have two small kids in tow so cycling won’t work either. However, I do try to limit the number of journeys I take, especially long distance, and if I only have a couple of hours free to work I do it from home.

EAT GREENER, AVOID WASTE – Our council doesn’t provide food caddies for rural homes, so we’re going to start composting. We’re quite good at using up leftovers and portion control so we don’t waste much, but all the wee offcuts of veg, teabags and egg shells can go in there.

One thing we could definitely do better is to use local, seasonal produce. I love a farmers market and there’s one in our local town, and we also have a number of farm shops within a reasonable range, so we don’t really have any excuses there apart from laziness and always shopping at the local supermarket. I’d also love to grow more fruit and veg at home, so I pledge to set aside an area of garden and grow some more food at home.

SAVING ENERGY – We’re quite good at this. We have a pulley for drying clothes indoors, always wash our clothes at 30°, use energy saving bulbs, only use heating and hot water when necessary. We also use Pure Planet as our electricity supplier for 100% renewable energy. But there’s always room to improve and that would be switching off all appliances and lights as soon as we’re not using them, and looking into a better heating system including boiler as ours is quite old so may need replaced soon.

REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE – We love good second hand finds, mainly through Facebook Marketplace or Gumtree or local charity shops. We also donate regularly to our local charity shops including “rags”. We definitely need to have a big clearout, I’m trying to embody Marie Kondo and declutter the house, so I’ll pledge to do that.

I also didn’t realise you could stop unwanted junk mail by registering through the Mail Preference Service, so we’ve done that. No more leaflets that we don’t read!

I feel quite confident that I can easily do my bit and carry out my pledges. What could you do to help the planet?