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Let's work together to make North London climate-friendly

Put your energy into being sustainably sustainable!

EcoCounts runs a climate action group - joining us costs nothing but your engagement

1.5 tonnes of CO2 per year for food, 1.9 tonnes for home energy, 2.4 tonnes for transport

These are typical CO2 emissions for a British citizen.

Why EcoCounts?

Wondering how you can tackle the climate crisis? You may think alone you can't do very much, but as a part of a group, even small contributions make a difference. Join EcoCounts and you join a community of like-minded people. Together we can work out the best and most inspiring ways to live more sustainable, environmentally-friendly low carbon lives.

This is community approach to a global crisis. Everybody brings their own passions to the group, and finds out the best way to tackle anything they think they can manage. Whether you're looking for the next challenge for climate champions, or quick wins for high burners, the EcoCounts community covers the whole panorama of sustainability.

Page Layout Examples From Other Charities

https://www.wearepossible.org/

https://www.islingtonmind.org.uk/

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/islington/d3

What we are actually going to do from day to day

1. Discover what the carbon footprint is of all the significant things we actually do (food, buying things, energy at home, travel)
2. Keep score of all the things somehow that have no definitive carbon footprint but are just as important (nature, advocacy, recycling, at work, protest)
3. Prioritise what we each do, because we can't all do everything: sharing, meeting, community-building, communication
4. Record what we are doing - the good and the bad - individually, to feed into the group results: search up carbon footprints
5. Display what we achieve and compare it to before - report on & display performance
6. Influence other people, groups, companies, councils, newspapers with data, impacts and stories - collaboration, dissemination, publicity

Virtuous circle / ascending spiral:

• comparative advantage in ecowarrior status / achievement
• impact on personal situation - mental health boost, financial savings, healthier life
• impact on group - reducing carbon footprint, broadening available options on file
• broadcast achievements, demonstrate successes, raise awareness
• influence others, catalyse new EcoCounts groups
• influence decision-makers by demonstrating feasiblility, popularity of actions

Examples from various categories: food, consumer goods, energy use, travel etc

1. Travel - want to go on holiday
2. Find out carbon footprints of different options - rail, car, flying, coach, boat
3. Choose one - (a) goes down on record (b) rate - cost, pros & cons
4. Energy use - want to change gas hob for induction hob
5. Find out carbon footprints of different options / manufacturers
6. Choose one - (a) record (b) rate - cost, pros & cons

1. Eating - options from carbon footprint, healthiness, cost
2. Build up a shopping basket footprint covering many items in store
3. Record both data and Identify potential substitutes for high emission products

Old Home Page

Global warming and climate change, 30 years after the first United Nations climate conference, are currently at the levels predicted as upper limits by scientists and government agencies 40 to 50 years ago. The estimates of what effects this will have are also playing out as predicted. The expected impacts over the next years, decades and centuries are doubtless realistic and are in parts exceptionally grim. How has society got itself into this situation, what does it mean for ordinary people and what can ordinary people do about it?

Much of the blame can be laid at the feet of the fossil fuel industry, unfettered free market capitalism and globalisation, but another major reason is simply human nature. We humans are fantastically bad at reacting to risks that we can't see, haven't happened before, aren't immediate, don't affect us personally, don't have a simple explanation or aren't caused by an enemy. Climate change is none of those. So then when we discover the problem, we look around to see who else is doing something about it (no-one) and then we leave it for later as it's a lot of effort to fix, and then unfortunately we forget about it until the next time David Attenborough mentions it.

So what is Carbon Counts doing that is going to help?

We are promoting a group-based approach, because together people acting as a group are more effective than individuals acting alone. We reinforce our engagement when we team up with other people with the same goals, and we immediately have more accountability, to each other, when we act as a group. For psychologists this is a no-brainer. We are psychologically pre-programmed social animals and we are at our most effective in groups.

Carbon Footprint-specific

The term carbon footprint means the total weight of CO2 gas emitted by whoever or whatever the subject of discussion is. For people, it is the total of all the CO2 emissions a person causes directly and indirectly, if that person added up all CO2 emissions from everything they do or get, for every goods or service they use, including their fair share of the manufacturing, processing, packaging, delivery and servicing of that goods or service. It is easy to calculate people's average carbon footprint, because it equals their fair share of the CO2 emissions that society pumps into the atmosphere, and climate scientists know almost exactly what that is. However it is very difficult to work out what any particular person's actual individual carbon footprint is, since the CO2 emissions happen at every stage of the supply chain in every product and service that provide the person with all the stuff that society has to offer. But just like Weight Watchers count their calories while trying to reduce their weight, everybody should be counting their CO2 emissions to reduce their carbon footprint.

