Here at Vet Pursuits, we believe that vets are ideally positioned to contribute to a sustainable future through our holistic understanding of animal health and welfare and ecosystems. We all have a role to play in ensuring a good future for all and as such, we will be sharing some information on other approaches to sustainability which are worth considering.
This section has been borrowed (with permission!) from vet Jen Gale who is responsible for the website www.asustainablelife.co.uk/ which promotes the approach of being imperfectly green!
“If you’re religiously been opening e-mails from me, or you follow me on social media, you will know that last week passed in a blur of (virtual) G&Ts, mix-tapes and stupid bus analogies with the Knackered Mums on (Eco) Tour.
We stopped off at a different exciting (not exciting) destination each day, and there were three suggested eco-actions to complete. The one that was possibly the most mind-boggling in terms of the numbers bandied about is the one I’m about to share with you…”
…DELETE YOUR STORED E-MAILS!
Why?
All of the data that we use online has to live somewhere. And it turns out it lives in massive servers that not only use a massive amount of energy to run, but also get very hot and need to be kept cool (ie be air-conditioned). Which also uses up a shed-load (technical term) of energy.
Currently data centres use 1% of global electricity demand, more than the electricity usage of some countries!
By 2030, electricity usage by data centres could exceed 20% of global demand
So basically, all those e-mails from 2010 sat on our computer and using up energy. So lets delete them.
How?
Little and often is probably the best strategy. You can click the first e-mail and then scroll down a big section to click again and got a ‘wodge’ in one go.
Could you do 50 a day? 100? 500?
Pain in the ass factor
Not massive if you can remember to do a chunk a day for a week or so (depending on how many e-mails you have!)
Impact factor
This is one of those things where little things add up to be big things. Imagine if we ALL did this?!
Are you up for this one?
How many e-mails have you got stored? ‘Fess up!!
For more info from Jen, please go to her website www.asustainablelife.co.uk/