OVER the last year, numerous reports, statistics and statements delivered by the great and the good raised awareness of the need to tackle climate change.

Most people have now come to accept that they need to do their bit to reduce their carbon footprint and minimise their environmental impact by using less energy in the home, driving less and generally trying to live more frugally by recycling, reusing and repairing rather than buying more.

At one extreme there are people who model themselves on Tom and Barbara from 'The Good Life' and, at the other, those who hope buying a 'bag for life' absolves them from taking an annual long-haul flight.

Despite environmental campaign groups saying we cannot wait to make drastic changes, government representatives at the United Nations Climate Change talks in Bali in December failed to set CO2 emissions targets for individual countries.

Individual efforts are all well and good and clearly it's better to do something rather than nothing, but it would seem it has now become incumbant on us all as communities to take the future of our planet into our own hands.

There are a number of ways we can do this:

- Supporting local food producers to reduce food miles - the distance food travels to reach our local supermarkets (often hundreds, if not thousands of miles)

- Campaigning to reduce the amount of plastic we use as a community (such as a town-wide ban on plastic bags) to help to reduce the amount of the greenhouse gas methane released into the atmosphere from landfill

- Supporting and helping to run walking buses to local schools to help parents to give up the daily school run

- Making good use of recycling points to put pressure on the council to provide more facilites for bottle, clothing and plastic recycling

- Making as many journeys as possible on public transport to encourage bus companies to lay on more services covering more destinations more frequently

- Starting a local car sharing scheme

- Recycling household items by donating them to charity or beginning a Batley freecycle group where people can log-on and swap unwanted items rather than throw them away (see www.freecycle.org - the nearest are Dewsbury and Wakefield)

- Starting a group of interested local people to coordinate community-wide environmental schemes and promoting them throughout the town

In the long-run, all of these ideas will save money, energy and help to make our corner of the world that bit greener.