Small pledges, big difference
Kate Drake-Lee, works at BrightKidz, a workers’ co-operative and social enterprise in Northants, which promotes Walk to School Schemes and children’s high visibility clothing. She talks to Greener Together about how small things can make a big difference. “Lance Holland, our co-ordinator, was encouraging the whole company to sign up to Greener Together and I thought it would be a good opportunity to see if I’m being green on not”, said Kate. “It made me revaluate everyday tasks to see where improvements could be made or reaffirm good practices”
Home pledges
As Kate lives in rented accommodation, some of the bigger home improvement pledges weren’t appropriate for her, so instead she focused on signing up to a broad range of the more simple pledges. “I said I’d use fewer bags for shopping, not overfill the kettle, switch the lights off, those types of pledges”, she explained. “The ideas of only filling up the kettle with the water you are going to use has really stuck with me throughout, I’ve now become focussed on just boiling what I need”.
“Overall I am pleased with what I have achieved” she says. “I have managed to attain most of the targets I set myself”. However, she’s limited with what she can recycle because of her local council. “I thought I was being very virtuous when I went down to the tip with lots of plastic bottles but they just threw them all in the rubbish, which was a bit demoralising”.
With a family of five, for household pledges to be successful, it’s been important to get everyone on board, but happily, Kate hasn’t faced any major resistance from her family. “The children are very switched on about recycling and waste, so I don’t think they’ve found it a major trauma. They’ve been quite keen to do it as it’s reiterating what they’ve learned at school, so they want to carry out the things at home”. Kate says that because they were generally quite good with waste and switching lights off, it wasn’t a totally new regime for the household. “We were doing those things some of the time, but now we’re trying to do them much more. Greener Together made us revisit those issues, and it’s becoming second-nature for us all now, so I’m sure we’ll be continuing”.
Making it achievable
Although Kate had some knowledge about green issues before signing up, she’s felt that Greener Together has reiterated the importance of what she was already doing, and spurred her on to be more committed with those simple things. “The process of saying that I’m going to do something has definitely made a difference” she says. “The whole process has made me refocus and realise that there are ways that I could improve on what I was already doing. There’s an understanding that simple exercises do have an impact”.
It’s signing up to do achievable pledges that have been the key to Kate’s success. “The lists are quite long and there’s a temptation to think you should do everything, but it’s not all achievable in the short-term. To get a sense of achievement you can do those little things, like recycle more and reduce the water you’re boiling, as it all makes a difference”.
Waste watching
Cutting down on food waste has been important to Kate and it’s been her key achievement. “With plastic bags, it’s very easy to get the ones from the store, so taking your own and being mindful of what’s in the fridge having been my main achievement. Now, I look in the fridge to see what we’ve got, rather than dash out to the supermarket and buy more – and you never go in to just buy one thing. That’s made an impact, and I think we’re eating healthier too because we’ve been using whatever’s in the fridge and thinking what we can make from what’s there, so we’ve been creative”.
“Waste is such a big issue nationally therefore we all need to do something to reduce it. We’ve only got finite resources and we have to be mindful to reduce our impact as much as possible. From a personal point of view, it’s also helping to keep costs down, and make things go a bit further, so that’s how I’ve approached it”.
As well as some financial benefit to the Greener Together pledges, Kate admits that there’s a feel good factor too. “You do feel good that you’re not wasting so much stuff and turning the lights off, that sort of thing. You do think that it must be doing some good somewhere down the line. And it does feel good to know that you’ve pledged to do something and you’re actually sticking to it”. Kate also says that getting emails from Greener Together has helped to keep her focused on her pledges.
“Overall, signing up to Greener Together has made me take a look at my everyday practices and that’s been really worthwhile. It’s opened my eyes to what I’m doing, and raised my awareness of green issues, not just at home but in the workplace too”.
