If you haven’t already been making a conscious effort to incorporate the reduce, reuse, and recycle mindset into your daily routine and gear your life in a more sustainable direction, then allow me to introduce to you the urgency of the climate crisis. Every aspect of life is being affected by climate change, and it’s happening at rapid speeds. Drastic changes in weather patterns are increasing the frequency of droughts and natural disasters. Warming oceans have the potential to negatively affect many if not all marine species. All of these changes in the world start and end with us. Humans are the ones creating this mess, and ultimately we are beginning to face the consequences.
Climate change has been of knowledge to me for quite some time growing up. I learned some pretty brief lessons in my elementary and middle schools about what causes it, such as the infamous greenhouse gases and how their heat-trapping abilities that should keep the Earth habitable are beginning to do the opposite since they’re being produced in enormous amounts. When I took an Environmental Science course in high school, lessons about the Earth’s fragility went much more in-depth, and rightfully so. It stressed to us how rapidly irreversible damages can be made if we don’t change our ways in the near future. Through this, my love for learning about the environment and what we can do to help it grew, causing me to become curious and eager to do more. But it felt unrealistic to me at that age to introduce my household to sustainable practices so suddenly after already being set in their ways. I believe now, though, that all it takes to start your environmental journey is having the motivation to make things happen.
Presently, I am majoring in environmental science in college, and I’m working to be more environmentally friendly in my day-to-day life as a student. I try to encourage my friends and others to take on eco-friendly lifestyles while also holding myself accountable. Recycling whenever possible, putting only as much food as I’ll eat on my plate, using reusable utensils and dishes in my dorm, and splitting laundry with my roommate are a few things that I’ve incorporated into my routines. Certain things are still hard to control since I’m not yet on my own, but the effort is always there.
My motivation to do good for the planet has come from conversations I’ve had recently with older adults about environmentalism, which suggested a huge hope for my generation to save us. What strikes me is that these conversations were had with strangers: a friend of my Dad’s during our first meeting, a lady working at a sustainability and vintage store called White Flower Farmhouse, and two women who were having a yard sale. At some point during each of these conversations, the individual(s) explained how excited they are that my generation is so active with the environmental movement, and although they feel concerned about the world we are currently growing up in, they have so much hope for us. This almost makes me feel like I have a mission to take on, continuing this journey and trying to make the world a better place in whatever way I can.
I aspire to someday have the privilege of teaching future generations to appreciate the beautiful Earth we live on and to continue to spread awareness about climate change. I have hope that the pressing movements and discussions of our time will someday be resolved, and I trust that my peers and colleagues will make a difference. Not only am I promising myself, but I’m promising the Earth that change is going to come, because it has to. I’m excited to keep learning about new sustainable practices that I can use to live eco-consciously as I go through life, like composting, home gardening, and eco-friendly alternatives. And on top of that, there’s still so much more to learn.
I’m not perfect in my ways of eco-friendliness, but I’m actively making an effort to make adjustments. Small changes that you can make to your everyday life matter, like limiting plastic waste, switching to products made from bamboo or recycled materials, and simply improving your environmental vocabulary and spreading knowledge. Even if you think that you, one of nearly eight billion people on the planet, couldn’t possibly make any kind of appreciable advancement towards a healthier planet, you can make a difference.
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