Sarah Sharma

Sarah Sharma - Born 1975, Birmingham

I’m Sarah.  I’m a Solicitor working in Birmingham, and live with my family.  I came across the NetPositiveLifeApp through my workplace, who decided to work with Better Century on their Transition Plan.  I decided if my work was taking it seriously, I probably should as well.  Check out my NetPositiveLife plan here.

I’m super busy, and haven’t been very eco-conscious so I found this really interesting.  We are a vegetarian family, we really don’t eat much dairy, so found those bits really easy, which seems to make all the difference to our impact on nature.  At home we have decided to make some energy efficiencies through lightbulbs, and draught proofing.  My husband also really wants to have solar panels and a battery, so we decided to put that in for next year.  The house is generally pretty efficient already though which is great.  We did look at turning down the boiler, which we managed, so that’s going to save on the bills.  We don’t think we can do a heat pump, but are really pleased with what all those savings meant for us.

Travel is difficult for us.  I mostly travel by train for work, and cycle a lot to get things we need in the house, but we have family in Bangalore, who we look to visit every year.  As a compromise my husband and I talked about cutting down the number of cars we have.  We hardly need two, so we agreed in a few years, we would go to one car, and move to electric.  That would allow us to cut our impact, which is really pleasing.

The one big compromise I had to go for was to buy organic.  It actually pushed us below the carbon impact.  For us, we are happy to pay a bit more to have food that will have less impact on nature and climate, and will be more nutritious.

Although this process has been something I’ve never thought about before, I found it really interesting.  Deep down I think we’re all a bit worried about the nature and climate crisis, and it’s nice to be able to do our bit.