MOMENT | Not the Eco Parent You Wish You Were? Start Here - with Jen Gale

0:00Excited to tell you about a new sponsor this week, the May app. Are you finding it difficult to find real answers to your questions amidst hours of scrolling forums and Google searches? Are you looking for something to simplify your journey of motherhood? Well, then May is the app for you and it's finally reached the UK after years of success in France with 750 ,000 users. May is a digital health app designed for parents and future parents made by health professionals. may help reduce stress, cut through misinformation and build confidence in your parenting. Topics include physical and mental health, sleep, breastfeeding, parenting, nutrition, stress and postpartum depression.

0:42You can use smart tracking tools for pregnancy, baby care and even your menstrual cycle, covering sleep, weaning, nappies, contraction timings and more. 93 % of users feel better informed about their pregnancy and postpartum. It's free to download and there are loads of amazing free tools and content. So go ahead and discover everything it has to offer. If you would like the premium version, you can get a month's free with the code MotherKindMay. That's MotherKindMay, valid until July the 31st.

1:21Today's clip is with the brilliant sustainability author, speaker and founder of the Knackered Mums Eco Club. It is Jen Gale. In this clip, Jen brilliantly breaks down the issue and the incredible power we each have to be part of the solution. I hope you enjoy it. Here it is. Guilt, whatever you do, isn't there? So there's guilt whether you're homeschooling, there's guilt whether you're able to send your kids to school because you're a key worker, there's guilt whether you breastfeed, whether you bottle feed, you know, whatever there is, somebody will make you feel guilty about it. My perception or my feeling is that there are a lot of parents out there probably feeling guilty and anxious about the environment.

2:07But as you say, there's so many other things to deal with. And I don't know about you, but certainly last year, and even at the beginning of this year, there's been quite a lot of sort of amazing David Attenborough documentaries. And there's a certain bit of me, and I'm sure lots of listeners will relate to this, that you kind of don't want to watch it because you know it's going to make you feel bad. So we're all kind of aware of the climate crisis. It's another thing that's adding to the overwhelm and the guilt. And I guess maybe the take on this is that you see this as something that actually you can control, like these things within your home, these gentle, really imperfect suggestions that you can pick the ones that will be easy, pick the low hanging fruits, that actually this is something when everything else is so out of control, when we've got no control over a global pandemic, when we've got no control over government responses, when our kids will be in school, this is something that we can actually take a little bit of control over and maybe feel a little bit empowered, dare I say it.

3:09I think it's a good point. And I know that when I do something very imperfectly, which I think is a more sustainable choice, it does feel esteeming actually. Yeah, it is. You know, I think that first step is always the hardest one because there's a graph somewhere, I think, that sort of shows that, you know, this sort of first step is huge. And then after that, it becomes much easier because you develop that momentum, that kind of like, wow, actually that wasn't that hard. And that was really easy. And like, I know nappies are a big thing when you've got young children and not everybody's going to want to do reusable nappies and not everybody's going to want to do it certainly as a first step, especially when we're in the middle of a pandemic and homeschooling and everything's overwhelming.

3:48But the example I use is when we had our first, I had every intention of using reusable nappies, but do you know, like rabbit in the headlights, like we weren't sleeping, all those sorts of things. But every time I put a disposable nappy in the bin, I was just feeling a bit crap about it, just feeling a bit guilty. And then it got to about, I don't know, eight, 10 weeks. And we finally started to maybe think about taking a breath. We had the nappy man, I think he's the only nappy man in the country, come around from our local wildlife trust and sort of show me what to do and things. And that sort of layer of guilt that I hadn't really even acknowledged was kind of lifted.

4:23And I was like, oh, my God, I feel so much better about myself now. You know, and so there are advantages to it. It isn't that you're going to read the book and feel guilty and feel like I'm telling you, you've got to deprive yourself of all the convenience, of all the nice things, of all the things that make life easier, because nobody's going to want to do that. That's not particularly aspirational, is it? It's all about gentle steps, imperfect action, because we've all got different families. We've all got different circumstances and setups and different challenges. You know, some people will be caring for older parents as well as the kids.

4:56Some people will have kids with additional needs. So this idea that there's one size fits all is complete rubbish. And so that's kind of, I hope, the message that the book gives is it's about finding what works for you and for your family and helping to ditch some of that guilt and overwhelm. When you said we don't need a handful of kind of eco warriors doing this perfectly, what we need is millions, if not billions, of people making very, very small, imperfect adjustments. And that really struck me because I think, you know, I sit in the wellbeing world, I guess, with Mother Kind. And I do see lots of people doing this very perfectly.

5:39You know, lots of people bulk buying, going to bulk shops with their reusable containers for the pasta and the grains. And I see people, you know, using the washing balls and I'm there using my plastic washing powder. And I think that's what I like about when you say that, because actually, if I do choose that once a week. to school instead of driving. Oh my God, yeah. That's actually a big contribution. Let's just start right at the start because as you said, lots of people, this does feel like the climate crisis does feel like another thing that is almost overwhelming. I know for a long time, I kind of put my hands in my ears.

