It’s been fairly quiet here this past week. As I’m on a ‘no spending on clothes’ month I have avoided the charity shops on my lunch break, which may have saved some money…
- I turned the large gift of tomatoes into some delicious roast tomato and garlic soup, and took it to work.
2. I was gifted two butternut squashes from a friend. As they keep for quite a long time I haven’t worked out whether to turn them into soup or something else.
3. I borrowed a book from the library.
4. I had a good look at our budgets and started some forward planning for next year. In 2019 we have (potentially) two large financial decisions to make and I want to be sure we can afford them both. I also want to start saving towards having three months’ expenses put away in case of job loss or any other emergency. This is rather ambitious as it will take quite a while to do this but I fell happier having a ‘safety net’. Last year our car was written off and having savings really helped – ‘rainy days’ do really happen!
5. Following the UN Climate Change Report last week my husband and I have been talking about a couple of things we can do. We only own one car (which is a challenge in a small village – see here) and the girls and I use a bus or walk to school/work. I’d like to think our carbon footprint is fairly low as only my husband flies for work (usually once a year). But there is so much more we could be doing. I’ve been talking for ages about switching to a green energy supplier, but have failed to do something about it. We could also reduce our meat consumption. One of our children is vegetarian and we already eat a few meat free meals, but we could make more of an effort to switch to a plant-based diet.
The author Mark Lynas will be talking at the North Wiltshire Sustainability Day in Chippenham this Saturday 20th)
It is good to have an ambition of further reducing your carbon footprint. Sounds you are already doing a lot towards that – certainly, thinking a bit more about your diet will squeeze that bit extra out of your efforts, but I think it also depends which meat you are eating. For example, I understand that pig and chicken meat cause fewer emissions. And local meat must also help.
Yes I was thinking that eating local meat is probably better. Living in a rural area we can buy village reared sausages and there is a lady who sells her beef locally (although I know cows emit a lot of methane which contributes towards greenhouse gases).
It’s a thin line when deciding what to do for the best but supporting local economies is in itself a good thing, I think.