Being consciously environmentally friendly is not as easy as one thinks. I started my journey into the sustainability and environmental industry in 2017 with little to no help. I plowed through as much information as I could find, bad or good. This includes all things how the capitalistic industry is messing up our world without care of what they have done is actually a lie. It’s only recently that I realized plastic is not the enemy.
The (Wrong) Alternative
Articles after articles showed me that plastic is evil and paper is good. However something never really sat well with me internally – our way of consumption. It didn’t seem right that we replace all plastic materials with paper when the carbon cost of the alternative is much higher than what it is replacing. It’s not sustainable because the energy used to produced paper does not justify its usage. Even your tote bags. Plastic is not the enemy.
Then I posted a cry for help on Linkedin, to seek expert advise to demystify the sustainability world as I felt deep down something was missing. Such as the consumption of plastic being a growing trend, with Tetrapak packaging for water as an alternative to plastic bottle. Personally it is the worst move to make in the battle to save ourselves – I’m not longer saying the planet. The planet will be here even if it is totally uninhabitable, it’s just that WE can’t live on it. Read that again;
We’re saving ourselves, not the planet. Make no mistake in this war for sustainability for our survival, not the planet.
The Help
It was then a Chris DeArmitt replied with a link to his podcast reaffirming what I’ve been thinking all the while but wasn’t clear of it till now: it isn’t the material such as plastic that is bad, but the way we consume it that is bad. Note this is purely my interpretation of his findings. I’ll skip the recap of the podcast as you should really listen to it but our action is clear:
- We continue the search for plastic alternatives.
- We find ways to go around how we consume, as regardless of what we choose to replace plastic there’s always a bi-product to be considered.