Silver linings

Natalie Fée, environmentalist and author of How to Save the World for Free, says that 2020 was full of good news...

- Natalie Fee

“We showed the world that we can come together to solve a crisis.”

You would be forgiven for thinking that as an environmentalist and founder of a plastic pollution-fighting organisation, I might have finished 2020 crying into my pillow. Single-use plastic surged as a result of PPE being used to prevent the spread of COVID-19, reusable cups and bottles were off the menu in most cafés and restaurants, and governments around the world were overturning plastic bans. (Happily, not ours! More on that in a moment.)

But, thankfully, I haven’t been deterred and, instead of crying, I found myself rejoicing over all the good that came from 2020 when it comes to saving our planet. Admittedly, eco-tears were shed twice last year, thanks to Sir David Attenborough’s Extinction: The Facts and A Life on Our Planet programmes – both absolutely heart-breaking and both absolutely essential viewing. But overall, I’m starting 2021 with a smile on my face, and here’s why…

Saving for the future

There was huge progress in 2020 in greening the finance sector. Once we’d woken up to the fact that most of our pensions and investments were still funding fossil fuels, fracking and deforestation (something I talk about in more detail in How to Save the World for Free) we put two and two together. We realised that there really was no point saving for our (or our children’s future) if our very savings were putting that future at risk. We put pressure on our big institutions to divest from fossil fuels and we switched to ethical pensions and bank accounts.