It is no big secret that climate change and global warming is a thing. There is no avoiding it.

Anyone who has been paying attention to the weather over the past 12 months will have no doubt said to someone else, “what is going on with the weather?!” We have had snow in April (any snow in England is a cause for concern!) and thirty-degree heatwaves in September, and that is just the tip of a (quickly melting) iceberg.

Now, I don’t want to rant on and turn this article in to a Ted Talk, but I feel that the world still seems to be skirting around the issue and not taking on the big worries facing our planet.

So I guess the question is; what can we do? Well, personally, I have been trying to “go green” for a while now and I am hoping my small successes can make an impact.

In fact, if everyone made small successes, imagine the size of the collective change we could all make.

So what have I done?

I have an allotment. Yes, I am one of those people. I am 33 and I have an allotment – judge away! But I have found that growing your own vegetables is very rewarding in many ways.

It saves a bit of money – I now have more kale and onions than any human being could ever eat, but it saves me buying a bag full of them for a couple of quid each week.

There are also the health benefits that come with it. A quick potter around the allotment and you’ll be surprised how much you move around.

It is also quite relaxing how much your brain turns off from the worries and woes of everyday life when you can just enjoy the weather and get some dirty fingers!

I recycle…a lot! This is something I am particularly proud of. I do make a conscious effort to avoid using plastic wherever possible. If I can buy produce and put it in a paper bag, or one I have brought myself, then I am going to do it.

Anything I purchase will always be recycled; cardboard, hard plastic, cans, glass, you name it – if I can recycle it, I will.

In fact our general rubbish bin goes out about once a month, and even then it might only have one bag in there.

I’ve also tried to go vegetarian.

This was a tough one. I have been a meat eater for a long time and to make the change was not easy, but my partner and I made the decision and after a while it becomes second nature.

I’ve grown to like tofu and the various “meat substitutes”on the high street and, while I am sure this doesn’t make the biggest difference, it makes a difference for me.

Cooking from scratch and using as many vegetables as possible has made a considerable difference health-wise and it’s a lot easier than you think.

However, having said that, I haven’t managed to give up meat entirely. I do treat myself to a bacon sarnie every now and then, and I can never give up on a good steak.

But overall, I would say I am down a good 90% in terms of meat eating, and any meat we do have is sourced responsibly from a local butcher and never from the supermarket.

However, I must admit, my actions are probably a tiny drop in a very large ocean. So I thought to myself, what else can I do on a bigger scale to make a bigger difference? This is where we at Trident have stepped up to the mark.

While Trident Fire Compliance might be a very small company with a few employees and (in the grand scheme of things) a relatively small carbon footprint, it doesn’t mean that we can’t make the decision to do better and proactively improve the situation.

Now, as a small business, there isn’t much we can practically do in terms of complex changes to the business to make eco-friendly changes.

Not every company can afford to put all of their employees in electric cars, and working across the UK means that cycling to our clients isn’t going to be an option – although we would certainly be the fittest company in the UK!

Instead, we can work with partners who are going to make social and environmental benefits around the world.

This is why we are partnering with JUST ONE Tree, a non-profit organisation that works with local communities in some of the most bio-diverse places on the planet and teaches them to increase their forest and woodland areas and protect them for future generations.

Their aim is to take donations and use them to plant trees all around the world to help reforest and rewild places which have been decimated by human ignorance and then protect them from that ignorance so that these areas are never cut down again.

This is why Trident have decided to donate 1% of profits every year to Just One Tree so they can continue to improve the world we live in, make a positive social and environmental change, and expand their influence to other countries around the world which need help.

Our aim, by making this donation, is to do our bit for making an environmental and social change in the world. This donation will help offset our carbon footprint every year (and even make our company carbon negative) and hopefully help inspire our clients and other small businesses like ours to do the same and make a small change which will result in a big impact.

Find out more about JUST ONE Tree: https://www.justonetree.life