6:22It felt too much to hear on top of everything else going on. So maybe that's very gently just underscore this crisis and the importance of us all taking very small imperfect action and the impact that that could actually have. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think it is hugely overwhelming. And I was in exactly the same place as you sort of somehow, not consciously, but choosing to sort of look away and feeling like it wasn't my place to do anything about it. Surely if it's that bad, it would be like the response to coronavirus and the government would be coming down hard, pushing things through, imposing all these laws.

7:01And they kind of seem that bothered about it. And, you know, surely if it was that bad, businesses would be rapidly changing what they're doing. And obviously they wouldn't be putting profit first. You know, that's crazy. Of course they wouldn't be doing that. And thinking, I'm just one person. This is huge. This needs Boris and Biden and all those people to step up and to do this. What possible impact can me choosing a different washing powder make? And I absolutely completely get that. And please be assured I feel that on a regular basis. The climate crisis is, I think David Attenborough was just on Good Morning Britain this morning saying, you know, this is the biggest problem of our time.

7:41This is the sort of defining issue of our generation. And he also talks about this idea that the decisions that we're making now are going to have an impact in 100 years time. So there's no pressure, no pressure to pick the whitewashing powder. And it is huge and it is overwhelming. There's a brilliant tweet by I think her name's Kimberly Nicholas. She's a climate scientist and she went to one of the climate strikes obviously last year or 2019. And she's got this sort of climate crisis in 12 words. And it's basically like it's warming. We're causing it. It's bad. And then the last one is like, we can fix it.

8:18So I think it's really important that we understand where we are and what's caused it. But it's also really, really important that we hang on to that. We can fix it a bit because otherwise we just run the risk of just people just going, well, do you know what, Sodham? There's nothing we can do about it. It's too late. It's not too late. So the next 10 years are kind of crucial because there was lots of talk around the US election, around the fact that Trump took America out of what's called the Paris Agreement. And that was something that happened in 2015. The reason it's banged on about a lot is because it was completely historical.

8:50And it was the first time all the nations had come together to say, this is a problem. We're all going to take action to solve it. And the goal of that is to try and keep temperature changes below one and a half degrees C of warming. Now, again, one and a half degrees C of warming. So what? Like I've got a cup of tea here. I couldn't tell you if it was 90 degrees or 87 degrees. So it doesn't seem like a big deal, does it? One and a half degrees of warming. But actually, in terms of the planet, it's kind of huge because there's all these really delicate systems and ecosystems that are all interacting together and all these little feedback loops and mechanisms and stuff that keep our planet in this sort of safe, habitable zone.

9:31And what's happening is that we're pushing it out of that. And if we get to one and a half degrees C, if we get to two degrees C, we start getting these, this is all a bit technical, but these sort of runaway feedback loops and things will then be kind of very much out of our control. So we've basically got until 2030 to really pull our fingers out and do something about this. Now, as individuals, our role in this is, and again, I don't want to get too technical because I know people just glaze over and switch off, but we all have a carbon footprint. So countries have a carbon footprint. Businesses have a carbon footprint.

10:02Your iPhone has a carbon footprint. It's the impact that it has on the planet. and the average UK carbon footprint for an average person is around nine or ten tonnes of carbon. We've got to get that down as individuals to about two and a half tonnes by 2030. Is that a lifetime? That's per year. Our annual carbon footprint in the UK per person is around nine or ten tonnes. We've got to get that down to about two and a half, which sounds like, oh, my God, doesn't it? But we've got 10 years to do that. So we can shave off 10 percent this year. and actually we can break that down into manageable chunks and we absolutely can do that.

10:39So, you know, some really easy things that are big impact would be switching your energy supplier to a renewable tariff. And again, we're busy, we're overwhelmed, we're stretched, and you're telling me I've got to go online and sift through a load of bloomin' energy suppliers and how can I believe what they're saying and all those kinds of things. But there's some great websites. There's one called Big Clean Switch and that only lists renewable tariffs. So you literally grab a recent bill, go on there, put all your details in, and it will just give you a range of quotes and you pick the one you like the best.

11:08You can do it in an episode of Paw Patrol. You know, like you can do this. There are really doable, easy things that you can do that will have a big impact. And once you're done, you just can kind of sit back and it's done. What struck me in the book was that I think there is a feeling, and certainly I have this feeling like well actually it's kind of big business is responsible the farming meat dairy industry is responsible but actually 60 percent of carbon emissions are down to individual households i think that is in a way a positive message because what i take from that is that with these small micro changes we could all have a big difference we could we are so much more powerful than we give ourselves credit for.

11:58So big business absolutely needs to change. We can help to drive that change with the choices that we're making.