Carbon Literacy Action Toolkit

• Moral Fibres - a free, extensive guide to pursuing a greener lifestyle

• Ethical Consumer - a comprehensive source of information and advice on how to shop more sustainably. A subscription costs £34.50/year, but the free version is still helpful.

• Centre for Alternative Technology Free Information Service - free, independent and impartial advice on a wide array of topics relating to sustainability and sustainable living: renewable energy, green building and renovation, water and sewage treatment, organic growing, and more

Further Learning

• Check out the range of Sustainability courses and events offered through Rise - expand your knowledge and build up those Rise points!
• Project Drawdown - billed as ‘the world’s leading resource for climate solutions’, Drawdown provides a comprehensive, cross-sectoral map of the solutions needed to resolve the climate crisis.
• UN CC:Learn - a range of free online courses from the One UN Climate Change Learning Partnership, covering everything from climate adaptation, to sustainable diets, to climate change and Human Rights.
• Climate Reframe - a resource amplifying BAME voices in the UK environmental movement. This is a great way to explore a cross section of the thinkers, activists, and organisations taking action in the UK right now.
• Climate Just -  a free webtool for public service providers designed to: identify who is vulnerable to climate change and fuel poverty and why; highlight neighbourhoods where climate disadvantage is highest; and explain the factors involved and help you decide what actions to take.
• People and Planet University League Table - a comprehensive table of UK universities ranked by environmental and ethical performance. Manchester Met is currently third, and we have been in the top three for 10 years running.
• The University of Gloucestershire has created an Anti-greenwashing Toolkit to help students in higher education assess how well sustainability is integrated into their courses.

Data Sources

• Carbon Brief - a UK-based website covering the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy
• Climate Action Tracker - a project tracking government climate action and measuring it against the Paris Agreement’s objectives
• Climate Watch Data - a wealth of data on countries’ carbon footprints, historical emissions, and carbon reduction commitments, broken down by sector. This was a key source for the Carbon Literacy training section on international carbon footprints.
• ND-GAIN Country Index - this is our source for countries’ vulnerability scores, the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative. The website allows users to examine each country’s vulnerability profile, as well as explore adaptation initiatives across the globe.

Apps

• Sustained / Impact Score - scan products’ barcodes to see how they score against various environmental criteria. The apps also suggest more climate-friendly alternatives.
• MeatFreed - a community sharing recipes and tips for a plant-based diet. Sign up and you’ll get discounts on vegetarian and vegan food in loads of restaurants around Manchester.
• Too Good to Go - helps users reduce food waste through the purchase of ‘magic bags’, surprise selections of unsold food from various outlets for a fraction of the price.
• Karma - like Too Good to Go, except you can actually see the food that is available (though at the time of writing, TGTG has more options around Manchester)
• Olio - reduce food waste by exchanging unused items with your neighbours!
• Kitche - allows you to use up leftover food by providing recipes based on what you have at home
• NoWaste / Nosh - help users reduce food waste by organising and tracking the food they buy and creating meal plans based around what they have in and when things are set to expire.

Websites

• Eat the Seasons - by eating food when it’s in season, we can reduce the amount of energy (and therefore emissions) needed to grow, transport, and conserve it. This website will tell you what’s in season when, and offer recipes based on that.
• Love Food Hate Waste - a campaign aiming to raise awareness of food waste. The website provides tips on how to cut your waster as well as recipes on how to turn leftovers into delicious meals.
• The Flexitarian - tips and recipes for a low carbon diet
• Sow the City - a Manchester-based social enterprise with a mission to empower communities to grow and live sustainably

• 50+ Women’s Ethical Clothing Brands for 2023
• Love Your Clothes - a website providing practical tips on how you can prolong the life span of your clothes
• Upcycle That and Freecycle are great resources for exchanging second-hand clothes.
• Aja Barber is a writer, stylist and consultant whose work deals with the intersections of sustainability and the fashion landscape. Her book Consumed  (available in the Man Met library) dissects the historical racism and inequality of the textile industry, and teaches us how to be more ethical consumers of fashion. Read Aja’s Six Tips for Enjoying Fashion and Doing Less Harm here.

Saving Energy

The Carbon Literacy training touched upon various household energy saving behaviours; the resources below go into more detail and advise practical steps forward if you’d like to make changes in this area.

Remember! Conserving household energy is an area where saving carbon and saving money often (but not always) happily coincide, but this is by no means the case for all carbon-reducing measures. Keep in mind that if you save money by conserving energy but then spend what you saved on something carbon-intensive (e.g. a flight), you haven’t really saved any carbon.

• Quick Tips to Save Energy - from the Energy Saving Trust
• Energy Saving Tips from MoneySavingExpert.com 

Saving Water

United Utilities provides water in the North West of England. Use their water savings calculator to get access to ‘quick wins’ and free products to help you save water. Emphasis on ‘free’.

• Travel Better Package - tools and guidance to help those in the FHE sector reduce air travel
• Sustrans - charity promoting walking and cycling. Their website contains maps of the National Cycle Network as well as hints and tips for how to incorporate more cycling and walking into our daily lives.
• The Man in Seat 61 - useful guide on how to travel by train in Europe
• BlaBlaCar - travel cheaply and efficiently by carpooling with those going to the same destination

Stories

As mentioned in the Carbon Literacy training, stories about real people’s experiences of climate change can bring facts and statistics to life, and can be a powerful way of engaging others. If you want to use this communication strategy, but are stuck for ideas, check out the resources below.

