How have things changed in our lives?
Over the last few months, we have seen our priorities change drastically. My zero waste journey, unfortunately took a hit. When we are concerned about our basic necessities, our personal health and safety, things like environment, carbon footprint, sustainability take a backseat. This is because we are busy trying to survive and everything else is low priority. I have felt guilty while making choices that I usually would not make, but I have also decided to accept, introspect and incorporate small meaningful changes into my daily life.
Is it time to slow down?
The past 4-5 of lock-down months have made us realize that we don’t require a lot of things to survive and be content with ourselves. This is also what sustainability stands for.
We are conditioned to feel happy by materialistic things- a pretty new dress, using the latest gadget or the best food in town. Let me clarify before one assumes, none of this is wrong. It is rude to judge someone by the choices they make to stay happy and sane. So, please wear your favourite dress and indulge in the best food in town. However, if these are the only things that keep you happy and you compulsively indulge your senses to feel good, it would become a vicious cycle of exploiting resources to feed our lack of self awareness.
Slowing down our life is a beautiful thing. In the process, we pause the never ending loop of distracting ourselves and indulging our senses. We respect what we have, we are thoughtful of buying, spending and consuming and it becomes easier to weave in sustainability to our lifestyle.
This is my humble attempt to put forward some suggestions on how to practise sustainability during these times. Here are my two cents:
1. Buy consciously. Buy necessities and what gives you pure joy!
2. Focus on re-usables instead of disposables and be kinder to Mother Earth.
3. Reuse and Re-purpose what you have.
4. Buy LOCAL and support local employment.
Please read through our blogs on different topics about sustainability and environment and how to adopt sustainable practices on a day-to-day basis!
Love
Ecolove-India Team