January is a month of abstinence for many, a flirt with healthier living that lures us ever closer to a more substantial plant food diet and a zero waste mindset. A time for embracing and adopting new planet saving missives.
To help us on our way, here are 20 NEW YEAR CHANGES we can make to help our beautiful world.
- Get the Veganuary ball rolling: avoid meat! Award-winning cook Anna Jones’s bible features 200 recipes that celebrate vegetables – plenty of choice to last the month including baked dahl and tamarind-glazed sweet potato, tahini broccoli on toast, one-pot stews… You don’t have to go full-on vegan to make a difference but at least aim to buy less, quality meat, from trusted farmers. Just know that to reduce our carbon footprint, have a positive impact on the climate, help stop deforestation and biodiversity loss, and save water, then a plant based diet really will make a difference.
- Or, sign up to Greenpeace’s veganuary subscription to download a free cookbook of 25 recipes, including a “Random Green Soup” by Joanna Lumley, plus a Vegan Starter Kit complete with nutrition and meal plans.
- Time to ditch the dairy milk! Read all about alternatives here.
- We just love these food covers from Lakeland. Never any need to buy non-recyclable cling film.
- For packed lunches, grab a pack of these cool and colourful Beeswax wrappers or these vegan wax wraps.
- Whoever hasn’t yet signed up to Who Gives a Crap loo rolls, clearly doesn’t.
- Smell great in 2023 with cruelty-free smellies in recyclable packaging, courtesy of Laboratory Perfume, available at Murray’s.
- Deciding what charity to support first can prevent us from donating anywhere. Sign up to Easy Fundraising in the meantime, where each online purchase you make will send a tiny percentage to a charity of your choice. You can switch your beneficiary at any time, happy knowing that your pennies are helping to make pounds.
- Save the bees! Buy them a home. Here’s a great article to inspire, it’s a few years old so some products may no longer be available. Or, buy a £5 wildflower pollinator seed bomb from the Ethical Superstore.
- Extinction Rebellion are staging their largest ever protest on April 21. They’re aiming for a 100k+ crowd to surround the Houses of Parliament. “We are facing an unprecedented global emergency. Life on Earth is in crisis: scientists agree we have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown, and we are in the midst of a mass extinction of our own making”. If joining this, if doing something peacefully, is for you, then mark the date in your diary. It’s not for everyone, but we can’t find any other company promoting action.
- We should all have moved away from fast fashion to well-made, sustainable clothing. Clothes made from natural, organic fibres release less microplastics into our waterways than nylon and polyesters. Garments can cost more than high street bargain shops, but you get a higher quality, longer lasting use, while supporting communities and ethical, independent businesses.
- Farewell to paper towels and hello “unpaper towels” with a set of these.
- More minimal plastic packaging grocery shopping for 2023! We are lucky to have two stores in Crouch End, The Source Bulk Foods on The Broadway and The Harmless Store along Tottenham Lane… read what they say here.
- Does anyone wear suits anymore? If your old ones are taking up space, help someone else to get a job this year by donating men’s office wear (see wanted items here) to Suited & Booted, a city-based company that offers clothes and mentoring to vulnerable, low-income job seekers.
- Keep recycling! Recycling saves tonnes of rubbish being disposed of as waste and in the UK it saves about 10-15 million tonnes of carbon emissions a year, the equivalent of taking 3.5 million cars off the road. Note, Haringay council offer “real nappy” vouchers, see here.
- Car boot sales can only get more popular. Stick the word “vintage” in front of the title and you have a modern day jumble sale for knick-knack bounty hunts. From south of the river Pimlico (starting Jan 8) and Battersea (starting Jan 22), to north/east, with sister boots at Stoke Newington and Kilburn (starting Jan 7).
- Reduce carbon emissions, holiday in the UK! What a summer it was in Cornwall (Devon/Scotland/Dorset/Lake District/Isle of Wight/Norfolk). English incentives here. Campsites here. Or avoid aeroplane travel with a Europe rail holiday, here.
- Get mucky nurturing “a London alive with nature” by volunteering at Walthamstow Wetlands Centre.
- Or, book a 3-day £60 gardening course at Finsbury Park’s wildlife-friendly, not-for-profit, forest gardening project, Edible Landscapes London. Held on Saturdays from mid March to instruct on the nature of plants, what grows where, sowing seeds, preparing soil, weeding and pest control without chemicals, and more.
- Support the world’s first carbon neutral theatre, the Arcola in Dalston, east London. Their solar panels produce up to 6 kilowatts of green electricity, generating over 10,300kWh of electricity, avoiding more than 8 tonnes of CO2 emissions. Upcoming events here.
Wishing you all a very happy, healthy 2023!!