In the UK

• Climate Action in Hulme: From the Ground Up by Len Grant: an illustrated e-book looking at the various local climate initiatives happening in Hulme - right on our doorstep! And wouldn’t you know it, Manchester Met is featured (twice!).
• Bristol Climate Action Stories: a little further afield, but a great resource looking at the diverse ways normal people in the UK are responding to the climate crisis - from Bristol Climate Hub.

Around the World

• Water Aid Climate Stories: a visually engaging look at how climate change is impacting real people in Malawi, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Niger. Notice how facts and figures are interspersed throughout the stories; the human element makes these statistics ‘real’.
• World Bank Climate Stories: a repository of articles and videos showcasing climate action stories from around the world

Practical Storytelling/Communication Tools

• Six Ways to Change Hearts and Minds about Climate Change: a useful booklet produced by Frameworks Institute and On Road Media. This informed the communications section of Man Met’s Carbon Literacy training, and complements the communication strategies we spoke about in module 4.
• Oxfam Education Climate Story Activity Worksheet: various climate story-based activity ideas for young learners. See the ‘find out more’ section for links to additional Oxfam resources.
• Stories that Make a Difference: Climate Narratives for a New World: a write-up of a forum designed to engage and inspire ideas on how best to communicate climate change, held on May 24, 2019 at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. This one’s a bit dense, but a very interesting read if you’d like to delve deeper into effective climate change communication.

Write to Your MP

Writing to your MP can be a powerful way to show politicians that the public is concerned about climate change and to ensure it is on the agenda in parliament. The more people raise a particular issue with their MP, the harder it is for them to ignore. The websites below provide guidance for those who may wish to take action in this way.

• The Climate Coalition has put together a useful template that you can modify to demand your MP advocate for climate action in parliament.
• Write to Them - a tool you can use to create and send communications to your MP. Also contains a very useful FAQ section (click ‘help’ towards the bottom of the page).
• They Work for You - this site helps you find and write to your MP, as well as showing you how that person has voted in the past on various issues. The site also aims to put parliamentary decisions and legislature into terms we can all understand.

Environmentalism grounded in religion is common. Exploring climate change through your own faith can be a productive pathway towards action, and invoking faith-based environmentalism can be a powerful way to appeal to people’s values when engaging with and influencing them on climate. Below are some suggested faith-specific websites, as well as some tools people of certain faiths may find helpful. Neither of these lists is exhaustive, but the organisations and resources below should serve as a jumping off point for further exploration.

Faith-based Environmental Organisations

• Faith for the Climate: an interfaith network supporting religious communities’ work on climate change
• One Earth Sangha: a Buddhist environmental group promoting ‘EcoDharma
• SGI-UK and Climate Change: read about what Soka Gakkai International (SGI) UK, one of the world’s largest community-based Buddhist associations, is doing with regard to climate change.
• Arocha: tools and resources to help you engage your church in climate action
• Church of England Environment Programme
• Green Christian
• Young Christian Climate Network
• Hindu Climate Action
• Green Muslims: check out their toolkit and calendar for tips on having a green Ramadan
• Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences (IFEES)
• EcoSikh UK
• Ecosynagogue
• Jewish Climate Action Network

Practical Tools and Reading Suggestions

• 5 Buddhist Practices to Help Tackle Climate Change
• Green scripture from the Christian Bible
• Hindu Declaration on Climate Change
• Green scripture from the Quran
• A Muslim’s Guide to Climate Change: produced by Easton Jamia Masjid Mosque
• The Climate Crisis: A Humanitarian and a Jewish Issue: publication from World Jewish Relief

• How climate-friendly is your bank? Visit bank.green to check if your bank is making environmentally damaging investments and to find a greener alternative if it is.
• Check out Moral Fibres’ guide to the Best Ethical Banks, Current Accounts, Credit Cards & More
• Top 5 Ethical Credit Cards in 2023
• Is your pension fund investing in fossil fuels? If you’re a student, you may not have a pension yet, but this is something to keep in mind as your life and career progress, particularly if you’re about to graduate and enter the world of work. Make My Money Matter is a campaign helping people demand that their money not be invested in harmful practices, and their website is a great resource for taking action and understanding the financial sector’s relation to climate change.

• The Climate Psychology Alliance is a community of therapeutic practitioners and researchers helping others attend to the psychology and emotions of the climate crisis. Their website offers a list of useful resources to help people cope with eco anxiety, and they hold periodic online ‘Climate Cafes’: safe spaces where fears and uncertainties around the climate crisis can be expressed.
• The Resilience Project is a UK initiative helping young people build resilience in the face of eco-anxiety.
• Feeling empowered to take action can be an effective way to deal with climate anxiety. Force of Nature helps young people turn anxiety into action through learning programmes and training opportunities. Their community of youth consultants act as climate advisors to business leaders, and their climate cafes provide spaces to work through the distress many of us feel around climate change. Check them out on Rise.
• Clover Hogan is an activist and researcher into eco anxiety. Her TED Talk and podcast may be of help if you are feeling overwhelmed by it all.

It is collective action that will bring about carbon reduction at the scale we need, and for many of us, the places we work are the biggest collectives through which we can act. By encouraging the business or organisation you work for to reduce its emissions, you can exponentially increase your own positive impact on the climate.

• Climate Solutions at Work is a how-to guide put together by Drawdown Labs, helping employees assess their organisations’ approach to climate and to promote and implement solutions.