A few months ago I volunteered to give a talk on living zero waste. The talk will be in a couple of weeks on 15th March which is World Speech Day, Comic Relief and the next round of school climate strikes – so a pretty busy day all round!

The catch to this talk is that we each only have 5 minutes for our speeches, which is no time at all for such a broad topic. I have decided to concentrate my speech on the 5 R’s of zero waste but leading in to that I wanted to show a graph depicting climate change data to highlight why going zero waste is so important.

I knew printing out a giant bar chart would, for the most part, be met with a blank stare from most of the audience. I wanted a visual punch to help make the most of my 5 minutes (and hopefully get people to talk to me after) so I decided to get the knitting needles out and knit the data as a scarf. 

Thankfully, a quick Google search revealed I was not the first person to think of this and so I was able to adapt this pattern from Sheldon Fiber Designs.

After I had finished knitting I decided to crochet a border around the edge and it was whilst I was busy with my crochet hook that I hopped on a train to attend Climate Ambassador Training – which for the most part means I’m now an official MP botherer! During the training I whipped out my scarf and got a much bigger reaction than I had expected. Taking the time to knit the data was definitely the right choice!

So just what do the colours represent? White is where the global temperatures were average, blue represents cooler years (.1-.3 degrees variance) and well I was going to do red for warmer years but that would have required 6 different shades of red! So I started at yellow and worked my way up to maroon.

When I attended the Climate Ambassador Training I made sure I was wearing the green heart that I made as part of the Climate Coalition’s #showthelove campaign. I started by knitting a green heart and then I repurposed some beads from a necklace I was given years ago. Sadly, the necklace wasn’t quite “me” but I loved it all the same and couldn’t bear to part with it so I’m really pleased to have been able to reuse the beads in this way. How about you, how did your green heart turn out? If you haven’t done one then don’t worry, there’s still time to get involved. Just craft a green heart – you can knit, crochet, sew, cut out felt or how about a paper heart? Then you can decorate it if you want to. Once you’re done just upload a pic to the socials using #showthelove and don’t forget to tag me @PrishaHill so I can see your wonderful creations.

Being a Climate Ambassador is a huge honour and I already have several plans in place to spread the message. As well as giving talks I’ll be holding a market stall with a big spinning wheel, I’m getting all the WI ladies in the county to help me make a giant version of the global warming scarf but made from litter – we’ll then take the giant version with us to Westminster for the #masslobby on the 26th June 2019. I’m also planning a film screening with a discussion afterwards, further details to follow. Of course I’ll also be getting in touch with my local MP and councillors too.

Finally, I’m also going to be researching local residents to see whom I can nominate for a Green Heart Hero Award. If you have someone in mind then go ahead and nominate them – I’m sure they’ll be thrilled their efforts are being recognised!