So I’ve explained my motivation for ‘a year of nothing new‘ here which I recommend you read before this post, but what guidelines have I set myself for the year ahead?

Food

The inimitable writer, Michael Pollan, says everything he's learned about food and health can be summed up in seven words: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants” and this is a maxim I intend to live by.

Intensive agriculture, particularly for meat and dairy production is one of the worst offending sectors when it comes to climate change. Methane has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide. Watch ‘Cowspiracy’ and ‘Kiss the ground’ to learn more about both animal and arable agriculture methods and their impact on our health and the environment. There are many other enlightening documentaries such as David Attenborough’s ‘A life on our planet’, also ‘Seaspiracy’, ‘Chasing Coral’ and ‘Brave blue world’ that show the impact that humanity is having on the planet.

From ‘David Attenborough’s A life on our Planet’

I became a vegetarian from the age of 11 (primarily motivated by the small cute piglet in the film ‘Babe’!) and but these days I am pretty much eat a plant-based diet (with the exception of the odd cheese-based misdemeanour) for environmental and health reasons, as well as concerns for animal welfare.

I will try to shop at local greengrocers with my own bags and containers to avoid as much packaging as possible. I will try to choose seasonal and local foods to limit the carbon footprint of my weekly shop. The other members of my household do eat meat but I try to buy and cook vegetarian meals for us at home as much as is possible.

Clothes

I am not hugely interested in clothes but still, somehow, I do still have a fairly relentless clothes buying habit. So for at least this year, everything (with the exception of underwear) will be second hand from charity shops, or swapped with friends. I have a surfeit of shoes already so I’m hoping they can be worn all year and no new shoes will be needed.

I’ll endeavour to buy second hand clothes for my two children also albeit my 6 year old daughter is a bit of a fashionista and she might need coaxing round to this idea.

Cosmetics

Over recent years I have radically cut down on the number of cosmetics and products I use for just a small handful of items, often making my own products. I will replace the bare minimum of products when they run out and stick to those that come in zero-waste packaging and use natural, botanical ingredients.

Work

I will endeavour to be as low-impact as possible in my work life. Finding ways to recycle or donate used plant pots and trying to use UK sourced materials and plants wherever possible without compromising on cost, quality or style. I will plant as many trees as possible in the next year and design planting schemes with biodiversity and habitat creation in mind.

I will try and avoid chemical use wherever possible, given the tremendous impacts herbicides have on pollinators, biodiversity and the health of the soil. Try watching ‘The Vanishing of the bees’ to learn about the threats to bee populations and what the loss of pollinators might mean for the planet.

The global information and communication technology system has a carbon footprint on a par with the entire aviation industry’s emissions from fuel, with server farms consuming huge amounts of energy. 80% of which comes from fossils fuels.

I am using Ecosia as a search engine as an alternative to google. Ecosia uses the ad revenue generated from searches to plant trees where they are needed most. They have planted 130 million trees to date. I will also purchase recycled printing paper and minimise plastic in my work as much as possible.

Travel and activities

A couple of decades ago I lived abroad and travelled a lot around Europe and the Americas so I’m certainly no carbon-neutral angel.

These days I travel a fair amount for work, and occasionally for longer distances around the UK to visit sites and family but I have rarely travelled abroad in the last 4-5 years. Partly because the thought of international flights with young kids is too stressful and also because I cannot reconcile myself to the ecological impact of flying long-haul for pleasure or leisure purposes. So, even though there are some far flung countries I would love to visit, I will travel by car, bus, boat or rail for the foreseeable future.

I appreciate people need to travel long distances to flee from conflict, find safety, travel for work or to see loved ones abroad. Having recently visited the very wild west coast of Scotland I was reminded how diverse the UK landscape is and how much of it I have yet to explore, so while I appreciate may others feel differently about this, no flights doesn’t feel too difficult for me, for the time being!

At some point when my current car no longer works, I would aim to buy a (second hand) electric car.

Books and audiobooks

Rediscovering the library post-lockdown has been wonderful. It feels pretty joyful to come out of the library with an armful of new books.

I’ve been reserving and borrowing books and using their free audiobooks service. Libraries also loan e-books, newspapers, magazines and journals so this is a great way to keep up to keep up with the news or your preferred journals without ordering a paper copy.

Gifts

I’m certainly guilty of incessant scrolling and adding items to an online baskets and wish lists. This year I aim to gift people with experiences, tickets to events, a meal out or second hand or handmade items or some flowers that I’ve grown.

Hopefully, friends and family won’t feel this is some sort of consolation prize. I would be really happy if a friend gave me a plant cutting, or offered to cook a meal for me or gifted me with a book they had loved or a piece of clothing they don’t use that they think might suit me.

Obviously this is tricker with children. We have trained them to expect to receive lots of ‘stuff’ on high days and holidays but I will try and gift them with experiences (cinema or theatre trips) or with practical and creative things such as books, clothes and crafting materials and hopefully my family might be encouraged to do the same.

I will ask if friends want to try a toy swap or a kids clothes swap two or three times a year to keep things from feeling stale.

Home

We have solar panels on our roof which heat our water in the sunnier months but when the radiators are blaring in autumn and winter we are guzzling heating oil. My partner and I are keen to switch to an air or ground source heat pump system. There was a £4,000 Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive being offered in the UK, up until spring 2021 so when a new scheme is announced we will try and move to this greener less polluting fuel source.

