You are part of this earth.
You have two homes, your planet and your body, take care of them.
It isn’t all about appearances, remember to also cultivate the beauty within you.
In order to protect our home, we ought to be looking to get as many of our needed items second-hand, as well as reducing unnecessary and frivolous purchases entirely. Especially as there is pretty much enough of anything we could ever need already on this planet, we could just stop production of many industries today and still not go without for years.
The aim of reducing our personal consumption of things is to try and remove so much of the demand, to keep polluting industrial production to a bare minimum from the bottom up.
Understandably there are some things we prefer not to get pre-loved. Maybe other times we were not as organised as we’d have liked, or able to find what we need in time and in budget. However, it isn’t all or nothing, just keep trying to do better every single chance possible.
The overall idea is to reduce this endless and ultimately destructive purchasing altogether and we do that by starting in whatever way we can. Particularly for items we don’t truly need and end up throwing away or “donating” without any real use. It is worth noting that most donations to charity shops and collection boxes are overwhelmed. So much of the stuff we think we are recycling via third parties actually ends up in landfills or incinerated, aka polluting our collective environment.
No shade, I also grew up in a society brainwashed into believing that always consuming more meant something other than abusing the life we are a part of. I was also an active participant in this ravenous consumption of worthless junk until I opened my eyes to the part I was playing in destroying our home and decided to make some serious changes. Ever since I chose to actively learn, I realised the impact our human activities have on our planet. Now I’m taking any opportunity I get to minimise the negative aspects my contribution has.
We live amongst a synthetic world of manipulated, mindless consumerism but alternatives to this overtly damaging consumption do exist. I’m chuffed to find more brands that not only recycle old clothing, make new items and technical clothing from recycled plastics but also strive to be planet positive in every aspect of their business. This is really what all brands should be doing now. Realistically, this is what all consumers should be demanding too.
If we don’t protect our nature, we don’t protect ourselves. We have much more power than we’ve been led to believe, if we want to see any change, I do think we must first align with it ourselves. And of course, we must waste less.
🌊