New Year, New Environmental Outlook
Stephen Haddad shares some ideas for environmentally friendly New Year’s resolutions. With Christmas festivities in the past, or soon to be, depending on when you read this, people are starting to think about what 2025 has in store, and making plans for the year (insofar as one can make plans in our rapidly changing world). After those festivities (sometimes because of them), many people are thinking about New Year’s resolutions, and how they are going to turn over a new leaf or make improvements to their lives from the first of January (or maybe more realistically the second).
(picture from Wikipedia)
Ancient Babylonians are considered the first to have made New Year’s resolutions, and the first to have
had a celebration marking the new year. They had quite the party, with a 12-day religious festival called Aikitu, during which they made assorted promises to their gods, including to pay off debts and return borrowed objects. The Romans got in on the act when Julius Caesar reformed the calendar and made January the start of the year. The Roman god Janus, after whom the month is named, had special significance, as he has two faces, one looking back
into the old year and the other looking forward into the new one.
So it is with New Year’s resolutions, looking back into the year past at things that we’d like to have done differently, or things we’d like to have not done, while looking forward as to how we can establish new routines so that we don’t just repeat the actions or mistakes, despite our best intentions. Such resolutions do tend to be rather inward looking, and often don’t really think about changes we could make, perhaps still achieved through introspective change, that will have a positive effect on the wider world. This year if you’re thinking about New Year’s resolutions, you might like to consider how you could make changes that will have positive impact on the natural environment, or at least reduce your negative impact. In our interconnected world of global supply chains, and a natural world where we see increasingly the interconnectedness of the global ecosystem, personal changes of behaviour can have a big impact around the world.
Like Janus with two faces, we can start by looking back. You could do an audit of your environmental impact in the past year as a guide to where you could make small changes that have a big impact. Common areas to examine include the food you eat, how you travel, both for daily or commuting purposes and for leisure or tourist travel, and the materials the things you buy are made of. Unfortunately this remains a far from straightforward process. Partly this is because many of the impacts are buried in complicated supply chains, and firms are reluctant to fully report the environmental impact of what they are selling. Also there are many different forms of impact. The carbon emissions from a product or service are perhaps the most high-profile example, but there are many other impacts. There’s the plastic from the packaging of what we buy. There’s the impact on the local environment of the farms and factories that produce things. There are even more hidden impacts like the amount of water used in the production chain, which area may negatively impact the environment especially in dry areas.
The good news is that for many of these impacts, if we look forward to how we can change, there are ever more options to do the right thing. If you are looking to reduce your carbon emissions, transport and diet are the two easiest ways to cut emissions. For transport, could you consider a regular journey that could be made on foot or by bicycle instead of by car. In addition there is an increasing supply of used electric cars with good range, as another way to cut emissions from transport. The cold and dark of January is a popular time to start thinking about summer holidays. Could you plan a holiday that involves less emissions due to travel? Also think about other environmental impacts of your holiday destination, such as whether it is an environmentally sensitive area where any tourism could be problematic. Another big source of emissions is in the production of meat and dairy. By going vegetarian just a few days a week, you can cut your emissions substantially. In these cold months, heating is a big source of emissions. Here too, a small change could make a big difference, if you reduce the thermostat temperature by a degree and wear warmer clothes.
Plastics are another area in which you could make small changes. Could you look to buy products with less plastic packaging? Do you take plastic bags that cannot be recycled from home to the supermarket for recycling? Like more traditional New Year’s resolutions, a lot of these are about finding ways to change your routine to make doing the right thing easier. For most of these changes there is the added benefit that while you’re doing your bit to protect our natural environment, they can also have a positive impact on more traditional target for resolutions, your health or wallet!
Eco Church Lifestyle Audit https://ecochurch.arocha.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/L4-Auditing-your-lifestyle.pdf
Ideas for eco friendly New Year’s resolutions:
o https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2021/12/10-eco-friendly-new-years-resolutions/
o https://onetreeplanted.org/blogs/stories/sustainable-new-years-resolutions
https://greencitizen.com/blog/sustainable-new-years-resolutions/