Last Tuesday 5 June was World Environment Day. So, I thought I'd take the opportunity to find out what most people do to try to limit their impact on the environment.
I'm happy to report that, according to my highly rigorous and scientifically valid survey (okay, twitter), we are all making significant changes to our lives — both in terms of daily habits and big lifestyle choices — in order to try to protect our planet.
To give you a feel for the responses, I'll group them into a number of key themes. The first is consumption. People are consciously reducing their consumption, avoiding 'fast fashion' and meat, and trying to buy locally or only second-hand. Right on theme for this year's World Environment Day, people are also focused on eliminating their use of single use plastics by avoiding excess packaging, and bringing their own containers, water bottles, keep cups, and shopping bags.
Recycling is also a big theme, including composting, worm farming, and donating clothing. And, finally, people are taking steps to reduce their water and energy consumption — moving into smaller housing, ditching their cars (or using them as little as possible), installing insulation, using solar power and energy efficient appliances, and avoiding the clothes dryer.
To add a bit more rigour to this analysis, these responses also reflect many of the 'climate solutions' identified by Drawdown as being worth taking due to their impact on both emissions and environmental and community amenity.
All this being said, the fact is that people remain frustrated by the limitations of individual action and are clear that there is a pressing need for structural and systemic change. While walking and riding to work is worthwhile, inner city living is beyond the means of many people, and public transport options need improvement. Inner city residents in turn would like to grow their own food, but have little space to do so, and there are challenges with gardening in communal spaces, including finding appropriate locations and dealing with issues of soil contamination.
Other people identified big steps that they'd like to take — such as going off-grid or building passive solar housing — if only they had the money. It is also challenging to avoid plastic packaging when it is so ubiquitous, and hard to efficiently heat and cool many rental properties.
"Australia is the third fastest growing vegan market in the world, and the roughly two million Australians who