Five people share their path to more climate friendly living

With COP29 wrapping up, we share the stories of five people and their efforts to live more climate friendly: from eating a whole block of cheese for dinner to eyeing what your bank does with your money.

Dubbed “the finance COP”, this year’s climate summit highlighted the need for capital to make progress on cooling the planet. While the average citizen might feel they have little control over governments’ choices or capital flows, their choices also have an impact.

Careful calculation and food waste

In 2016, Maire-Beatrice Noble left the world of law to find out who she was outside the preconceived expectations of her upbringing. It was “by surprise” that she became an environmentalist, she says.

As a former lawyer and founder of law firm MNKS, Noble looked at all the details of living a climate-friendly life before taking action. “As I started quite late. I tried to be impactful in what I did. I did the carbon calculation of our family and then worked on that in every aspect,” she says.

Addressing the big sources of her carbon footprint, like transport and food, was one of Noble’s major steps. “When I bought my electric car, 10 years ago, I think I was one of the first ones in Luxembourg to have one,” she says. She now favours public transportation, especially after the extension of the capital’s tram line.

“Finance is also very impactful: to review what your bank is doing with your savings and whether it is virtuous or not,” she adds.

Sustainable agriculture and food is one of Noble’s priorities. She studied reports from the UN and various EU institutions to understand the impact of changing her food habits. And eating vegetarian certainly helps.

“For me it is all about food waste. 30% of what we produce [globally] is thrown away. Millions of animals are killed for nothing. And when you throw away food, it emits methane. Limiting food waste is a double positive,” she says.

On a mission to stop littering

César González Fernández will not let any food go to waste © Photo credit: Private

Food waste is also a pet peeve for César González Fernández. “My wife thinks I am a dog for this, but I never throw out food at home. If I see something in the fridge that is about to expire, even if it’s a whole piece of cheese, I eat that for dinner,” he says.

But the Spaniard’s main point of focus is trash. He co-founded non-profit organisation Clean Something for Nothing (CSFN). Its app encourages people to pick up trash, do it together and share the result on the platform.

“Everything starts with consumption. That’s the very beginning of the whole chain that leads to finding a piece of trash on the floor. I try to not buy things I don’t need,” he says, acknowledging the process that creates waste in the first place.

And when he does have to get something, his first reflex is to look for a secondhand option. Having recently become a father, Fernández extends this approach to his child’s clothes, saying that most of them are either gifts or secondhand.

Conscious shopping and transportation

Socially responsible entrepreneurship and fatherhood also go hand in hand for Emanuele Santi, founder of Riding the Rainbow. His app allows people to donate items, for example to refugees.

“As a father of two, I feel a deep responsibility to set an example and contribute to preserving the planet for future generations. I only purchase clothes when necessary, leaning towards second-hand options to minimise waste,” he says.

Emanuele Santi has switched to e-mobility and also launched a sharing app © Photo credit: Gerry Huberty

Santi also aims to make informed purchasing choices and uses apps like Yuka, which provide information on products’ impact on the environment, as well as Boycott and No Thanks, which tell users if products are associated with boycott movements.

Santi also favours public transport over car use and has invested in an electric scooter and a bicycle to get around town. “This shift not only reduces CO2 emissions but also supports Luxembourg City’s sustainability initiatives,” he says.

One man’s old sweater is another person’s treasure

Laure Cales says people can take baby steps to change their lifestyle and habits © Photo credit: Mireille Scheid Photography

For Laure Cales, who lives in the countryside, not having a car of some sort isn’t an option. “I did have an electric car for a while and now I have an old van. I think that using stuff until it breaks is a good way to make climate-friendly decisions,” she says.

She is best at making such choices when it comes to clothing and used to run a second-hand clothing store, Pilea. She still keeps her Instagram account alive today. “On Instagram I follow so many influencers who do many updates and so much unpaid work to inform people. That is something I wanted to do with my account even when I stopped having my shop,” she says.

Cales credits her understanding of climate change to having worked for environmental protection NGOs as well as reading books and consuming content on social media. For her, getting informed is not that difficult, but she believes that you have to know where to look.

One way in which people struggle, according to Cales, is getting started. “People always think too big. They think that from tomorrow they have to become vegan. There are baby steps, like eating vegan twice a week, or only buying secondhand clothes for one year, or having one outfit per week that is made up of secondhand clothes,” she says.

V is for vegan

Veronica Ribeiro is a youth climate activist © Photo credit: Chris Karaba

Verónica Ribeiro became interested in the climate as a teenager and she is now involved in Luxembourg’s delegation to the EU Climate Pact while still in school.

After reading up on plant-based diets’ impact on climate change and health, she began to gradually shift towards a vegan diet, passing through a period of being pescatarian. “It didn’t make any sense to me to continue financing industries that are so damaging to the planet. It is necessary to get yourself informed in terms of nutrition before doing [the switch],” she says.

Vegan products wrapped in small plastic packaging frustrate her, she says, as well as news of floods, turning people into climate refugees. “To avoid feelings of eco-anxiety, I try to focus on solutions, on helping people to make responsible choices. Making people around me feel connected and comfortable to take steps forward helps me focus on the positive side of things,” says Ribeiro.

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