Most of us limit our interactions with our local authority to whingeing about our bin collections and paying our council tax BUT did you know that they have a whole lot of carbon emissions within their influence and therefore a whole lot of potential for a positive planetary impact?
But how do we know what our council are doing? And if their plans are any good? And how they compare to the county next door, or at the other end of the country?

This is where today’s guest comes in!
I’m chatting to Annie Pickering from Climate Emergency UK, a not for profit who are supporting local authorities to achieve faster emissions reductions. Last year they assessed the climate action plans of all the local authroties in the UK and ranked them in a set of council climate plan scorecards – I use these regularly in my Carbon Literacy training and also in my talks when I’m talking about spheres of influence and the role we can play as citizens – these scorecards are a great ‘hook’ to get in touch with your local authority and start a conversation about climate action.

This year they’re going a step further and are assessing and ranking local authorities on their actual climate actions, rather than their plans, and this is where we come in!
Not only can we use these tools (the current one now and the new one when it’s available in Autumn of 2023) to engage with our councils around climate action, but if anyone has been looking for climate volunteering opportunities that they can do from the comfort of their homes, then this could be the one for you!
Climate Emergency UK are looking to recruit a small army of volunteers to help them to assess the CA plans of all the local authorities in the UK – a somewhat mammoth undertaking! They’ll provide full training for you and it looks like a brilliant opportunity to get involved in something that really is having a meaningful impact – you’ll hear in our chat about some of the impact that the plan scorecards have already had, so it’s exciting to think about what the action scorecards will achieve!
I’ve already signed up – if you’re interested, here's the link.

Enjoy!

PS. If you’ve enjoyed the podcast this year, please do give me a Christmas pressie of a rating and review whether you get your podcasts – it really does help the podcast to grown and reach more people!  

COP 27...
What happened?
What didn't happen?
And why?

For those of us in the UK, COP26 in Glasgow last year felt like a BIG deal - it was everywhere in the media while it was running, and schools, businesses and organisations were all keen to get involved.
This year's COP (COP27) has felt very different. And I found myself struggling to follow what was going on, and getting a handle on any outcomes.

I'm so delighted that the brilliant Laura Young was able to make some time to come back on and chat to us all about it. Laura was at COP26 last year, and did a brilliant Beginner's Guide to COP26 episode for us, followed up by a debrief afterwards. And it was fabulous to chat to her about what happened at COP27.
SO MUCH to take away from this episode - I feel so much more informed after chatting to Laura, I hope you do too!

And of course, I LOVED Laura's call to action at the end - to make our voices heard not just about the stuff we DON'T want to be happening in our local area (eg fracking) but super importantly to make our voices heard around the stuff we DO want to see happening (eg cycle lanes, onshore wind etc).
What positive stuff has happened near you? Or is in the pipeline? Who can you contact to let them know that they have your support?

Enjoy this episode!

You might not want to hear this but...Christmas is coming!
We’re about to enter silly season for consumption with Black Friday and then the Christmas shopping, so what better time to take a pause and think about the impact of what we’re buying, and how we might be able to make our money do good stuff at the same time as buying good pressies.

I’m chatting to Sian Conway-Wood who is the founder of ethical business platform Ethical Hour and managing partner at 181^st Street – a communications company. Earlier this moth, Sian launched Shop Ethical Instead – a campaign to encourage us to use our Christmas budget to buy gifts from small, ethical independent brands.
Now, as some of you will now, I’m coming to the end of Nothing New in 22 – a year buying gnothing new, 10 years on from the first one that was the star of my own sustainability journey. I’m pretty sold on the message that one of the most powerful things we can do as individuals is to consume less – so I did gently challenge Sian on how she feels about marketing more stuff to us, that we might not really need.

It was a brilliant chat – and I totally sign up to Sian’s mantra of buy less buy better – so if you are on the look-our for some thoughtfully seclted presents for the loved ones in your life, do check out the Shop Ethical Instead gift guides.

