When thinking of how to lessen our impact on the environment as individuals, households, businesses or public bodies, we need to consider it in the following terms in order of importance. Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
Reduce
The most impact can be make by simply reducing consumption.
Less energy use, by insulating our homes, walking, cycling or using public transport rather than private cars. Eating locally sourced produce, reducing food miles. are some examples of this.
You can also consider extending the lifespan of products and using them till they wear out for example clothing and white goods,
Reuse
Re-purposing redundant items where possible. Exchanging, selling or giving away items that other may have a use for others. An example of this being, used battery Electric Vehicle batteries repurposed for static battery storage,
Recycle
If an item has reached the end of its useful life recycle it, but not all recycling is equal. Some products can be made into new versions of themselves, such as Electric Vehicle Batteries where 95%+ of the materials can be used to make new batteries, whereas most plastics can only be recycled once into lower value products such as bin liners and traffic cones before becoming landfill.
Pay Someone else!
Once you have done AS MUCH AS YOU CAN of the above, increasingly Carbon Credits are being used as a method of reaching so called ‘Net Zero’ . Though the systems for managing this are prone to misuse and not delivering what is promised. Even some of the world’s most profitable – and most polluting corporations – have invested in carbon offset projects that have fundamental failings and are “probably junk”, suggesting industry claims about greenhouse gas reductions were likely overblown, according to new analysis.
According to another article a significant portion (27%)of businesses lack a backup plan to achieve their green targets if the projects supported by their carbon credit investments fail to deliver promised emissions benefits.
There are stark warnings and examples of this, including this University of Cambridge article covering a study published in Science, stating The majority of carbon offset schemes are significantly overestimating the levels of deforestation they are preventing.
This article is work in progress and will be added to later.