Several years ago (pre-Greta), I visited a friend, who, for a long time, had composted food waste, re-used plastic bags, shopped local and so on. By the way, did you know that the Swedish inventor of plastic bags did so with the intention of them being re-used to prevent the chopping down of trees for paper bags?!! There’s a thought.

When I visited this friend she took me to a ‘refill’ shop (the first one I had ever seen - since a child when we bought ‘loose broken biscuits’ from my father-in-law’s grocer shop! He also sold loose rice and pulses - I didn’t know that!). This refill shop also sold items to reduce the excess use of plastic and packaging. I was so taken with this idea - it seemed a novelty at the time - not so much now, though I expect that depends on where you live. Do you know where your local refill shop is? We have several near us; the B Green Store, the Refill Pantry and the Replenish Refill Store.

Later that year my friend and I went to the Ethical Consumer Consumer conference in London and were inspired by many of the speakers, particularly Mike Berners-Lee, author of There is No Planetb. From then on I became much more interested in how we could reduce our CO2 to reduce global warming and live more sustainable lives. I joined our local group - the Welwyn Sustainable Living group to meet with like-minded people and discuss what we could do.

Some things are complicated, some difficult, some expensive, but there are many things - or even just one thing that we can try to reduce the CO2 we use. Here are 10 tips for doing this.

I would love to hear your feedback and what you are trying to do as it may encourage others. Please join my LOCAL Facebook group to comment and ‘advertise’ your local stores.

Pat