Festival land

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 travelling around Britain. Now we’re home, but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

Current travel supplements are awash with places to go, things to do, etc, over the summer. I’m not a big festival-goer but in a bid to make it to Brazil we went to Camden Green Fair for dancing (tea dancing in fact!), partying – and some green info. Apart from the obvious, the only way you could tell it wasn’t really Brazil was the serious over-dressing by festival goers. A brave few were in T-shirts but most had raincoats somewhere nearby.

This pic is during the carbon footprint game run by Camden Friends of the Earth. Most people use 10 tonnes of carbon (much more if they fly) during a year. With our various improvements to our house (eg, insulation, solar hot water, Good Energy's renewable electricity supplier) our family gobbles up about 6 tonnes of carbon per year. The problem is that everyone in the UK needs to be using just 2 tonnes - that's either a lot of giving up, or a lot of energy-efficiency innovation.