Habit tweaks to save our home

Habit tweaks to save our home – Santa’s home just reached a record temperature high of 38°C. How much longer can he and his reindeers live there? There’s no point thinking of moving to the South Pole because a crucial Antarctic ice shelf could fail within five years. And it’s not any better in other places with major floods in Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand and droughts in Kenya, Iran and Afghanistan. Our home is warning us of what we’re in store for.

With all this going on, this Christmas, the greatest gift we can give ourselves, our family and friends is to tweak our habits. So, this month we give you a sneak peek into our upcoming report that shows that making small changes – “tweaks” – to our habits can mean massive emissions savings and also in many cases water savings.

Check out what tweaks you can make in flying, social media and shopping online among others. We also take a look at how Hong Kong can stop choking on F&B plastic waste and whether the MTR will sink like the polar express.

It’s easy to feel low these days. The pandemic is dragging on, Omicron is spreading (think it’s cosmic Santa telling us we’ve been bad?) and we had a lacklustre COP26. But it’s not the time to wallow because the clock is ticking (2030 deadline) and there are too many obstacles/people blocking us from moving forward, the latest being the US Democratic Senator Joe Manchin blocking the Build Back Better Act. So, if we are going to even try to stay below 2°C, we need to take our climate future into our own hands as much as we can.

Just from tweaking habits across 8 areas in life, we can save 2GtCO2e every year, which is the equivalent of the 2015 GHG emissions of Japan & South Korea, combined. The report is by no means exhaustive and while we have used science-based evidence there are still data gaps (that should be filled) and so we have had to make logical estimates. But without anything more formal, the report can be used as a loose guide. See more info on the report here.

Flying is one of the areas where tweaks can have big savings. Having not been able to really fly with the pandemic, it has given the world a chance to examine our flying habits. Without any meaningful ways to decarbonise, aviation is a carbon intensive industry and will remain so.

Already contributing 3.5% to global warming, let’s not just pile into planes like we used to or did we learn nothing these last two years? Cutting one short-haul flight a year saves 0.2 tonnes of CO2, that just from Hong Kong to Taipei.

Also, thanks to the pandemic, many of us have spent more time online. But tis the season to be worried about our online habits and cultivate a new sustainable digital lifestyle. Social media is sucking up not only our time but also energy and water resources. Social media CO2 emissions are equivalent to launching 2,389 rockets a day for a year.

By cutting social media use by one hour a day for a year, you can save between 9 – 21kg of GHG emissions, which is equivalent to charging your smartphone about 1,100 to 2,700 times. Another tip – switch to WiFi as using mobile data consumes 2x more energy.

As we build that sustainable digital lifestyle, we also need to include online shopping. It’s so easy to hit that ‘buy’ button but we’re not paying the full cost with high hidden costs from the actual package to delivery that the climate pays for. More than 8.8 million tonnes of paper & plastic packaging were consumed by China’s express delivery industry in 2018, enough to fill HK’s TKO landfill.

And our habits of opting for speed delivery and endless returns are exacerbating things. But by cutting just one return a month for a year is like driving 150km, saving 46kg of CO2e.

Food is another area where tweaks can have big savings. In our upcoming report, we look at food choice and wastage but with ADMCF’s research on Hong Kong’s F&B waste complete, its Helga Vanthournout was kind enough to share key findings – you’ll just have to wait for our report early next year to see what tweaks you can do with food.

In 2019, HK used & discarded more single-use takeout items than anywhere in the region, a staggering 3.9 billion. The good news is there are alternatives available of which recycling and BYO show the most promise. Vanthournout explains why and shares her three wishes for the new year.

The sinking Polar Express may not be such an issue if Santa does move but closer to home, it is going to be a huge issue if the MTR sinks. As seen in New York and Zhengzhou, railways are vulnerable to climate impacts. Is MTR prepared for this? Has it thought about building coastal resilience? We propose these questions and more to MTR.

After all, a functioning public rail transportation system is important for reducing emissions, we can’t swap a car trip for taking the train if there is no train.

We hope this sneak peek into habit tweaks has whet your appetite for our report coming out early next year. And some goods news is that there is still time for us to change to help the climate but we need to change now. Instead of a 1.5°C – 2°C temperature rise by 2100 we are on track for 2.4-2.7°C in the best case. And staying below 2°C matters. A third World War may be unimaginable but the death toll from air pollution alone if our world warms by 2°C instead of 1.5°C is estimated at 150 million people – twice the number of those who perished in World War II.

And on that mostly merry note, happy holidays from the CWR team and get ready to tweak yourself in 2022!