Today’s blog is written by Keshav, a St Albans teenager who shares his top tips (and photography) for kids who want to live more sustainably.
Walk or ride a bike
Cars burn diesel/petrol and produce carbon dioxide, which is bad for the environment and causes climate change.
By riding a bike or walking short distances children can get fresh air which is good for their health and the environment. Walking to school can also benefit children by making them more alert when they get to school, positively impacting their school work.
Use buses and trains for longer distances
Cars produce lots of carbon dioxide per person in comparison to buses or trains. For example, a car carrying three people make 200/3= 67g CO2 per kilometer per person, but a bus carrying 40 people makes 1300/40= 33g CO2 per kilometer per person, so it is twice as good to use a bus or public transport then to use a car or taxi.
Remember: CARs produce CARbon!
Traveling less often or traveling more locally
Traveling abroad in a plane makes lots of carbon dioxide and is bad for the environment. To help, you can chat with your family to plan to travel closer distances, or travel in a plane less often. Some good holiday destinations near St Albans are Brighton, The Lake District, or The Peak District, which can be reached in just a few hours by train.
Eat less dairy and meat
Cows and pigs raised for dairy and meat burp and fart methane which is bad for the environment.
Children can ask their grownups to try eating vegetarian or vegan food for one day per week, or for one meal a day. There are lots of tasty vegetarian meals, like broccoli pasta or veggie noodles.
Growing vegetables at home
Growing fruits and vegetables in your garden provides fresh food, supports insects and bees and does not cause any emissions.
Children can grow fruits and vegetables in the garden or in a pot on a sunny windowsill. Vegetables that are easy to grow in St Albans include tomatoes, sugar snap peas, chillies, courgettes, and green beans.
Use Less water
Saving water is important because it is a limited resource and millions of people don’t have enough clean water to drink. Most water isn’t used for drinking, most water is used for long showers and baths, or making cotton clothes.
Children can save water by turning off the tap when brushing teeth, taking shorter showers, and asking to buy new clothes less often because clothes (especially dying and growing fabric) uses lots of water. You can buy clothes at second hand clothes stores or avoid buying new cotton clothes also, because cotton takes lots of water to grow.
Use LED lights
LED lights use 85% less electricity than normal lights. Electricity is often produced in fossil fuel power stations, which produce a lot of carbon dioxide. To put it into perspective, it takes as much energy to run one normal light as it does to run 6 and a half LED lights simultaneously.
Next time a light bulb breaks, children can remind their grown ups to replace it with an LED light, but don’t replace lights before they break because it takes lots of energy and resources to produce a light bulb.
Turn off lights
Turning off unused appliances and lights is important because it saves electricity, and leaving things on when they are not being used can waste a lot of electricity.
Children can remember to turn off the lights, toaster, microwave, or TV when it is not being used to avoid wasting electricity.
Use a refillable water bottle
Using a refillable water bottle is good because disposable plastic bottles go to the ocean and animals can choke on it or swallow it and get sick.
Children can take refillable water bottles to school, and refill them at drinking fountains or at home, so there won’t be any wasted plastic bottles.
Recycle
Recycling is important because waste that isn’t recycled can go to landfills, or the ocean, where animals and birds can choke on waste or accidentally swallow it.
Plastic waste is especially bad because plastic takes hundreds of years to disintegrate, which means it will be in nature hurting animals for hundreds of years.
Children can recycle by helping to separate household waste into the different bins.
Thanks Keshav for your top tips! If you are or know a young person who would like to volunteer with Sustainable St Albans, get in touch to explore ways to get involved!
This is great stuff! Fantastic to see young people helping other young people to understand what they can be doing to help the environment, and why. Well done Keshav!