Trying to be greener at least some of the time, join me and let's do this together?

[AlexTheLittleCat]

I realise I can't do everything, and I know there's often an all or nothing approach to these things which isn't always practical and can be alienating, leading to many doing nothing (like a recent thread on AIBU about everyone should go vegan since there are meat-free alternatives - everyone said they didn't want to) .

I'm determined this year to be greener at least some of the time. For example, I don't want to go vegan, but I'm happy to try and cut our meat intake in half and cut back on dairy - between me and DH, that's the same as one of us going vegan. I can't say I'll never fly again but I'm committed to cutting back.

If we all cut back at least a bit, together it would make a difference.

I'm going to focus on the main areas of Food, Energy, Travel and Political Action.

Food - cut down to three meat evening meals a week or less with one fish meal a week. Switching to chicken and lower carbon meat, I'm going to reduce beef consumption by 80% from once a week to once every couple of months and use quorn mince instead. I will continue to use non-dairy milks. I tend to eat meat free breakfasts and lunches anyway. I'm also going to cut food waste as much as possible.

Travel - no flying at the moment as I have small children (not the greenest thing ever...) but I'm going to commit to only flying once every two or three years at the most once they are older and travelling is easier and aim for less than this.

Energy - trying to draught proof our house, already on a 100% renewable tariff.

Political Action - everyone needs to do their bit but political action is important too, I'm going to join Friends of the Earth and have signed up for their campaigns.

Any more ideas?

I'm trying to buy less stuff, declutter and recycle/donate anything we get rid of, continue to recycle and use eco-friendly cleaning products and cosmetics. I'll try to use the tumble dryer as little as possible - it is barely used in the spring/summer but winter is difficult as we have an old house, it's not great for drying clothes as it makes the house damp.

We are doing more or less the same as you.

The main change is that we are no longer buying red meat (although I have some in the freezer that will be used to avoid the waste). We are then only having meat three times a week. This could be a struggle with DS2.

We don't have any food waste since we have chickens and so all food waste is turned into eggs (I know someone will tell me its illegal to feed chickens kitchen scraps) or else gets composted for the vegetable garden.

Do you grow your own food? Food miles are a massive issue and its amazing how much you can grow in a back garden with fairly minimal effort.

We have planted a wildflower meadow which should hopefully be better this year. Last year it was mainly wildgrasses, clover, buttercups and sheep sorrel. I've sown lots of yellow rattle and so that should help the other flowers to gain some ground. Encouraging the bees is really important for the environment. We also regularly plant trees since we own woodland.

After meat I think our biggest change will be not buying anything we don't really need. Consumerism is a massive problem and its so easy to fall into a cycle of buying "stuff". Once my car finally dies we will replace it with an electric car.

Great ideas. We don't grow our own food at the moment but it's something we'd like to do.

I like the wild flower meadow too. I'm working on our front garden to tidy it up and I'm trying to find some bee friendly plants to replace it with.

Trying not to buy too much, either. Consumerism is a big problem, we all have more than we need.

I had an enormous clear out last weekend and sorted many, many bags of clothing to go to charity or for rag recycling but first used loads of shirts that were in the rag bag to cut up for dishrags and for bags for lavender and for moth balls. I also cut up some very old towels for the same purpose.

The odd sock mountain has now been sorted for turning into pan scrubbers. Its quite a relaxing activity and only takes about ten minutes to make one in front of the tv.

Im also on a mission to use up all the toiletries in the house before we buy any more. We have loads brought back from hotels etc. We have switched to bar soap from shower gel and have bamboo toohbrushes etc.

We mainly heat the house using wood from our own land so that is a big plus. We only use the trees that come down naturally or weirdly shaped chunks that the village tree surgeon wants to get rid of. Its an awful lot of work though and so I would urge anyone thinking about log fuelled biomass heating to think very carefully before committing. There are lots of little things you can do to make your house more energy efficient. have you looked at cavity wall insulation, extra loft insulation, draught excluders at external doors, thick lined curtains closed as soon as the sun goes down?

Do you have water butts in your garden to recycle rainwater for the garden?

Do you use terracycle points locally to recycle things that "can't be recycled" by the council? Just in the local villages we can do things like pringles tubes, pet food bags and crisp packets by taking them to the right collection points.

On the tumble dryer issue do you have a hanging drying rack? smaller things will dry very quickly on there even in the colder months.

I work from home and don't heat the house during the day when its just very fluffy dog and me. I use a heated electric blanket instead which costs pennies to run and I wear fingerless gloves. In general we don't use the heating as much as we could and everyone has to put on extra clothing instead. DH and I are often cold but the DC never seem to notice it and wander around in shorts and T shorts when we are completely layered up.

We have a dog which is not good for the environment due to massive meat consumption but once our current stock of kibble is gone we are switching to half raw meat and half insect protein kibble. If you haven't watched Apocalypse Cow on Channel 4 then do. It will make you realise that we cannot carry on consuming meat like we do.

You are doing a lot!

We have so much washing at the moment (I have a small baby) that drying it all on the racks isn't working, I do dry some of it and use the gently dry setting rather than the intensive dry setting and finish it on the racks.

We need to get water butts for the garden too.

I'm also using all the cosmetics etc up and trying not to buy more than necessary - i.e. one small make up palette a year rather than multiple.