Life as a ‘zero-emissions’ family… how hard can it be?
Safeguarding the planet’s future begins at home – and with a few small changes that everyone can try, as Eleanor Steafel and Anna Tyzack discover
‘Being green isn’t about shunning 21st century conveniences’ ‘We gave up buying sliced bread and biscuits’
In her final flourish as Prime Minister, Theresa May has sought to cement some sort of legacy by enshrining in law a commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Stipulated in an amendment to the Climate Change Act, introduced in Parliament yesterday, the move
would make the UK the first member of the G7 group of industrialised nations to legislate for net zero emissions. Mrs May said it was “time to go further and faster to safeguard the environment for our children”.
She said: “This country led the world in innovation during the Industrial Revolution, and now we must lead the world to a cleaner, greener form of growth. Standing by is not an option.
“Reaching net zero by 2050 is an ambitious target, but it is crucial that we achieve it to ensure we protect our planet for future generations.”
Outside the Westminster bubble, ordinary families have been making steps to reduce their own carbon footprint.
So how can you lower your emissions, without sacrificing your free time – and fun? From the parents on a budget making cheap and simple eco-friendly lifestyle changes to the climate change campaigners adapting their existing houses and those creating state-of-the-art sustainable eco houses in the British countryside, we speak to three families taking matters into their own hands. Zion Lights doesn’t own a car, avoids planes and used cloth nappies when her two children, now aged five and seven, were babies. She is not so evangelical, however, that she expects the rest of us to adopt her carbonneutral lifestyle overnight. “Being green is not about shunning the conveniences of the 21st century, but about using them responsibly.”
Lights, author of The Ultimate Guide to Green Parenting, was a schoolgirl climate change warrior; after much nagging, her parents allowed her to take glass bottles to the bottle bank at the supermarket on the weekly shop. When she was a teenager, she turned vegan. It pains her that her children, who are also vegan (although her eldest occasionally eats eggs), already feel anxious about the future of their planet. But she also believes that they need to be aware of the realities of climate change. “People feel they are powerless, but if we can limit global warming to 1.5C over the next couple of decades, we will hopefully avoid catastrophic climate change,” she says.
Top tips from the Lights family
More plants, less meat – try meatfree Mondays or at least swap beef for less carbon-intensive protein, such as poultry, eggs, farmed fish and mussels
Compost your vegetables, food and paper packaging
Insulate – if you can’t afford double-glazing, seal your windows and doors with an eco-friendly draught excluder, such as Marmox Multibond. Failing that, you could simply invest in heavy curtains. Their roomy Georgian house in a well-groomed West Sussex village might not appear, at first glance, to be a hive of environment-saving activity, but the Corts were once hailed as “Britain’s greenest family” for their efforts to make their home and lifestyle more sustainable.
Carrie Cort, 53, and her husband Brian drive an electric car, swapped to a renewable energy supplier and installed solar panels. But it’s the small, everyday changes which they believe really make a difference.
“We avoid buying any packaging
and anything with food miles,” Carrie explains. “We don’t buy bread in plastic bags – I make our own bread instead.
“We also don’t buy any commercially made biscuits and certainly nothing that contains palm oil [whose plantations are responsible for deforestation].
“We have milk delivered by the milkman in glass bottles; he also delivers butter. I have a fruit and veg box from Riverford. They try to source their produce as locally as possible and in season. And we do grow a little bit at home.”
Their shampoo, shower gel and cleaning products are all topped up at the local refill centre, which Carrie helps to run. There, she also tops up on loose dry food, so as to avoid buying any excess packaging.
The family also participates in a recycling scheme, which sees single-use plastic recycled into benches, tables and dustbins, rather than yet more plastic bottles.
They only bank with ethical banks such as Triodos, which invest in renewable industries of the future.
Even their 11-year-old son Adam is on the bandwagon. He grows and sells chillies to the local community – a product that has typically accrued 12,000 food miles by the time it tips up in supermarkets – recycling the seeds, of course.
Top tips from the Cort family
Switch provider, to a clean renewable energy such as Good Energy or Bulb
Reduce the amount of packaging you buy day-to-day by using local refill schemes, milkmen and veg boxes
Get a dual flush loo – we don’t flush wees unless we have guests. The Hubers lived practically off-grid on boats for years before, with a growing family, they decided to move to a Twenties terraced house in west London. In the decade they have lived there, they have worked tirelessly to make their modest urban cottage as sustainable as possible.
They installed discreet solar panels and a battery bank to store energy when the sun isn’t shining, which provides most of the energy they need all year round.
“I reckon we must be saving £1,000 a year on our energy bills,” says Jurgen Huber, an art conservationist, who works at the Wallace Collection in London.
He and his wife, Zoe, spent around £4,000 renovating their house, installing top-quality insulation to make the house carbon neutral. They have no gas connection – instead, their instantaneous water heater, powered by solar, heats the water, and they cook on an energy-efficient induction hob.
Inside, they have fitted crafty internal insulation, losing space in their rooms, but gaining energy efficiency.
Day-to-day, they don’t run a car, buy organic food, and grow some of their own fruit and vegetables using harvested rainwater. They have also cut down on the amount of meat and dairy they eat. The kids, he says, get it, are happy to eat mainly vegetarian and shop secondhand, but are allowed to have the odd Mcdonald’s. “They do get a bit fed up of me preaching about renewable energy…”
Top tips from the Huber family
Insulation – if you have beautiful old single-glazing, it would be a sin to get rid of it. Instead, a cheap, easy solution is to buy stick-on window films. They reflect infrared light and UV light, storing heat inside in the winter and keeping the house cool in summer.
Shop secondhand – we try to buy “pre-loved” goods when it comes to clothes, gadgets and toys.
Install an air source heat pump, which transfers heat from outside to inside, releasing the heat as hot air, or into hot water-filled radiators or underfloor heating. The same system can often do the reverse in summer, cooling the inside of the house.
‘We now have milk delivered in glass bottles, and grow a little bit of veg in a patch at home’ ‘We don’t have a gas supply in the house any more’