We are stronger together. When choosing to become part of a nurturing like-minded community, we can gain support and guard against eco-anxiety. One of the biggest barriers to social change is the perception that diverging from social norms will make us outsiders. By choosing to openly declaring our plans and actions, we can help to change social norms and make it easier for others to join us. This is one of the most impactful things we can do.
When enough of us share our eco-friendly progress and opinions, it will create an unstoppable social movement which will supercharge our collective efforts to address the climate and ecological emergency and promote climate justice, thus helping to save lives, reduce inequality, and avoid global ecosystem collapse and mass extinction.
Therefore, to make this happen, it is highly recommended that you choose to publicly declare your progress on social media, as you commit to, start and complete your actions. This will also be a prompt to your community to provide you with relevant support and tips to help you progress and stay motivated. Do declare any actions you have already taken in the past as well as those you are currently progressing, so that the community can see and benefit from the full extent of what you have achieved.
For those who need support with this, read our guide to using social media, which is particularly aimed at social media novices or reluctant / infrequent users.
Tell your “personal eco-progress-story” by posting regular updates on a social media thread. To maximise the benefit to the community we recommend you post your progress on your Facebook timeline to share it with your network (which will help to reach and inspire a wide variety of your contacts).
Click or tap here to reveal the key steps to follow for sharing your “personal eco-progress-story” using Facebook or other social media such as Instagram, LinkedIn, etc or to create a private group with family and friends to support you e.g. on Whatsapp. :
- Post your current or past “personal eco-progress-story” on your timeline.
- To maximise the benefit of your post to others ideally include:
- a brief description of what you did, how it made you feel and any learning points that might be useful to others. Keep it positive. If you have encountered challenges we suggest focusing on how you overcame them, rather than simply sharing problems. You may want to consider sharing a relevant photo to illustrate your commitment, progress or completed action. Alternatively, share a EcoTracker graphic.
- You can share this to Facebook via links on the relevant Actions or Tracker pages. Select “Share to News Feed or Story” from the drop-down menu at the top and tick “News Feed” and “Your Story” at the bottom before completing your post. Alternatively, for platforms other than Facebook, save the graphic to a relevant folder on your device before posting by:
- with a computer and mouse, clicking your mouse right-side button and selecting “save image as” or equivalent. with a phone or tablet, tap and hold on the graphic, then select “download”, “save image” or equivalent. Next open Facebook, create a new post and upload the graphic from your device to your Facebook post. You will need to use this approach if you want to also include a photo in your post (see below) or more than one graphic. One further benefit is you will have a record of your journey on your device as well as on your “Progress thread”.
- You can share this to Facebook via links on the relevant Actions or Tracker pages. Select “Share to News Feed or Story” from the drop-down menu at the top and tick “News Feed” and “Your Story” at the bottom before completing your post. Alternatively, for platforms other than Facebook, save the graphic to a relevant folder on your device before posting by:
- a brief description of what you did, how it made you feel and any learning points that might be useful to others. Keep it positive. If you have encountered challenges we suggest focusing on how you overcame them, rather than simply sharing problems. You may want to consider sharing a relevant photo to illustrate your commitment, progress or completed action. Alternatively, share a EcoTracker graphic.
- The more fun, personalised and engaging your post the better!
- If you prefer not to post EcoTracker graphics, we would be grateful if you could reference EcoTracker in your post so that others might be inspired to start their EcoTracker journey too.
- To maximise the benefit of your post to others ideally include:
The most important thing is that you do share your “personal eco-progress-story“ with others.
If you return to post on the same platform and thread each time, all of your progress will be in one place and it will be easy for others to see and engage with your journey.
To support your community it is also highly recommended that you share tips and interesting news (following a similar method to sharing progress as above), as well as responding to posts from others with supportive comments or likes.
Do you want to make The EcoTracker 2030 Pledge or are you committed to progress a Top Action? Share your commitment with the community using the EcoTracker declaration templates, as part of your “personal eco-progress-story”:
- Make The EcoTracker 2030 Pledge
- Reduce my home energy use
- Get renewable electricity
- Get low carbon heating
- Walk, cycle, use public transport and reduce driving
- Eco-friendly driving
- Eco-friendly travel (reduce / avoid flying)
- Reduce food waste
- Eat an eco-friendly diet
- Support Rewilding
- Eco-friendly money
- Buy fewer products (re-use and repair)
- Use eco-friendly products and services (and reduce waste)
To maximise your impact, we recommend that you only share your commitment to progressing a Top-Action when you are ready to start progressing it rather than, say, committing to completing all the Top-Actions in one go:
- Focus on progressing a small number of Top Actions or sub-actions at any one time – even just one at a time
- Be clear about specifically what you have committed to progressing in the short term so that you can track your progress and maintain momentum.
- Avoid being overwhelmed
- Spreading out your public commitments on social media over time and aligning these with your progress will give more people a chance to see your commitments and progress; this will enable you to inspire more people and give them a chance to respond to your posts which may in turn help support you. If you post a commitment but then do not start to make any progress for longer time, the online story of your journey will become disjointed which will be more difficult for people to follow and support.
Already completed a Top Action? Share your “personal eco-progress-story“ with the community via the relevant Top Action page.
It is also highly recommended that those who have made progress already participate in the community to support those less experienced.
Why not challenge a friend to complete actions at the same time as you and then support each other to achieve your goal? It can be fun to introduce a competitive element and see who can get there first or find the most creative solutions.
There are other ways you could get involved in supporting the EcoTracker Community and further address the Climate and ecological emergency, for instance:
- Tell us how you think we might improve to better support yourself and the EcoTracker Community.
- Tell the story of your journey to reduce your environmental impact, by writing a blog post or making a short video for us.
- Volunteer with us.
To get involved or for other queries, please contact us using the form below or by emailing info@ecotracker.org.uk.
