Tom Beckett

Tom Beckett - Born 1980, Bicester, Oxfordshire

As the creator of the NetPositiveLifeApp, I’ve gone nearly all out on my life plan – check it out here.  I had learnt about most of the solutions and had started to take some actions before I pulled together this application, but the thing it’s meant for me, is to really understand the cumulative impact of decisions.  It’s also meant I’ve made decisions since creating the app, with my wife on the basis of tangible and measurable impact.

We had already cut down on meat eating before I started this whole process, but I didn’t understand the impact of diary until I had done the analysis.  I then have had to make some difficult choices about my food, not least because I suffer from an auto-immune disease, and it actually makes a different to eat non-diary milk and to eat a lot of greens.  I now order meat from those culling deer or running a rewilding estate.  This has saved a decent amount of my impact on food, especially on my impact on nature.

I’ve cycled a bike for years and have taken most of my short journeys by bike – I even used to have a trailer to drop the kids off at nursery and latterly school.  I honestly find it liberating.  I don’t take flights inter-Europe or in the country, as I know the impact that brings, but sometimes I need to travel internationally for work, but the business takes care of those emissions.  For a long time my wife and I shared an ultra low emissions carbon diesel car.  We both commuted on public transport or for me, a bike, but I often felt bad about driving places. I felt like a hypocrite in caring about the environment and driving a diesel car, but when you have kids a car is super helpful – my wife certainly wouldn’t have gone without it.   We have been really lucky to save up for a second hand electric car now.  We really love it – it saves us quite a bit of money on fuel as we’re able to charge it at home and of course it doesn’t have any guilt factor on travel.

The home we live it has undergone a full refit.  When we moved in we installed solar.  Honestly I was pretty disappointed to find out later that it didn’t have a massive impact on our carbon footprint.  Of course it’s the gas being burnt at home for our heating that brings the impact.  After many years of having a gas boiler, we have finally replaced it with a heat pump.  My wife was really unsettled about this move and I was a bit sceptical and nervous as well.  We had to block up our chimney moving the gas fire to electric, add tonnes of insulation in the loft, and had to find a place for the heat pump.  But now it’s installed it’s amazing.  We’re using the Octopus Cosy Homes tariff, and when used in conjunction with the solar panels, we are saving 40% on our bills across the year – and we’re all electric!  (well – nearly – I still need to move over the gas cooker!).

Money was a discovery area for me during my exploration.  I have now moved over my pension to one without any exposure to oil and gas, and arms, and have made some investments through Abundance Investments, which makes me feel great.  This amazingly results in me having a net positive impact through my money, as my investments are making a better world :).

The NetPositiveLifeApp has helped me rationalise my decisions.  I work for the environment in my day job, and I have experienced a lot of anxiety and grief about the nature and climate challenge.  What having a plan has made me realise is that I can take control of how impact the world, and it gives me a chance to see what the choices I make actually affect that impact.  Ultimately, I know now that I am doing everything in my own life, and that I am genuinely a Cool Human; someone who is cooling the earth and making it nature rich, not destroying it.  That makes me feel wonderful.  I would say about 80% of my eco anxiety has been sublimated through this plan.  I have created this for free so others can experience the same thing.  I hope you find your peace through this as I certainly have!