Becoming carbon neutral or climate positive
Updated on Oct 17, 2021
My aim is to become carbon neutral or climate positive as quickly as possible.
What I’m doing well
- 🥦 Plant based, whole food diet. I’ve been vegan since March 2018 and haven’t looked back. If you’re interested, you can see some of my recipes here.
- ⚡️Renewable electric. All of the electricity we use at home is from renewable sources.
- 🍅 Growing my own veg. I’ve started growing my own vegetables. Since it’s my first year, I’m growing a wide variety of herbs, fruit, and vegetables.
- 🌳 Offsetting the rest. While some consider it controversial, I think it’s a great intermediate step before I make the remaining changes. Even then, I’ll like continue to do this so I can be climate positive.
What I need to improve
- ⛽️ Gas supply. My gas supply is currently offset. From some quick research, the only vegan energy supplier for gas is Ecotricity which I plan to move to once the cost is lower (it’s currently around 30% more than competitors).
- 🚗 Buy locally. Unfortunately, I don’t buy much locally. After researching, I discovered this is harder than first expected. Most fruit and veg stores don’t source a lot of their products locally so it doesn’t feel like a big gain compared to using Ocado.
- ✈️ Reduce travel or at least offset it. I’ve not done much travel recently (for obvious reasons), but I plan to be more consciously aware in the future.
- 🎁 Buy less things. This is a simple one, buy higher quality items and use them for longer. I love the UKPersonalFinance’s Should I Buy This? article.
- 💻 Improve my digital footprint (Internet service provider, cell phone network, hosting providers, domain registrar, etc). Unfortunately, I haven’t paid much attention here. Netlify, my hosting provider, has a sustainability page. I’m researching other providers I use.
