10 THINGS YOU CAN START WITH TODAY
Eat less meat & buy more organic
Industrial farming is the major culprit for the ecological disaster situation that our planet is in. Causing serious health issues in the farmers, their kids but also those who consume, leads to the extinction of thousands of species, 1 every 20 minutes, causes death of the soil and financial and psychological ruin of (especially the smaller) famers.
It requires immense amount of our water, poisons the groundwater and contributes towards global warming.
Livestock farming is responsible for 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions alone. 65 billion of animals are bred into cages, pumped with medicine and murdered.
To feed them, millions of acres of our forests get cut down to grow soya and corn with pesticides that poison and kill the permaculture and soil itself. Spraying pesticides just once a day, kills 50% of the earthworm population. Farmers spray nearly daily.
Many species that once lived in these forests were killed or deported.
Our diversity of seeds is at risk by the few top players of the industry, that forced everyone else to bankruptcy. Retailers keep food prices low. Farmers are have to continue to destroy our living source.
Change your energy supplier to green energy
Fossil fuels contribute towards the pollution of our planet and encourage global warming. As they become more rare, prices will increase which causes geopolitical tension. Nuclear energy is not an alternative: it is dangerous, it consumes huge amounts of water and its toxic waste cannot be gotten rid of.
By now many green energy providers do not even cost more than your previous subscription.
Buy local and independent
You help facilitating their existence buy supporting them with your purchase and the money stays in your community, where it will find its way back to your advantage. When buying from a global conglomerate, hardly anything stays within your periphery. Most likely, the company is not even paying taxes in your home country and exploiting its workers.
This also means cutting out the middle men: they are including in the price. You pay for the list of suppliers, when buying objects from far away. By cutting that out, you support your local farmer, artist etc. more directly and therefore return their autonomy to them.
Change your bank
Your average big banks fund very destructive industries, are highly involved in lobbyism and engage in speculation with your money (housing, oil etc.) while securing their own safe incomes. The fake economy of intangible money is what has created this monster of hypercapitalism in the first place. In similar fashion to supporting a local shop, there are many green, honest, family-oriented co-op banks, that are happy to safeguard your money, investing into education, greener living or care for the elders. Some banks of the newer generation try to attract by planting trees for every purchase. While this is still a capitalist idea, it is much better than passively investing into deforestation and consequent endangering of life on earth.
REFUSE
REDUCE
RE-USE
RE-CYCLE
RE-PAIR
SHARE
There is so much waste. Things we do not need. From the way our food is wrapped into plastic, to the fashion industry selling us an idea that we need new items every season. Landfills and beyond: beaches, rivers, oceans, forests: not a single place on earth is not contaminated by our waste. With our microplastic. We do not need more. We can re-use, re-cycle, re-pair, up-cycle, borrow, share. The less we buy, the we become complicit in a system that abuses of our resources and the less we become culprits in the toxic waste, the fumes of fire when burnt, cause serious health issues in those burning it, the microplastics that end up in our groundwater, damaging us and all the other living species living in/of it. There are many fun ways to engage with your items and waste (Zero Waste movement offers great blogs, Instagram accounts for inspiration). You can connect to sharing communities online. Get creative with what you have at hand. Grow a relationship to what you need and what is simply too much.
If you can spare some of your income, invest into the green businesses around you that are paving the way.
By supporting them fiscally, you are encouraging growth of that segment of the industry. This way you can move from harming the planet, to sustaining it.
Get involved in local politics. Join a union. Run for office. Help with campaigning. You have the right to have a say and influence the doings by engaging yourself in the political insurgence.
Find something you feel passionate about. It may be offering help to neighbourhood students, your old neighbour, growing a garden, joining a local farm project, fighting gentrification. Whatever your thing is, pursue it with the time you have at hand and see how it makes you feel.
Reduce your carbon footprint. There are fun online tools/apps that calculate your footprint to help you identify where you can improve: how about taking your bike to work next time?
Read the Transmodernity PDF. Confide that together, we can make the change happen. We are already making it happen. Now is the time to make an influence in which way we turn.
And this is cute.