Eco-buddy scheme

Summary

We’re launching the ‘Eco Buddy’ scheme, targeting “20% for 2020” – how to form pairs or small groups, to encourage and help each other assess and improve our own Climate and Ecology ‘footprint’, and find more fulfilment and fun as we go!

Explanation

Personal change is very challenging!

Just to understand and assess what our whole Footprint is requires learning and thinking through many unfamiliar things.

Cutting our whole Footprint calls for big changes to our lifestyle. We’ll have to re-think many things, learn lots of new ways. It’s hard to change life patterns we’ve had for years, and start new, unfamiliar ones.

Daily life ‘gets in the way’, and our best intentions fade under pressure.

Humans are social beings, that’s how we are strong. Most things we achieve, are through working together. So we need to harness this positive social reinforcement (encouragement, ideas, reminders, positive peer pressure etc) to tackle the big Emergency we now face.

It’s a case of ‘every BIG helps’ – small changes here and there won’t add up to nearly enough now. But we can make it more easily by targeting ‘achievable significant wins’

Cutting our total Footprint by 20% each year is more manageable, yet over several years it actually delivers the deep cuts that are essential to avoid catastrophic climate/ecology breakdown.

You can focus on specific actions, such as our energy sources and wastage (bigcleanswitch.org, turning thermostats down where feasible, getting help insulating buildings, cutting car and plane trips).

How it can work

Find a buddy – form pairs or small groups of people you trust to share your struggles and worries, and sympathetically help and encourage you, as you do the same for them

Keep regular meetings, in a friendly place (home, cafe, nature park…)

Commit to share honestly and listen sympathetically with your buddy

Start by assessing your whole impact on the planet, as best you can. Visit www.tiny.cc/tcnweb/footprint for some tools to help you

Then commit together to achieve some goals. How about “20% for 2020” – assess your overall Footprint, and reduce it 20% this year. We recommend to record these on our Pledge Sheet. Visit That way you can log and track your own progress, and we can also see how we’re progressing overall as a town.

Now start working on some actions. Go for ‘accessible significant wins’. Visit www.tiny.cc/tcnweb/actions for ideas. You can log and track these on the Pledge Sheet too.

If you have any queries or feel ‘stuck’ or daunted by any things, you can drop us an email at TransitionChippingNorton@gmail.com. We’re in touch with lots of knowlegeable, competent people, so someone can probably help!

However you do it, we’d love to hear how you get on, so we can evaluate and improve this scheme.