Our Planet Needs (More Than) a Helping Hand
ON December 3 last year Sir David Attenborough gave an arguably generation defining speech at the UN climate change summit in Katowice, Poland.
At that summit, Sir David talked of “our greatest threat in thousands of years” and warned that “time is running out”.
He said that “if we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisation and the collapse of the natural world is on the horizon”.
Sir David went on to add that it is not yet too late and that everyone has a part to play and can make a real difference.
His words brought the immediacy of the challenge we all face to the fore. On a very personal note, they made us angry, sad, scared, and most importantly determined. To do what we can to help the cause, even in a small way.
That is why we decided this January to set up an online community to raise awareness of the challenges we all face and to share ideas and information on how we can all make changes in our everyday lives.
You can find our Facebook page, Plastic Free Home, by simply searching or at www.facebook.com/plasticfreehomeuk.
In the past month alone our content has reached 226,000 people, with 72,000 post engagements.
But most importantly, we value and appreciate the daily interaction with followers, putting across their points of view, sharing their ideas or feeding back on successful changes they have made; many as a result of following our page.
A couple of months ago, we wrote to Sir David to thank him for inspiring us, like many others, and we were both touched amazed to receive a handwritten response endorsing our efforts just a week later.
Not long after, we were pleased to appear on BBC Radio Berkshire to discuss the issue, as well as online and in print.
From this issue, we are even more delighted that you will be able to find our weekly column in the lifestyle section of The Wokingham Paper.
We hope that everyone will learn something along the way, and that we can highlight easy and affordable changes that we can all make in our everyday lives.
We too are Wokingham residents and a normal family.
There are 65,000 households in Wokingham Borough. Imagine if each of those reduced their waste output by one bag of rubbish annually; 65,000 bags, or 390 tonnes of potential landfill saved.
Imagine if every one of the Borough’s 165,000 residents bought one less plastic bottle in a year.
You can do the maths on that one!
Make that one bottle every month for a year and that’s just shy of 2 million bottles.
Hopefully it’s very easy to see how simple changes can have a significant cumulative impact.
Let’s do this! We’ll see you next week.
For more tips and advice, join the online group at www.facebook.com/plasticfreehomeuk