C-: Could do Better

The road to true sustainable development really depends on two things; what we build (the engineering challenge) and how we behave. It is this second one that many of us struggle with. Last week the Scottish Government published its report on the ten key behavioural areas that should be addressed. There is a wealth of data in the report and it can be accessed through this link.  http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2013/10/3267. The behaviours cover four topics, energy, transport, food and waste. A few of the statistics I picked out were:

- 47% of people in Scotland monitor or, in simply keep an eye on their home energy use which means that over half of us don't.

- only 66% of homes with cavity walls have actually insulated them and only 45% of lofts have adequate insulation in them. 

- less than a quarter of Scots turn off heating on unused rooms.

- 57% never turn the TV fully off overnight. 

- around 30% either walk, cycle or use public transport to get to work. That proportion has stayed pretty constant at that level over the years. 

These society level statistics are all very interesting but what really matters is what we do as individuals. So I decided to do a little thought experiment. I scored my personal performance on each of the ten behaviours out of ten giving me a theoretical maximum of 100. I scored 48. What was interesting was that on a few areas I scored well, we do, for example, keep our thermostat low, but on other areas I was hopeless. I scored myself 0 out of 10 on healthy eating, my love of curry and chips beats apples and carrots I'm afraid. I don't do well about dependence on the car but I have significantly improved my MPG by both car choice and less speed. 

I shared this with a group of leaders in the Scottish public sector and two things emerged. Firstly, we all recognise that we aren't perfect and our individual performance is mixed. Secondly, what counts is gradual and incremental improvement. So my challenge is to get 48 up to, say 60 in the next year. If we aim for perfection we might as well give up but we can all aim to get better.