Who worries about their carbon footprint mounting up day-by-day? Greta Thunberg! The question is deliberately easy, but the point is, the answer should have been "EVERYONE!" because climate change is making itself felt, wildfires, floods and extreme weather are everywhere, climate refugees are camping along borders, the polar ice caps are melting and sea level rise will inundate major coastal cities by the end of the century and everything is getting very alarming. For anyone unaware of that, this page (link) goes into more detail and leads back here.

Newspapers and the media mention the UK government's Net Zero 2050 though, and the EU's Green Deal, and Biden's Clean Energy programme, which allay many people's worries because they appear to offer an industry-based approach to the climate crisis that doesn't involve people managing their own carbon footprints. Scientific research makes it clear that these policies will not keep the world to under 2.0°C or even less likely 1.5°C as recommended by the IPCC. The research and the economic literature on global warming of greater than 2°C outlines grave dangers to our economy and society if we follow that path. But that is the path we are on.

Industry analysts in many fields tackling climate change continue to point out where the largest CO2 emissions come from so we can follow the growing movement of people trying to be low carbon and having a small carbon footprint, by cutting down on air travel, internal combustion engines, meat and dairy and so on. We can visit websites which will give us a rough estimate of how we are doing by estimating our carbon footprint from the answers to a series of questions on our lifestyle.

Ideally though there should be a carbon label on everything. That's something that Carbon Counts advocates for, but it is a long way from happening and any type of mandatory labelling is always strongly opposed by industry. In the absence of this information, we must resort to putting together estimates and using them to calculate and reduce our own personal carbon footprints. As a group, we can generate impressive reductions and demonstrate some real climate action.

One reason why people don't watch their carbon footprint is because the problem is so vast and planetary in scale, their efforts seem meaningless. But we can't tell anyone to reduce their carbon footprints if we aren't doing it ourselves! Actually doing the simple arithmetic to add up our carbon footprint and keep a running total for it gives us the agency to start demanding that everyone does the same.

Building up real practical information about our carbon footprint and doing something about it also makes our activities suddenly interesting to more people - to local companies, to local councils, to the press. We can collaborate with companies to get the carbon footprint of their products and services and feed it into ours. Soon the Carbon Counts name will win credibility and respect and gain recognition, at which point organisations will request that we endorse their actions on lowering CO2 emissions

RSA Islington Presentation Blurb

According to the UK government's Climate Change Committee, the public has a big part to play in reducing CO2 emissions. Although climate change has forced its way into our lives, what we should do is far from clear. Adam Hardy is a founder member of the charity Carbon Counts, a new North London-based group. It is building a group of 40 volunteers wishing to become as sustainable, environmentally friendly and low carbon as possible.

Despite his MSc in Environmental Technology, Adam Hardy is not advocating for any particular zero emissions lifestyle. Rather he is planning a simple, pragmatic approach with the team: they will share progress regularly; they will brain-storm the most appropriate, realistic actions; they will develop useful technical tools, given funding; they will actively seek out participants representative of the community.

Adam will discuss the challenges and potential for Carbon Counts. This will lead into a group discussion of the benefits he hopes to achieve and the wider implications for society as it faces up to the climate emergency.

Even Shorter

As climate change shakes us into action, what we should personally do is the subject of RSA Islington's September event. Adam Hardy is a founder member of the charity Carbon Counts. It is building a group of 30 to 50 volunteers in North London. Their challenge is to become as sustainable, environmentally friendly and low carbon as possible. Adam will outline several facets of their common sense approach. Group members track their progress and develop the appropriate technical tools to monitor their carbon footprints. They inspire and hold each each other accountable. Together they will plan the most appropriate, realistic and achievable way forward. He seeks participants from all backgrounds representative of the community. Adam will discuss the challenges and potential for Carbon Counts and open a group discussion of the benefits he hopes to achieve and the wider implications for society as it faces up to the climate emergency.