And on that note, if you’re looking to do Christmas with a bit less waste, impact on the planet and money this year, then I’ve pulled together the Crap-Christmas Course – a self-paced course with sixteen modules covering everything from plastic-free stocking fillers, through to sustainable(ish) drinks choices for the Big Day. There's more info right here.

Do let me know what you think of this episode and if you'll be checking out some of the wonderful brands Sian mentions.

Enjoy!

Wouldn’t it be great if everything we bought had a label on it telling us what it’s carbon footprint it? Then we would be able to make informed choices about the things we were buying and the impact they had.

Today I’m chatting to Charlie Cotton from ecollective about exactly that – what is a carbon footprint, how is it worked out, how feasible my grand carbon footprint labelling dreams are, and if some companies are already doing it.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this one – is this something that you would find useful to help you make decisions? How viable do you think it is/

Awareness of the climate crisis feels like it is at an all-time high. All the studies tell us that 75-80% of people are worried about it, but we're still not really talking about it, and lots of people aren't really sure what they can do about it. 
There are lots of reasons behind this, but sometimes feeling like we don't have the knowledge or expertise to start conversations, and like we don't know enough. Many of us might feel like we kind of understand what's going on, and what's causing the problems, but possibly we wouldn't be able to explain it to our kids.
Which is where Carbon Literacy comes in.

You might have heard me banging on about Talking Climate - the Sustainable(ish) Carbon Literacy course in the last few months. So I thought it was probably a good idea for an episode all about Carbon Literacy - what it is, how it works, and how to get involved. And who better to hear from, than one of the co-founders of the Carbon Literacy Project, Phil Korbel.

I first heard about Carbon Literacy during the first Covid lockdown, when I took a course delivered online by Pete Watkins from Speak Carbon. Inevitably it then took me a while (about a year!) to get my act together and create my own course for individuals and households, but in March this year I launched it, and since then have trained over 130 people. And those 130 people add to the 42,000 people worldwide that have also done the course and gained their carbon literacy certificate.

It's been amazing to run this course - seeing lightbulbs go off, and seeing people's confidence grow in the science, the impact and their agency to create positive change is HUGE. Everyone has to create two pledges at the end of the course, and reading these pledges as they come in makes me smile from ear to ear.

Listen in to hear more about the project, the courses and how to get involved. 

Enjoy!

Often one of the first ways that young people start to express themselves is via fashion, but fashion comes with a considerable environmental footprint. Textile production accounts for around 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and uses 1.5 trillion litres of water annually. And we all wear clothes.
In today's episode I'm chatting to someone who is on a mission to get young people engaged with slow fashion. Tze Ching is the founder of Refashion My Town, which is educating young people about the impacts of their clothing choices, and equip them with the skills and resources they need to repair and upcycle their own clothes.

There are so many great ideas in here, that all of us can get involved with, whether it's with young people or with our wider community. Do let me know if you're inspired after listening to this to think about a mending circle, clothes swap, upcycling workshop, or something else!

Enjoy!

In this episode I’m chatting to Parisa Wright, who is an absolute powerhouse of positive change – to the extent that I felt the need for a nap after speaking to her!
I am in absolute awe of her passion, her energy and her absolute commitment to creating a greener and cleaner world for all our of children and for future generations. Parisa’s journey starts in the same way that many of ours will have done – looking at the changes she can make in her own life and home. She then started to think about how she could get others involved in her local community and created a local FB group and started running regular events. Not content with that she went to a fully fledged charity and raise hundreds of thousands of pounds to open an eco hub in a large shopping centre in London. And even then she’s not content and is involved in research into how we engage people with the behaviour changes needed, and is looking at how the charity can support other towns and cities to create eco hubs.

As I said, Parisa is an absolute powerhouse, and for anyone who ever says ‘but what difference can one person actually make’ I will certainly be pointing them in her direction! I think you’re going to love this episode – please do let me know!

Enjoy!

Football – I have to confess I’m not really a fan, and it’s certainly not an area I would usually associate with sustainability. And if we’re not afraid of stereotyping, then I wouldn’t have pegged football fans as big eco types either.

