#GreenUp: How YOU Can Save The World
Every year on Earth Day my feed is full of people sharing how much they love nature, love traveling, and love our planet - but feel so helpless to help protect it (and us) from the affects of pollution, climate change, water scarcity. After all, in a world of 7.1 billion people how can our actions be anything more than a drop in the bucket?
That’s my goal with Earthling: Make it easy for a bunch of tiny drops in the bucket (hi, that’s you!) to make the tiny changes in your everyday lives that add up and make waves.
But the real question is how.
I was standing in my kitchen unloading my groceries, most of which were packaged in single use materials, when I flashed back to an article on a girl who managed to fit all of her trash for a year in a single jar. And I thought …how the hell do I do that?? And more importantly, how the hell do we make it easy for all of us to do that??
The truth (I realized as I stared at my groceries) is that sustainable living is hard because the companies that control the contents of our homes aren’t incentivized to make it easy. So to change the world, we need to change companies’ incentives.
Lucky for us, that’s exactly what consumerism does.
How change happens
There are 3 major ways to make lasting progress toward sustainability in an industry:
Companies internally decide to develop sustainable products and processes.
This is actually happening with a few companies, but not enough.Governments introduce regulation that requires companies to be more sustainable.
Stay tuned for an article about the states with the best (and worst) sustainability laws!Consumers create a demand for sustainable products and companies follow the demand.
This also makes #2 easier, because companies won’t as strongly oppose legislation that’s profitable.
All of these can and will play into making change, and like I said I’m super excited to write an article about both sustainability laws and how you can influence them - but for now we’ll focus on #3 because it’s what we can fully control.
To get an idea of how this works, let’s look at an imaginary soap industry.
Big Companies control the soap industry with cheap, non-eco-friendly soaps.
Little Green Startup makes an eco-friendly soap, but doesn’t have the resources to make it accessible to everyone.
The people who can buy from Little Green Startup do so to be more eco-friendly.
Big Companies see that they’re losing profits to the eco-friendly soap market. *Cue jealous girlfriend meme*
Big Companies start making eco-friendly soap to win those dollars back.
Competition between all the companies, plus the resources the Big Companies have, drive down prices and make eco-friendly soap available to everyone.
Boom. Sustainable soap industry.
Which character made all the difference in this story? Who was the real key to the outcome?
The people who buy from Little Green Startup.
(Spoiler alert: That could be you.)
Your Role
The goal of Earthling’s Go Green posts is to help you be one of the people who buy from Little Green Startup in real life.
That doesn’t mean you’re going to spend more money.
That doesn’t mean you’re going to sacrifice time or energy or product quality.
What it does mean is that you’re going to shift your resources to the option that pushes the market towards eco-friendly alternatives - which could be better and even cheaper than what you’re buying now.
But trying to figure out how to make eco-friendly choices is exhausting - which is why I want Earthling to take that burden off of you by doing all the research for you and compiling it into an upcoming Practical Person’s Guide to Eco-Friendly Living. I want this Guide to make it SO EASY to make eco-friendly choices that it becomes a zero-stress thing for you.
I’m compiling the Guide bit-by-bit, and today I’m posting a walkthrough of the SUPER EASY steps 1 and 2 of your #greenup process:
Step 1: Your Household Shopping List
Please, if the idea of spending minimal time, money, and effort to help effect huge steps toward sustainable industry intrigues you, go take a look at these posts and circle back for more of the golden nuggets I’m compiling in the Guide. You can also sign up for notifications or follow me on Instagram to hear when more is posted.
Green living should be easy - and I’m trying to do my part to make it so.
in the big picture . . .
This post is a teaser. A push. If I can help make it easy for visitors to this site to make eco-friendly consumer choices, maybe that can compound to make a real difference.
I hope this gave you a peek at the role you can play in creating a sustainable future.
Ready to start saving the world?