Of mice and elephants

But I am surrounded by volunteers at work. And I know its not good enough to promote things I value, amongst the young people I work with... unless I am doing it myself.

For me this means becoming a volunteer, and living an ever increasingly "light" life.

But how to go about it? Thankfully A Rocha have come to the rescue. I have become a member,  and plan to volunteer for them, or if they don't have anything in my area, I shall have a go through the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers.

But what about R and I's way of life? Its not like we have lots of money, or our own home to make changes on... but thanks to A Rocha's Living Lightly web site, we are beginning to put into place a change of lifestyle.

How is it possible to make a real difference? Especially when so many ideas seem to be for home owners... Well, as it says in the international A Rocha magazine:

"A parable for today

Elephants are big, but they take two years to have just one baby. In that time, a pair of tiny mice can produce more than 100 million offspring – over 2000 tons of mice! The moral is that multiplying matters more than how big you are to

start with."

So I have a list. It has 15 things on it from the Living Lightly pages... so far we have:

• Started putting lids on saucepans every time
• Started to cook in bigger portions and freezing more (then using the microwave)
• Started to eat less meat (we wont go veggie but reduction is good)
• Signed up to the mail preference list
• Started getting milk from the milkman (reusable glass bottles)
• Started a wormery compost bin for our kitchen waste
• Continue to drive carefully to save fuel

Next on the list is to change our energy provider to an eco one, and to do double glazing... of a sorts. As we live in a rented property we have got some of that double glazing film that looks like cling film—you stick it over your windows and hairdryer it tight and then it acts just like double glazing—only cheaper!

So that's the story so far. I am blogging about this on my own blog, and will track our progress there. Perhaps it might help other people in similar situations to us, to take the eco lifestyle plunge.