Earth Day: What are we doing?

On the 22^nd of April, we celebrate Earth Day. Did you know? It is sad to say that this holiday is not as popular as Valentine’s Day, Halloween, or Thanksgiving Day. Raising awareness on the state of Mother Earth is not as popular, and even if it was there are powerful interest groups that would work against any initiatives that are pro-environment doing real work on the ground.

THE CURRENT STATE

How is the earth today?

-Air pollution;

-Ocean pollution;

-Water pollution;

-Deforestation;

-Destruction of Wildlife;

-Animal to Human Transmitted Diseases.

Our home is dying, and we need to do something! The Majority of the pollution comes from the production and distribution of non-eco-friendly products, mainly plastic, from the fossil fuel industry.

The current situation is a real-life case study. People are buying less, not by choice but you see the result in some cases where you are using the money you usually spend on consumerism to buy urgent necessities. You can actually make a list of all the unnecessary spending you usually do. In a culture of consumerism, it may seem difficult to simply stop buying but it is possible. Like someone who’d like to stop smoking, there are alternatives to the actual product to help the detoxification process.

By now, there are many products invented that are perfect replacements for the problem of single-use plastic and there is a rise in the demand for more organic-based food but more of these inventions need to become mainstream.

The problem here is that the inventors are startups, and small business owners who don’t have the capacity to promote and expand on a worldwide scale. There is a high probability that the bigger enterprises are willing to buy the shares or the license and patent of the invention to prevent its success and avoid competition. It is up to the business owner to stay true in regard to why they started the business. Was the product intended to help the environment or was it just a side mandate to make it more popular?

WHAT CAN WE DO?

Even if you’re money-driven, the probability of financial success, if you keep fighting and keep control of your business and your business ethics, is higher than when you simply sell it today for an X amount of money. If you keep your business on the market and keep improving and updating your business value it will go up. We all can contribute to hurting mother earth less. Here are some suggestions:

-We can change the way we do grocery shopping; replace plastic bags with canvas bags, totes, recycled bags, etc.

-We can change the way we buy plastic; avoiding plastic at the grocery store today is very difficult when every product on display has some kind of plastic on it. At this stage what we can do is identify the plastic we buy. I know recycling is not the ultimate solution to solve the plastic problem but it is a good start. If we avoid non-recyclable plastic companies will take notice because it will hurt them financially.

-Choose eco-friendly fashion. Many of our clothes, bags, shoes, and other accessories are made from plastic, most of the time the non-recyclable kind. What if we focus instead on recyclable fashion like leaf leather instead of animal or synthetic leather?

-Help the fight against single-use plastic by carrying your own set of utensils, and your own mug made of metal, bamboo, or recycled glass.

-Like to write a lot at work or at home? Use recycled notebooks or use whiteboard-inspired notebooks that you can reuse. With reusable notebooks, you can easily take pictures of your notes and save them on the cloud. No need anymore to use that much paper.

-We can choose to use services and buy products from companies that are environmentally friendly. For example, we can leave banks that directly finance the fossil fuel industry with our money.

-We can and must support services and products that are locally made and environmentally friendly.

-We can directly support an environmentally friendly project as investors in Green Bonds or provide support to organizations that provide climate financing services.

-Help spread the message: Raise Awareness of the consequences of not having clean air, clean water, and healthy food.

-Morally Support the Earth Defenders on the front lines.

-Stand with Earth Defenders (help them on the ground if you can).

-Financially Support Earth Defenders on the front lines through legitimate organizations that directly help them.

What do you think?

What more can we do to celebrate earth day the right way?