How do we start a CRAG?

A guide to the practical issues involved in starting up a CRAG. First there’s a quick checklist to get you up and carbon rationing in super quick time, whilst the following sections go into the practicalities in somewhat more detail. For more in-depth information on how CRAGs operate, see CRAGs: a short guide.

Summary: the Nine Steps

1. Download and read CRAGs: a short guide.
2. Agree on what you want to count. To keep it simple you might want to just focus on heating, electricity, car and plane travel. Some groups are trying to count public transport as well.
3. Agree on the conversion factors you are going to use. Probably worth checking out what other groups are using. You might decide to put a zero conversion factor on certain things e.g. Ecotricity or wood.
4. Calculate or estimate your individual carbon footprints over the last year. Feel free to use our worksheets or spreadsheets.
5. Agree on a target for this year. Most groups seem to be going for 4500 kgCO2 per person in 2006/7.
6. Agree from when to when your carbon year will run e.g. January to December or April to March.
7. Agree on the penalty for holding carbon debt at the end of the carbon year. Most groups are currently going for 4 or 5p per kgCO2 debt.
8. Agree anything else you think is necessary at this stage e.g. an optional cap to carbon debt.

1. Decide how you are going to keep track of your carbon over the year. Will you email a “carbon accountant” or will you do your sums each time you meet up and if so how often will you meet up?

If you have followed these 9 steps you are already carbon rationing! Good luck! The only other thing your group needs to decide is what to do with any carbon fund that appears at the end of the year.

Finding people for your CRAG

You can find potential CRAGgers amongst your own friends, in local groups and your local community, or through this website. The opportunities are boundless! It is tempting to look for a mix of high and low emitters but it does not really matter. It is much more important to find a group of people that get on and that you can build trust amongst the group.

Friends and Local Networks

A good place to start is with your own friends, work colleagues, networks and local groups – green groups, cycling groups, faith groups and other campaign groups. Try sending out an email to people in your own address book and onto email lists where the recipients know you. Even facebook can be useful. Friends know what to expect, they will feel comfortable about calling you up and asking questions and will happily forward your email to others they know that might be interested.

This approach is likely to result in a small group of keen committed and supportive members who “get it” pretty much from the off and are not put off by the “less is good” message. In the subsequent meeting or two, you will manage to agree on how your CRAG will operate and go “active” within three months of the initial meeting. Most of your members will already be pretty heavily committed to other activities so, while willing to participate in the CRAG, don’t be disappointed if most do not have the time to help you facilitate the group or seed new groups if that is what you would like to do.

In your community

Alternatively, breaking outside of the usual suspects is particularly rewarding. Make use of notice boards in community centres and libraries, and the local paper. Make announcements or write short articles for neighbourhood newsletters. Try to provide as much information as possible, tell them about yourself, give them links to the website and newspaper articles, where the group might meet and how often it might meet but without being over prescriptive. Surprisingly there are people out there who want to take personal action on climate change but have no intention of ever campaigning about it.

A larger, more mixed initial gathering of people is likely, some of whom may actually be there to argue against what you are proposing! It will be more difficult to establish a consensus over what you will count, how it will be counted, what ration you will allow yourselves and what reward/penalty system you will apply at the end of year for carbon saving/debt. You may end up with something that is very different from what you originally envisaged. On the other hand, you may enthuse someone who is not tied up with other commitments and decides the CRAG is what they want to do.

Through the website

Set up a group space on the carbon rationing website. This is the shop window for the group. Many groups leave their group page blank and wonder why nobody else has subscribed! Post up the contents of your emails so that others can see that you really do want to start a group. Edit your personal profile and talk about climate change and your contribution to it and say as much or as little as you like, see Jacklyn’s inspiring profile. This is a slow but steady way of recruiting members and requires very little effort. (If people do contact you about your CRAG please respond even if you do not plan to call the first meeting for several weeks).

Ideal group size

You can start a CRAG with any number of people but a small CRAG might not survive a small disagreement and a large CRAG won’t easily fit in a front room. A group of ten works very well but not everybody knows nine other people that are mad enough to join a CRAG. In which case, you might want to gang up with someone else who will share the responsibility of recruiting the other members; finding five people is much easier. If you are working on your own, try holding a meeting with those that have shown interest so far and discuss how to recruit a few more people. Experiments are ongoing with much larger groups of up to 50 members each, but we haven’t yet seen how successful they can be.