‘Be the change that you wish to see in the world’
Mahatma Gandhi

I’m no Greta Thunberg. I’m aware that my ‘year of nothing new’ is a drop in the ocean and isn’t going to impact upon the climate crisis. That said, it is only by becoming more vocal and pro-active as individuals that we can urge our political and business leaders to make changes on a national and global level.

Living like a monk

You can’t have many possessions when you live in a shipping container. Ten years ago, my partner and I were verging on living like zen-monks. We lived in the woods in a 40ft shipping container house that my partner built. The container we purchased was entering a forced retirement from international travel after about 11 years of globetrotting on container ships.

It arrived up the bumpy gravel track, slightly battered and grubby on a lorry and was craned into position in the woods. Over the next couple of years my partner almost single-handedly turned the container into a perfectly formed little house complete with wood burning stove, kitchen, bathroom and a mezzanine bed that looked out over a little pond. We could lie in bed and watch foxes, woodpeckers and deer go about their day. It was an architecturally brutalist version of Thoreau’s Walden pond. Given the limited space in a 40ft shipping container, we had to do a huge ‘Marie Kondo’ on all our possessions and live with the bare minimum. It was, to date, the most efficient and enjoyable house I have ever lived in.

Fast-forward a decade and now we have two children, a much more conventional house and just like small goldfish in a capacious pond, we have now expanded our quota of stuff to fill the space we have.

Friends tell us we are still pretty austere and monk-like but when I look around, I feel like we are bursting at the seams. Additionally and infuriatingly, I am increasingly aware of the flimsy quality and limited lifespan of the items in our house: the welly boots that split before both children get to use them, the zips that break and clothes that rip, the appliances which stop working and all the single use plastic that rolls in and out of the house in the form of packaging, toys and tools.

Why things fall apart

I always used to wonder why older family friends still had the same electric whisk or washing machine that they were gifted as a wedding present 30 years ago and yet everything in our house lasted a fraction of that time.

When I really thought about it and learnt about the terms ‘planned or perceived obsolescence’ I was shocked. Expendability and failure is consciously designed into products so you have to replace them with regularity.

Here is a useful three minute introduction to the concept if you aren’t familiar with the terms ‘planned and perceived obsolesce’.

Phone providers encouraging consumers to upgrade every 12 months to get the latest flashy phone model is commonplace but it is common knowledge that the precious metals required in electronic devices are finite in supply, increasingly in demand and exponentially hard to source in the natural environment.

Hopefully this will become increasingly unacceptable and manufacturers will be encouraged to change this approach due to consumer pressure.

Like most of you reading this, I am fortunate enough to browse amongst a vast array of products and with just a few clicks and a few hours’ wait, can have them arrive at my doorstep, courtesy of behemoth online shops.

Dead-duck planet?

One could be tempted to wonder if the world’s billionaires have decided that earth is now a dead-duck and, albeit they have only managed to escape earth’s atmosphere for a few minutes at a time, they seem to be planning to jet off to explore as yet untapped markets elsewhere in the solar system.

Copyright Inc Magazine and Chloe Krammel

I was drawn to my profession as landscape architect due to a love and concern for the natural environment. My work means I spend a lot of time thinking about biodiversity and healthy habitats and I have certainly noticed in the last decade or so real micro- and macro-climatic changes. The seasonal rules for planting can no longer be relied upon: In the U.K. our Springs are hotter, our summers are wetter and our winters are milder.

The tipping point

Climate change first became headline news over 30 years ago. It has never been far from the headlines over those last three decades. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report published this month (August 2021) is being called ‘a code red for humanity’.

The report is confronting and beyond emphatic that the time for climate action has almost elapsed and we have very little time before climate change will balloon and reach several tipping points, leading to a donimo-effect of accelerated changes and irreversible impacts. Examples of tipping points are loss of the permafrost, sea level rise, rainforest dieback and collapse of the Gulf Stream.

The UK will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in November 2021 but there is a need to not just talk about radical climate action at some hazy point between now and 2050 or 2060, but actually implementing climate action as soon as possible.

The IPCC clearly states that we have already enacted irreversible damage and have less than a decade to try and lower the extent of temperature change and avert the most extreme ‘extinction’ levels of temperature change.

What can we do?

My frustration is coming from a place of inordinate privilege. I am typing this on a computer with fast internet access (and the vast panoply of knowledge there within). I have had access to an excellent state-school education and I can hope for the same for my children. I am working in a warm dry house with access to free healthcare and a kitchen fully-stocked with food and with taps that issue drinking water on demand.

Nothing in my life is remotely challenging compared with the daily challenges of a huge percentage of the world’s population.

Given how easy it is to spiral into consumerism or be downcast by paralysing climate anxiety, I am embarking on ‘a year of nothing new’ as a way to try and check my privilege, be less wasteful, make positive climate-friendly lifestyle changes and hopefully, encourage others to think for a second when they find themselves acting on autopilot.

While there is still time to make an impact on the extent of climate change, there is a need for us all to make positive choices and be part of the groundswell of change and to stop ignoring ‘the biggest threat modern humans have ever faced’.

So what intentions have I set myself for the year ahead? Read on…