When I think about it now, I reckon I’ve always been pretty environmentally friendly.
Or, if you want to put it another way, I’ve always been tight.
I am that person in the house who switches the lights off and drops the heating back an hour. I have a horror of the TV being on standby overnight. I cannot bear to hear a tap left running while teeth are cleaned.
Think of the polar bears, I have always said. Think of my pocket, I have always meant.
It is not really ethical considerations that mean I make do and mend – or, to be more accurate given my absence of practical skills, make do and try not to use the bit that’s broken. Rather, it is because I don’t like spending brass. I’m the definition of slow fashion. I have suits so old, I think they’re now classed as vintage. Out in town last summer, someone asked me where I’d bought my retro Argentina football shirt. JJB I had to tell them, but 21 years ago.
I have the same approach to furniture. My living room is a paean to Seventies chic. A critic might say it looks like their gran’s old front room but, then, for that matter, it looks like my gran’s old front room too. That’s where half the furniture came from. I took it when she passed away four years ago, along with a decent haul of kitchen equipment.
"Try not to look so pleased," I recall my dad saying as I loaded up. I mean, come on now. Of course I was devastated but that's no reason to let a serviceable slow cooker go to waste, is it?
So, yes. I am a sustainable sort – but not always perhaps for the purest of reasons.
Until, that is, recently.
I read somewhere once that your whole outlook on the world and the future changes when you have children. Suddenly, it is said, you have skin in the game.
This, I think, may be true.
Over the last 18 months, since I started sharing my house with this ridiculous bawling, hyper-demanding, night-waking little ball of tears and toileting mess – but never mind my partner’s post-birth state, the baby’s even worse – since, then, I have found myself increasingly sensitive to evidence of planetary apocalypse.
I have found myself thinking that, ideally, it would be nice not to have to sit the kid down, switch off Hey Duggee, and break the news that, sorry, junior, the world is – what’s the right phrase here? – it’s on its arse. Good luck fixing it!
I don’t want to have to have that conversation – not with her and not with her impending little sister either.
Which is why, my pledge for 2020 is to become a sustainable parent – and human.
I plan to double down on lights going out and TVs going off - my partner will be delighted. I will bring my car use close to zero. We live just a mile from the hospital where number two will arrive. Possibly we could walk there when the contractions start, I’ve suggested. The idea, inexplicably, appears not to be flying. It’s in the ‘maybe’ pile for now.
Other stuff? No plastic toys, more hand-me-down clothes (bean juice stains are the new black etc etc), and a bash – send your wishes and prayers – at using non-disposable nappies. We’re disconnecting the dishwasher and vowing to food shop local. This year’s holiday will be in the UK and reached by train. Apologies in advance to anyone sharing the carriage.
None of these, I accept, are hugely life-altering – the nappies excepted, perhaps. But you do your bit, I think. You make changes where you can succeed; and when those changes become routine, you go on and make more. Evolution lasts longer than revolution.
And, of course, if it all gets difficult, I’ll just think of all the good it’s doing my pocket. I mean, the planet.
