When I met my husband it inspired me to become more conscious about the environmental impact of my daily habits. At the time, I did the normal things like recycle and brought my own bags to shops, but I was still buying packaged produce and not compositing my food waste.
Since then, I’ve changed even more habits and found out more about the impact human lifestyles on our planet. As a result, it’s made me motivated and apathetic at the same time.
You watch documentaries that show you just how massive the issue of climate change and ecological destruction is, that it leaves you, or at least me, feeling hopeless. When you see the mountains of landfill waste being dumped onto developing countries you think – what possible impact could I make by recycling my 5 tin cans?
I’ve met many people in the same position.
What’s the point in doing anything if it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things?
What’s the point if the solution relies on the powers that be?
The conclusion I came to is that – it doesn’t have to be black and white, and that’s ok. The decision doesn’t have to be between doing nothing at all over becoming a breatharian.
Because ultimately, every action, no matter how small, helps. Regardless of whether governments or large companies do their part, there is power in the voice of the individual, even more so the voices of many individual.
I’m not saying that change will happen overnight, perhaps not even til I get to my retirement age. But we’re not here for the short term. Human destruction to the planet didn’t happen overnight, so we can’t expect it to heal overnight either.
My grandfather used to say, it takes less time to do something harmful and more to make it better.
And I think this saying applies to many things, including the battle with climate change. It didn’t take a month, a year, to cause the damage we’ve caused to the planet. So how can we expect the damage to be undone in that same time?
