Set it and forget it

One-time eco actions that pay long dividends

As I get older, I like New Year’s Eve less and less (this year I celebrated in my preferred manner: getting in one REM cycle before midnight), but I do love the energy of a new year. Something about the long darkness, the quiet after frantic holiday activity, the sense of a fresh start. I love the process of reorientation: Where am I? Where do I want to be? How might I get there? Who might come along or be there already?

There’s a lot of pressure this time of year — to police your body, edit your home, overhaul your finances, dream up new milestones, replace all your bad habits with good ones. I’m not here to add to that pressure by adding “slow anthropogenic global heating and catastrophic biodiversity loss” to that list. (Unless you are a petro-baron or a political leader, that is.)

But the new year is a good time for me to reflect, to ask the questions I wrote about last year, and I encourage you to try it as well. Find a dark, quiet time, light a candle, and give yourself at least half an hour to write and process and brainstorm. (Reminder: I have a worksheet, if you are a fellow worksheet person.)

This is a time of year when we think a lot about our habits and routines, and I truly love that stuff, but if you feel a jolt of New Year’s energy, may I suggest another plan: first channel it into a one-time accomplishment that will continue to pay green dividends down the road when your priorities may lie elsewhere.

Happily, unlike, say, fitness, which requires annoyingly constant maintenance, there are eco things we can do that are set it and forget it. Some of these take one minute, others are more involved, but all of them have concrete benefits for people and the planet.

A few suggestions, ranked from easiest to more involved:

• Support climate journalism. Journalists play a vital role in keeping government and corporations accountable, spotlighting changemakers, and raising public consciousness around social and environmental issues. Buying a subscription to outlets like the National Observer, The Narwhal, or The Tyee means supporting this essential work (and is tax-deductible in Canada). The Observer’s Chris Hatch has the best weekly climate news and analysis email I know of, and while you can receive it for free, if no one funds it, it won’t exist.

• Set up recurring donations to a charity or activist group. I have had some monthly charitable deductions running for almost a decade, and it is painless for me and effective for the organizations. They can plan better (and thus likely perform better) if they can count on a regular income stream. You may not want to do all your giving this way, but try setting up a couple core donations and know that you’ll be doing good on autopilot. (More on charitable giving, with some suggestions, here.)

• Sign up for a community supported agriculture (CSA) program. If you like going to the farmers’ market but find it hard to prioritize, buying a CSA share will give you a reason to show up every week and make your eating maximally seasonal. (Some programs also deliver.) CSA programs are essentially a farm subscription you pay for upfront, which allows farmers to pay the early season bills. If you can support a regenerative or organic farm, all the better. If you love local blooms, you can also buy CSAs from local flower farmers. (It makes a great gift!)

• Join a grocery co-op. Not everyone will have this option, but if you do, it’s a great way to avoid giving more money to billionaires and bad actors, support more local and ethical producers, and keep tax dollars in your community. Plus, co-ops are usually conscientious about waste reduction and excellent community hubs. I love Karma Co-op, and though I only do some of my shopping there, I know there are trickle-down benefits every time I do. (Read more about the mess of our grocery system here.)

• Switch your bank and/or investments. I’ve written in depth about this (read about banking here and investments here), but it’s more important than ever. Big energy companies prioritize dividends over planetary boundaries, and banks fund the expansion of fossil fuels that is cancelling our future. So far, I haven’t switched my basic chequing bank, because it carries a relatively small balance and I’m averse to fees, but as Matthew Desmond’s truly excellent Poverty, by America illuminates, there are no free transactions, just fees shifted to low-income folks charged high interest and large overdraft fees that make it harder to escape poverty. So this is where I’m going to spend my new year’s resolve. (I’m leaning to a Meridian High Interest Savings Account to start, and then I’ll add Everyday Chequing if all goes well.)

• Renovate or electrify your home. If you’re a homeowner, especially of an older house, you may be able to significantly reduce your footprint with a few changes, and the government will subsidize them. The first step is to book an EnerGuide evaluation to see which interventions would be useful for you. The feds will refund the $600 evaluation fee if you do a retrofit, plus kick in other rebates and the government offers 10-year interest-free renovation loans. In Ontario right now, there’s $6,500 for heat pumps, including hybrid heat pumps that work with gas furnaces (which run $6,500–$8,500) if your furnace is under 10 years old. Most of the time your house will be heated and cooled by the magic of heat pump alone, reducing costs and emissions in the long run. If you’re not ready for a bigger retrofit, consider something smaller, like swapping your gas stove for an induction model.

You may have other ideas for one-time actions that deliver eco action on autopilot: please do share them in the comments! And if you’re choosing any of these suggestions to commit to, let us know what you’re tackling.

This November-December, our beloved cat got diabetes, then almost died, and is still pretty deep in chronic illness. This absolutely devastated my nervous system: I had no appetite, I had many sleepless nights, my brain was a spirograph of anxiety. I had to step back from some things just to stabilize myself. This helped (along with indispensable support from my best beloveds and medical professionals), and our family is currently more stable. I share this to say, That’s just real life. Sometimes our worlds contract; sometimes the personal will eclipse our bigger aims. But even in the worst of it, I could be confident that some of my default settings meant I was still having a positive impact.

So often, the structure of our society means the default is damaging. But we have the power to change that with one-time choices, to let the passive be positive, to achieve more while doing less.

I’m not sure what my new eco efforts will look like this year — but I’m dreaming of more collaboration, so reach out if you have an idea I might be able to help you achieve. For now, I’m staying open, still asking questions and staying receptive to the answers.

xo

Jen

Five Minutes for Planet is written by me, Jen Knoch, and edited by Crissy Boylan. Opening photo by Bookblock on Unsplash.