How Can we Make a Difference?

There are so many ways in which we as individuals in the population can make a difference to sustainable development. Although most of these are pretty simple tasks like not leaving anything on standby and taking a shower rather than a bath, not everyone sees that it’s the little things that make a huge difference to the planet over time.

There are many things individuals can do these include;

Recycling
In many areas this has been made very easy now-a-days with little thinking involved as the different boxes are clearly labelled. For example in University Halls here there is blue bin for tins and plastics, a green bin for paper and cardboard, a red bag for glass and a red bin for normal (non-recyclable) products.

Back home in Sussex we have black boxes and bags for the different recyclable materials and again these are clearly labelled. The boxes are collected by the County Council straight from the door fortnightly which is the perfect length of time as they don’t over fill. Therefore there is no excuse really for people not to recycle as it’s so easy.

Linked to recycling is the idea of re-using products like plastic bags. This can help lower the amount of plastics manufactured. Tesco even offer rewards “green points” for its customers as an incentive to reuse bags therefore helping to make a difference to sustainable development.

Lower Car Usage
Possibly one of the things we are most guilty of is making unnecessary car journeys, sending an excess of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Short trips are one of the worst polluters and are mostly the unnecessary ones. However if you are in a situation where you need a car then you could always drive in an environmentally friendly fashion such as using the highest gear as soon as possible.

Alternatively people could ditch there cars altogether (or 99% of time) and use public transport, which in many areas is easier, quicker and sometimes more economical as well as being better for the environment. This is the case in Lewes, especially as they have now launched a scheme where you have to pay to park on the road and each household is only allowed 2 cars.

Cut Down on Electric usage
Saving electricity is yet another way individuals can make a difference as all it takes is to turn off light switches as you leave a room, not leaving things on standby and only boiling the amount of water you actually need.

I think you will agree that none of these are particularly taxing…however you will potentially also agree with me when I say that like many of the population I could do a bit more to make a difference.