Catherine Somerville is a member of Sustainable Wallingford

WE have all heard about climate change and global warming, but to many of us these are distant ideas that don’t really affect us as we go about our daily lives.

Yes, we have heard that, as sea levels rise due to ice caps melting, some islands may cease to exist and our own coast will be affected. But still, it doesn’t really affect us as we go about our daily lives.

Just a minute – our daily lives: isn’t that what the world and its industries and economies are made up of?

People like you and me, going to work to keep a roof over our heads, bringing up children, having holidays, getting groceries, buying a new car – all the things which make up going about our daily lives.

So, people like you and me going about our daily lives has resulted in climate change.

We could start changing as many of those things as we reasonably can to choices which have less impact on our world.

Then the situation could become less severe than the current predictions say it will.

If you would like to know more, or do something positive, contact us on sw@sustainablewallingford.org.

Oh, you say, Sustainable Wallingford? Aren’t they the people that do the swap shops?

Yes, that’s us. But do you know what swap shops’ purpose is?

It is to keep anything with usable life still in it out of landfill. Have you noticed your council tax bill and how much the council spends on dealing

with our waste?

We‘d all be more careful about not being so wasteful if we did. But Sustainable Wallingford does so much more.

For example, we have talks, events about how to use and re-use things, and film shows.

The latest film, screened on March 14 at the Corn Exchange, was the English language version of the award-winning French film Demain.

This was an uplifting film which showed that there are very positive, simple things we can all do to make things better.

We do other things too.

All expertise is very welcome; we currently have a vacancy for a good communicator for social media and the press.

But ordinary people going about their daily lives are what we need really. No experience necessary.

There are other community actions groups (CAGs) like ours throughout Oxfordshire; you can find out more by visiting cagoxfordshire.org.uk and click on ‘view groups’.