Climate chats

Over the last few months the group have been chatting about how to become more sustainable and keep down their costs.

This led to the group coming up with some great ideas that they implemented in the new year.

The group suggested:

• Swapping from bottled water to reusable jugs and cups. Most community spaces have a drinking water tap that you can use to refill your water jugs.

• Bringing in reusable mugs/travel cups and asking the café to fill these instead of using single-use paper cups that get thrown away after the session. The group use a kettle and hot water flask. Once a month we stock up on tea, coffee, sugar etc. and a group member brings in fresh milk each meeting. This means we’re not wasting takeaway cups and it saves our group money each meeting.

“Making greener changes to the group like buying plastic reusable cups, cutlery, and refreshments in bulk has saved the group so much money and helped us become much more sustainable”

— Group member

We have been having lots of climate chats about how we travel to the group and who might be able to car share or use public transport to be able to be more eco-friendly. We also chatted about how we cook and discussed air fryers and slow cookers and how these can be cheaper and more energy efficient ways of cooking.

The group helped Outside the Box create some climate resources about what they had learned. You can view these here: https://otbds.org/projects/climate-chat/.

The group also helped with Arabic translations so that they can share their learning with other New Scots and facilitate more climate conversations.

This work is funded the Scottish Government's Climate Engagement Fund and The Robertson Trust.