Baby steps

I'm a great believer in taking a bit by bit approach to things. Yes our planet may be in crisis, and I don't say that lightly, but life has taught me that is you try to do too much too quickly you will often fail. It's a bit like a crash diet, you can cut everything out and lose weight very fast, or take a more considered approach and let yourself have little bits of 'bad', lose weight a bit more slowly, but lose it in a maintainable way, a way that becomes a permanent change in lifestyle rather than a 'crash and burn' approach.

I think this is particularly important as my nature generally errs towards the 'I want to get everything done yesterday' mentality, so I need to slow myself down, and remind myself that baby steps will get you to your destination, and sometimes you can get there in much better shape, or spot important details along the way that help you to do things a better way.

So, yes we need to move towards a greener, more sustainable way of living, yes we need to clean up our planet and make sure we give our children a future, and yes we are running out of time and need to act NOW. But we can make big changes relatively quickly by taking baby steps, sharing the ideas we come across that work well in our lives and focusing on the positive of every little move make in cutting our consumption and moving towards sustainability.

A good example for me is reusable nappies; many people are put off by the thought of the work involved. But you could substitute just one disposable a day as a start and when that's working, try two... baby steps. Another is meat consumption - there are very few of us who would succeed in going vegan immediately, but if everyone ate less meat it would make a huge difference. So more realistic for most of us is to try reducing our meat consumption by one meal a month, then two, then maybe try a meat-free meal a week.

This is the thinking behind the series of features I am writing for YachtsandYachting.com right now... Take one step, then think what your next step might be. By taking baby steps each day, week, month then by the end of the year you will be greener.

Small steps will get us there, so don't be put off by the enormity of the task and take heart in every bit you do.

Just a few of our baby steps...

1. Reusable nappies and wipes (currently 99% of the time)
2. Homemade soup
3. Loose leaf tea
4. Homemade bread
5. Soap substituted for hand and face wash, shampoo and shaving
6. Food as much organic and local as possible
7. Organic beef and lamb direct from local farm
8. Organic milk direct from our local dairy using reusable glass bottles
9. Fruit and veg as much as we can bought loose without using plastic bags
10. Toilet roll and tissues bought in bulk without plastic wrapping
11. Clothing - minimising purchases and trying to buy natural fibres
12. Reusable water bottles, coffee cups and cutlery for out and about

A quote from Jane Goodall's film 'Mother Earth' sums it up really well I feel:‘I’m not alone in saying we have a window of time, a window to start changing the direction, but it depends on changing attitudes and if we could just get a critical mass of us who start to think about the consequences of the little choices we make each day, what we buy, what we wear, what we eat...’

The point is to keep chipping away at your plastic use, at your consumption and move gradually towards sustainable habits - every little counts, just as every biscuit you don't eat will help your weight loss.

Please don't be put off by the enormity of the task, together we CAN make a difference.