Green activist John Cossham, 52, on how he earns very little so he can live a low-carbon lifestyle

Name: John Cossham

Age: 52

Income: £10,000

Occupation: Entertainer and ecology educator

I’m an enthusiastic green activist and I earn very little so I can live a low-carbon lifestyle. That’s the way I like it; I don’t want much money, because people who earn a lot have a high carbon footprint. This green lifestyle saves my family about £10,000 a year on utilities, food and travel compared to the average family of four. But that’s not the reason I do it.

I’m proud to make between £3,000 and £4,000 a year gigging as a children’s entertainer called Professor Fiddlesticks, riding a unicycle and juggling. I also give talks on climate change and other green subjects, plus I sell compost, do gardening and bike trailer removals, which adds up to about £2,000 a year.

I live with my wife, Gill, who works full time as an unpaid carer, and two adult children. We bought our house outright after Gill’s mother died, with help from my dad. As a family, we get a working tax credit of £367 a month.

I’m a freegan, which means I get food from bins, from foraging, or from my garden. I’m largely vegan, but eat dairy if I find it thrown away. The most unexpected thing I found in a bin was a bottle of champagne. I buy unsold fruit and veg for a penny a bag from a local food shop and get four loaves of yesterday’s bread for £1 from the local bakers.

Off the lamb: how to eat with a low carbon footprint Read more

We spend about £100 a week on basics such as rice and pasta. I occasionally have a coffee or pint out, but we never go to restaurants or get takeaways.

I’m frugal with water. We only pay about £280 a year for it. In the bathroom our rule is “if it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down,” and I also have a compost toilet in the garden. I wash every day in a cup’s worth of cold water, using a flannel.

I use a wood stove to cook meals as much as possible and our gas bill is about £200 a year. The electricity bill is about £340 annually with Good Energy. We have an energy-efficient fridge, freezer and washing machine and our solar panels earn almost as much as we pay for electricity.

I travel by bike and sometimes by train. I haven’t flown in a plane since 1997. We don’t own a car or go on holidays. I don’t care if my T-shirt has a hole in it. However, I did get a tattoo of a compost symbol for my 50th birthday.

I haven’t been able to afford a pension and I never have more than about £2,000 in the bank. I never know when money will come in, so I don’t budget. But I believe happiness is separate to your income. Aside from my sadness for the state of the planet, I’m a happy bunny.

'I'm a knight and I live by the chivalric code' Read more

I’m always busy, either chopping wood, turning compost, or picking beans. I’m autistic, which means I’m very enthusiastic and a bit over-focused. But my focus isn’t on cleanliness, or train numbers. It’s on saving carbon and trying to promote the green agenda.

I do a lot of volunteering. I help out with a group called Abundance York, picking unwanted fruit from gardens and taking it to local schools, food banks and homeless shelters. I also distribute spare freegan food and other items to places it can be recycled or reused. I give food to a friend who’s on universal credit, and to Food Not Bombs, who provide free food in town.

I’ve been trying to get people to be more green for about 30 years and I am proud that I have such a low carbon footprint. However, I feel like a failure: the CO2 concentration has risen continually over this time and climate change is now an existential threat. Yet we still live in a wasteful society.

I’ve had a lot of negative comments about my lifestyle over the years. Some people feel challenged by me. They ask: “Do you think what you do really makes a difference?” I tell them that an ocean is made up of lots of individual droplets. I’ll keep doing what I do for as long as I’m fit and able.

As told to Abby Young-Powell