Today’s guest is part of an organisation looking to change that , and to harness the power of sport in general, and football in particular to drive sustainable change.
Rich Holmes is part of Planet League, a frankly brilliant idea, that encourages football fans to sign up for their favourite team, and then score goals for them by doing some simple eco actions. I can’t tell you how much I love it!

Sport is a huge unifier, and as we’ll discuss in the podcast, it has ‘permission’ to engage fans in their everyday lives, as if we’re an avid fan, it can feel part of our identity.
And it’s not just fans that they influencing, Planet League is working with many of the country's top clubs to support them to go greener too.

This really is a fascinating episode – I hope you enjoy it. And please do share it with any schools, local football clubs, or football fans in your life – the next Planet League Cup is kicking off of the 10^th Oct – I’m going to see if I can get my husband and son to sign up!

What's the best climate charity to donate to?
How do I know that my money is actually being used for good stuff and not swallowed up in admin?
What sorts of things might charities be funding when it comes to helping the climate crisis?

When I think about donating to a climate charity, whether that's a personal donation, or if I'm thinking about running some kind of fundraiser, I find it hard to know which charity I should donate to. Organisations like Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, and Friends of the Earth spring to mind, but other than that I'm a bit stumped.

And it seems I'm not the only one. Apparently only 2% of philanthropy is currently going to climate mitigation. And it turns out there are some amazing organisations doing brilliant stuff to help to fight the climate crisis.

In this episode I'm chatting to Olly Tapper, who is the Development Manager at the Global Returns Project - a UK based climate change charity. The Global Returns Project have done all the research and identified what they feel to be six of the most impactful charities and not for profits working on climate solutions, and created a Global Returns Portfolio.
The charities in the portfolio (listed below) might surprise you and it was fascinating to hear about these brilliant projects, that we might not automatically think of as being a really key part in working to solve the climate crisis.

The six charities are:

• Ashden - finds, funds and supports organizations delivering new, affordable and sustainable energy solutions around the world.
• Client Earth - a team of lawyers ensuring existing environmental laws are respected and helping governments develop effective environmental policies.
• Global Canopy - targets the market forces driving the Climate Crisis and the destruction of nature. Its data platforms enable and increase pressure on companies, investors and governments to halt their impacts on tropical forests and other vital ecosystems.
• Rainforest Trust - safeguarding existing rainforests is one of the most effective ways to fight climate change. Every donation will be matched by a generous supporter, doubling the impact.
• Trillion Trees - will ensure one trillion trees have been re-grown, saved from loss, and better protected around the world by 2050.
• Whale and Dolphin Conservation - a global champion for whale and ocean-based solutions to the Climate Crisis. Whales play an important role in maintaining a healthy ocean and planet by accumulating carbon and fertilising carbon-sequestering phytoplankton.

I know that I’m not alone in occasionally feeling a little bit "what’s the point?" 
Do my actions really make a difference?
Will it really make any odds in the grand scheme of things if I take recycle this bottle, buy this new pair of jeans, or even take that flight?

Our individual actions can feel inconsequential in the face of the overwhelming enormity of the climate crisis and the scales of the changes that need to happen. Which is my attention was caught by a sentence in a book I read recently (Zero Altitude by Helen Coffey – you can listen to my chat with Helen in Episode 143) about individual action having a ripple effect that can start a public conversation (I bang on endlessly about the ripple effect of our actions in the Sustainable(ish) Clubhouse, and once you start to notice it, you really do see it in action!). The book then referred to a study by Steve Westlake, where he looked at the impact it has when one person tells their family and friends that they’re giving up flying for climate reasons. Steve found in his study that half of respondent who knew someone who had given up flying because of climate change, said that they flew less because of their example!
I was fascinated by this and promptly did a quick Ecosia search (top tip - swap your search engine for Ecosia - they use their ad revenue to plant trees!) for Steve Westlake. It turns out that he’s a PhD student at Cardiff University exploring how leading by example can influence behaviours and attitudes towards climate change. Which I totally wanted to hear more about, so in my usual slightly over-excited way, I got in touch with Steve and invited him on the podcast to talk about his research. And I’m delighted to say that he accepted, and that this is our chat – enjoy!