Would anyone be interested in trying to do one small thing each week to tackle climate change?

[riotlady]

I’ve seen a few threads on aibu recently with people panicking about climate change and I often find myself worrying about it too, especially in light of the report published today. Studies show that one of the best ways to combat anxiety is to feel like you’re doing something about the problem, so I’ve decided to challenge myself to do one small thing to reduce my impact on the planet each week. I’m wondering if anyone would like to join me? I’m thinking small actions like walking or cycling a journey when you would normally take the car, swapping shower gel for bar soap, switching to a greener energy supplier, etc. No judgement about what is and isn’t feasible for people- for example I have ME and am very fatigued, so often use my tumble drier instead of hanging things out as I just don’t have the energy. There’s no point guilting myself over that, so I might as well focus on the things that I CAN change.

I’ve just sent an email to my MP so that’s my start to this week :)

No.

We have bought glass containers for the fridge and compartment lunch boxes. Haven't used a scrap of cling film or a sandwich bag for ages.
Also cutting down our meat intake and I've stopped buying magazines with plastic tat on the front.

@malificent7

I heard that some people have managed to run cars off vegetable oil and water...not sure how true that is. Big corps wouldn't have it though.

This is true.

The addition of refined vegetable oil to diesel is something that has been around for well over 20 years. The VW 1.9 TDI engine was rated for 100% biodiesel in most states of tune, but more modern engines aren't. In Europe, pump diesel usually contains small proportions of RME (rape methyl-ester, an oilseed rape-based biodiesel) added to petrodiesel - it's 7% in Germany off the top of my head (thus the "B7" standard there) and France wanted to get up to 10% but gave up a while ago. In the UK, McDonald's runs its fleet on waste vegetable oil from its deep fryers.

The water thing I am not sure about: I remember reading in the mid Nineties that some producers were exploring it as part of the transesterification process but couldn't say what became of it.

In Brazil, almost all local-spec cars run on bioethanol as well as normal gasoline. This isn't veg oil in the European sense, but produced from sugar cane distilled into alcohol (and, possibly, why pure cachaça used in caipirinhas tastes of petrol). In many states it is noticeably cheaper than normal gasoline although in Rio de Janeiro - where the oil industry is - the tax on gasoline is much lower. The car I had out there ran much more lumpily and rougher on bioethanol, and was slightly down on power, but at significant cost savings in São Paulo.

The issue with all biofuels is that if you mandate or incentivise their use instead of petroleum products, you'll eventually compete with food production for land. This is what happened when the George W Bush administration pushed for the addition of bioethanol derived from corn in his second term - it pushed global food prices up noticeably.