Obviously, when you start making changes in your lifestyle to make the world a better place, it's best to start in your immediate environment. This applies whether the changes you are making are related to spiritual matters, environmental matters, family matters or a combination of all three. Yes, it's good to make donations to support organisations dedicated to providing disaster relief, wiping out nasty tropical diseases or stopping the commercial hunting of whales, but we all need to start at home to make real change happen.

But after you've got your own home sorted out with a first-class recycling system, a small patch of organic vegetables and you've finished using toxic cleaning products as much as possible, then what? Is this the time to start donating to those organisations and then considering your job of helping the world done?

Well, not quite. Once you've got your own house in order, it's time to think about your wider community. No, not the global community. Everyone seems to talk about the global community and the global village so much that they forget about real, local communities and real, local villages. What can you do at a community level to make the world a greener place?

Of course, if you're a leader and feel strongly about some local issue, the obvious starting place is to get a campaign going to clean up your local river or something of that sort. Good for you, if this is your thing. But some of us aren't that type. What can the rest of us do?

* Take a plastic bag (OK, or some other container) with you when you go for a walk or to the park. Wear rubber gloves and pick up litter in the streets.

* Look at what you can do in your workplace to make things a bit more sustainable. Can you start a policy (even if it's a private policy) of recycling paper, using china mugs rather than disposables, not using staples or of taking home all organic rubbish for composting? Taking home organic rubbish (which usually means crusts, apple cores and orange peels) is often an easy and popular step to take. Use a dedicated plastic bucket for collecting organics for composting in. You may get known as the Compost Lady/Gentleman, but earning a reputation for being environmentally aware probably isn't a bad thing in the workplace these days.

* Help a neighbour. If you have an older neighbour who needs a bit of a hand with gardening or house cleaning , see if you can help out now and again. Using sustainable methods, of course! However, some of these older neighbours may know a few tricks of the trade that were common during the WWII/Depression era that you may find handy. This is a real win-win situation – swapping knowledge for muscle power.

* Offer to start a carpool or a "walking bus" for your school or workplace as a way of helping other people cut down on fuel consumption.