Many of us first heard this phrase from the British track cycling team. Basically, the accumulation of small changes accumulate to make major impacts for example:
The 2011 Census estimated that there are 112,822 households (with at least one usual resident) in Walsall. This is an increase of 6,500, or 6.4% since 2001. The population stands at 288,700 (2023)
As previously discussed, the average UK person produces over 5 tonnes of CO₂ per year.
If we could cut down 1% per day Walsall alone would save an astounding 4,429 tonnes per year.
"If we could cut down just 1% per day Walsall alone would save 4,429 tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere per year."
Small changes together
make a big difference
The Maths Bit
•An electric kettle boiling 1 litre of water, produces 70g of CO₂.
•The average household boils a kettle 3 times per day.
•If a single resident cut the use to 2 times a day they would save 25.55Kg of CO₂ per year
• If every household in Walsall reduced this to two times a day we would save:
•70g per day x 365 days per year x 107,822 homes =
•2754852100g per year or
•2755 tonnes of or 6.88 million miles driven by an average car, enough to drive around the world 277 times.
Examples of how small changes make a big difference
424Kg does not seem like much over a year but when you see what it equates to for the whole of Walsall then it makes sense. These changes are easily to adopt.
The added bonus is by adopting these small changes we can also save money on energy – who doesn’t want that.
We can also do other things to make a difference such as:
Plant a tree – A fully mature tree removes over 20Kg of CO2 per year and produces clean oxygen for 4 people every day. Source – saytrees.org
Update technology less often – An apple iPhone produces 64Kg of CO2 during its manufacturing process.
45,666
Tonnes