10th October 2023 Bulletin

ECO CORNER

Hello again from Eco-Corner.  Last week, dedicated Eco-Judaism team member Julian Brown bravely logged on to a virtual meet-up of Eco-strivers from Jewish communities around the UK, and he returned with stirring dispatches from the front line of Eco-Judaism.  You can see some of the ideas communities liked in the Word Cloud attached (see attachment, “mentimeter”).  But first, following on from our chat in previous weeks about sustainable eating, we would like to steer the conversation towards a wider consideration of ways in which we can reduce our individual carbon footprints (the amount of greenhouse gas generated as a result of our lifestyle choices). 

The first step in the process is to learn more about your current footprint, and to this end we would like to invite everyone in the community to visit one of the carbon footprint calculator tools available online. There are lots of options, but we suggest for starters that you head to www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx or, for a less-comprehensive (and presumably less accurate) but simpler questionnaire, the WWF calculator at footprint.wwf.org.uk/.  For example, using the WWF calculator, one of our Eco-Cornerers had an annual footprint of 9.8 tonnes of CO2 equivalent – just above the 2023 UK average -- while the other scored 8.7 tonnes, just below the UK average of 9.3 tonnes (but way above the world average of 6.3 tonnes). Most helpful are the suggestions that the WWF calculator offers to reduce your footprint further.  For example: footprint.wwf.org.uk/results/food/ .…and see attachment 2 (Carbon Footprint Image).  

So, in other words, we have plenty of room for improvement! It’s quick and fun to do, so why not try it out!