Treepoints monthly challenges: January
Each month, Treepoints’ challenge gives you an easy way to make your daily living more sustainable. Helping you on your journey to a carbon negative lifestyle.
Veganuary for January
The festive season is fast fading, and we’re looking at 2021 stretching out ahead of us. You may be feeling, like us at Treepoints, that the new year is a great time to kickstart those lifestyle changes and start living greener.
For this month’s sustainability challenge, we wanted to shine a spotlight on Veganuary. This is the initiative behind so many of us swapping to a plant-based diet for one month of the year. Since the organization started in 2014, over 1 million people have taken the Veganuary challenge.
Yes, it’s as simple as it sounds: follow a plant-based diet for one month!
One person eating a vegan diet for a month will save on average 124,900 litres of water, 84 square meters of forest and 273kg of CO2 emissions. These days, there are so many delicious recipes out there that eating plant-based does not have to mean any restriction to your diet. Why not use the challenge as an excuse to try new foods, recipes, and flavours.
Why not try the Veganuary Workplace Challenge? Going vegan has proven health benefits including lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and increased energy levels. Getting your whole office involved will provide a good source of motivation to keep it up all month!
Read more: 10 ways to be a greener business this year
For delicious vegan recipe inspiration, we recommend checking out:
This fun, vibrant vegan blog from Brooklynite Isa is one of the most approachable out there, but with a clear sense of moral and ethical reasons behind meat and dairy free cooking. It’s particularly good if you’re on the hunt for vegan bakes and desserts.
Bosh! is the lovechild of Henry Firth and Ian Theasby, the dream team behind is the world’s most-viewed and most-loved plant-based and vegan recipe channel. This one is especially good if you’re new to vegan cooking and looking for a no-frills approach to hearty classics.
Teaching you how to make easy and delicious vegan Indian food. This blog helps vegan newbies to access vegan Asian cooking and all the delicious flavours on offer in an easy, step-by-step way.
There are also loads of helpful apps out there to help you stick to your plant-based goals. We particularly like Happy Cow, which locates vegan restaurants near you. This will help you keep up the vegan lifestyle, and also helps you support vegan and vegetarian restaurants and businesses.
And also Barnivore, which enables you to check whether your alcoholic beverage is vegan or not. Because of brewing processes, you might be surprised to learn that not all drinks are vegan. Make sure you’re not caught out by running your beverage through the Barnivore search directory first.
Aiming for carbon neutral in 2021
Researchers from the University of Oxford have found that switching to a plant-based diet could reduce your carbon footprint by up to 73%. This is a brilliant example of how lifestyle changes can result in less carbon emissions, lowering your individual carbon footprint.
However, sadly lifestyle changes alone will never get us all the way to net carbon neutral. This is because almost every activity in our lives has some kind of carbon emissions associated with it, even with a plant-based diet. For example, the emissions associated with importing the food you eat, as well as packaging them, and then recycling the waste.
In order to reach fully carbon neutral, something that all of us will have to do to reach Net Carbon Neutral by 2050 as a planet, we need more help.
This is where carbon offsetting comes in. Carbon offsetting allows you to balance your emissions by reducing them elsewhere, through supporting carbon reduction projects.
Spread the word
Already carbon offset for yourself? Great, spread the word and make sure your friend and family know how important carbon offsetting is too!
Don’t forget that if you are a Treepoints member, you can earn extra Treepoints for referrals. Just head over to your Account page to find your unique referral code.
Check out our subscription plans at Treepoints. Don’t forget, you don’t have to stop at carbon neutral. If you offset more than you emit, you become net carbon negative, meaning you’re actively having a positive impact on the environment.
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