A Common Man’s Contribution to Sustainability

The Grand Ambani Wedding did indeed make all of us gasp. In fact, it made us gasp even louder when we saw the raised bills. It wasn’t even our fault to begin with! We weren’t invited to the wedding either! Blasphemy! Cruelty! 

But did it occur to you even once, that we ended up becoming poor souls who suffered the high bills (to be honest, it wasn’t even that much) and the more resourceful people got the best of our share? Imagine this, you’re a turtle swimming through the Mediterranean with leisure, bathing in warm skies and lucid waves, when suddenly– a plastic straw gets stuck into your nose. And now you’re bleeding, wondering how and what isn’t allowing you to breathe anymore and why it smells like a pumpkin spice latte. You didn’t get to taste the latte, and still ended up bleeding. You became the poor soul, who got nothing in return but instead got a huge part of your life stuck because of someone ‘resourceful’.

Yeah, animals feel somewhere close around to that because of our actions. And yet we complain about paper straws drowning in our drinks without mercy while they save the life of a turtle who could’ve gotten a plastic one up his nose. Classic.

I’ll save you the argument. No, you aren’t rich enough to make a huge project about climate change a success immediately. No, you cannot control people’s minds and make them change their actions in a snap. At least not 8 billion of them. And no, you aren’t a superhero that can effortlessly and magically save the earth.

But on the brighter side– you’re an aware human! 

You can be as helpful to the earth as actual superheroes. And it's surprisingly pretty easy too!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is one of the most commonly used methods to help the environment. But what can you do? Maybe, instead of throwing that old notebook away, you can try and make homemade paper. It’s sustainable, fun and very, very cool (trust me). That’s recycling. To collect and treat used objects that are ready to be thrown away into something productive and useful. Sounds fun, right?

In fact, you can even try and find empty pages to draw or fill in, or maybe use the notebook paper as scrap paper, and you would’ve practiced reusing! Easy!

Or perhaps, not take thin and flimsy notebooks next time that you barely use just because they have a cute cover. I know, it sounds harsh. Cute notebook covers aren’t that easy to forget.  But it would save the environment by being used by someone who writes in every corner of it. And that would be, reducing.

At the end of the day, after all the reusing and recycling, you would’ve realized something crazy. It was, quite actually, that easy to save the environment. It all started with a simple notebook, a simple decision, and probably saved a huge part of the environment somewhere. 

Still don’t believe me?

Alright.

When was the last time you saw the beach? (Did you actually visit it or are you lazy enough to just scroll through its pictures online?) It was pretty, wasn’t it? Did you know that 80% of the earth’s surface is JUST water? It is quite literally our lifeline. 

But the question here is– do you forget to wear sunscreen while at the beach? (Please don’t, the results can be horrendous). By wearing sunscreen you protect yourself from the harm of the sun’s UV rays. 

You’re billions of miles away from the sun and yet you need the sunscreen to not look like a red version of Peppa Pig. And the earth needs her sunscreen too– the Ozone layer. But sadly, it’s depleting. Antarctica now has a huge hole atop it’s head that allows all the worst rays of the sun to step in! Gosh, imagine how sunburnt and heated our earth is getting! All of this global warming and climate change sounds so terrifying.

But how do we save this?

Obviously, one can’t walk up and fix the hole in the earth’s sunscreen. So what now? 

I’ll give you a hint, the answer is very simple.

Yep! It’s by taking small conscious steps every single day to make a better future! You definitely guessed that on your first try and did not just continue to read mindlessly further on this blog!

But in all seriousness, it really is that simple. By choosing to switch off the air conditioner and sitting under the fan will really help cool down the earth. Or maybe even, by sharing a ride to the office with your annoying neighbor will reduce the carbon emissions and help you make a strong bond with someone. 

Tiny little steps, every single day.  

So maybe it does start with us. 

With a simple decision. 

Be it taking paper straws or maybe a bus ride home. Be it switching off the extra lights or tightly closing the water tap when not in use. It could even be taking portions of food as much as you need in order to save food wastage. 

You may not think it is a huge step, but the earth will thank you someday for it. A very wise woman (me) once said, “All the love given comes back around, in some way or the other.” Give love to earth. Give love to nature.

Give love.