Last Updated on 18/07/2022

We have just experienced the wettest January in England since 1766. And February seems to be equally atrocious. I think the depressing reality is that we will be experiencing a lot more of this freak weather over the coming years and decades (and beyond!) What have we done to deserve this?

The most respected climate scientists must all be thinking ‘we told you so’. All the previous talk of likely climate change is now being physically shown to be real. And things are likely to get worse even if we stop acting in such a harmful way to our planet – which is difficult to see happening.

The problem is that there has yet to be a concerted global political effort to challenge the status quo i.e. the perceived wisdom that states that economic growth, never mind the resources needed, is vital. As the world population continues to grow there will inevitably be a need for economies to develop and grow. But we think that we have to start using our collective brain power to examine how to slow down the crazy global system that is eating up the Earth’s finite resources. Something has to give.

But we cannot assume that our governments will lead the way. Its down to the individual citizen and organisations to take a stance and force the politicians to wake up. GreenBuying.co.uk in its tiny way is about shifting peoples perceptions away from thinking that buying recycled products or products with a smaller carbon footprint have to be more expensive or be of an inferior quality. That is not true if you consider the whole life cost of procurement, including disposal cost and resale values. And the cost to the planet must surely be factored into this! Purely thinking about unit prices will not help anyone in the long term.

To be clear, we don’t pretend that buying eco friendly products is in itself going to stop all the floods and freak weather events. Nor do we believe that buying anything is perfectly eco-friendly. But if everyone changed their purchasing habits and took many other steps besides to consider their environmental impact then something fundamentally positive would happen, for the good of all. Small steps sadly won’t stop the trends but GreenBuying.co.uk will continue to consider ways to support organisations to improve their green credentials. We really cannot see an alternative.

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