The Really Important Meetings

The first two or three meetings are really important; this is when the CRAG will make the key decisions, it is also the time when some people will drop out. But the good news is that others will be very enthused and motivated by the whole thing. You also don’t need to ask people to commit to being in a CRAG for six months or a year; just work on the basis that if they come to the third meeting they are probably are going to stay!

Before inviting everyone to the first meeting, ask everyone to roughly calculate their carbon footprint (using worksheets or spreadsheets or anything they are comfortable with using). Every CRAGger needs to know whether they are likely to be high or low emitters before deciding how much carbon credits will cost or whether there should be a maximum penalty! It also helps if they have read about CRAGs, for example CRAGs: a short guide.

Not every CRAG member is going to be able or want to come to every meeting. However when a group of environmentally aware people come together, there is no shortage of things to discuss. Be prepared for some discussions to take a while and don’t try to cover too much at the first meeting. Consider allocating time for particular items and having a chair to ensure everyone gets to speak and that they don’t interrupt each other! Some people can be intimidated (or just bored!) by the more vociferous or informed, and may be deterred from returning. Try to ensure that everybody in the CRAG buys into every decision even if they don’t agree with it. The challenge is to agree the rules before anyone drops out!

Recording and publishing the decisions the group makes in the early meetings is invaluable especially when it comes to settling up. Before the meeting you might want to looking at the agendas and minutes of other groups to see what they decided in their first meetings e.g. Oxford, Islington.

Here are some suggestions for items that you might want to discuss in the first two meetings:

First meeting

1. Agree on what you want to count. To keep it simple you might want to just focus on heating, electricity, car and air travel and ignore travel by public transport. Or you might decide to only record journeys public transport above 10 miles. But keep in mind that commuting long distance by train can really add up over the year.
2. Broadly agree on any financial rewards and penalties. Most groups have penalties of 4 or 5p per kg of CO2 debt., some groups reward low emitters as well.
3. Agree to set a maximum penalty. Each CRAGger then knows in advance the maximum amount that they would have to pay (but it is a cop out!).
4. Agree on allowances for any children in the group.
5. Agree a start date.
6. Agree on how you are going to communicate with each other between meetings. Several groups use a yahoogroup.

1. Agree on when and where the subsequent meetings are going to be held. You don’t need to meet every month¹.

Second meeting

There are then some less important technical and practical issues that you might want to leave to the second meeting.

1. Agree on which if any suppliers of green tariff electricity qualify for a carbon discount.
2. Agree on how aviation emissions are going to be counted. CO2 from flying is a complicated issue. You can enter miles into the CRAG spreadsheet but it is wildly inaccurate. The most reliable approach is to calculate the emissions using a good external website such as Climate Care.
3. Agree on all the other conversion factors. These are generally uncontroversial. The CRAG speadsheet uses numbers from the Carbon Trust; most other calculators use similar numbers. There is generally no need to differentiate between different types of rail travel or even between rail and coach unless you have a long distance commuter in your group.
4. Decide who the group’s coordinator is going to be and who the “carbon accountant” is going to be. These are two largely separate roles in a CRAG. The roles can be done by one and the same person but it is better to have two people share the load. This can be very effective as there is little overlap in the work.
5. Agree on how carbon emissions will be recorded. This can be done with a combination of diaries, spreadsheets and web sites. It is important that everyone believes that everyone else is recording their emissions correctly especially if the high emitters are going to be buying carbon credits from the low emitters. It is not that CRAGgers are likely to be dishonest with each other but some CRAGgers do keep very meticulous records of all their trips while others find this very hard to do.
6. Agree on how carbon emissions will be recorded. Will each CRAGger calculate his/her own emissions? or will each CRAGger email the “carbon accountant” or will the whole group try do the sums each time you meet up?
7. Agree on the settlement process. Are you going to open a bank account with a friendly organisation? If high emitters are paying low emitters i.e. effectively trading carbon, you need to decide how much each low emitter gets. Or are penalties going to be paid to an appropriate campaign or cause?
8. Agree on when and how often you are going to settle. Most groups settle every 12 months but 6 months isn’t so long to wait.

1. Agree on whether you are going to allow unused credits to be carried from one period to another, this may be fair if you settle every 6 months.

Moving on …

If you have followed all the steps you are already carbon rationing! Subsequent meetings can be a little more relaxed and there’s time to talk about the finer things in life; grey water systems, energy efficiency ratings and insulating houses with solid walls.

Good luck!