I have never been much of a petition signer.
But I am now beginning to feel that for some specific campaigns at least they may be useful.
And there are always plenty of petitions to sign...
38 Degrees
I recently started paying more attention to 38 Degrees.
38 Degrees is a website that provides very simple to use facilities for anyone to set up and promote an online petition.
It's tagline is 'People. Power. Change'.
The site was set up in memory of Anita Roddick who founded the Body Shop.
Nearly 40 million signatures have been collected through the site so far.
Currently there are just under a thousand petitions running covering a wide range of issues including social, health, environmental, community and human rights.
There are almost 60 in the Environment category at present, over 200 in Planning and Countryside.
Among the more popular ones is one to Save the Bees...
Another about solar subsidies...
And one asking McDonalds to stop selling Nestle bottled water...
Something for just about every taste.
Help reduce plastic in oceans
Of course 38 Degrees isn't the only place running environmental petitions.
For example Friends of the Earth UK currently has one to tell the UK government that we need a new law to phase out plastic pollution...
And the Centre for Alternative Technology has a petition demanding a Climate Action Plan...
Signing petitions is not going to save the world overnight, but it's free, it's quick and it's easy.
And it is one more little lego brick in the wall of democratic change.
[ header graphic from pixabay.com ]