Posted on January 9, 2018 by Dhruvi Meel
If you just try hard enough
How many times for the writing section in the English and Hindi exam papers have you written articles, essays and letters to the editors on sustainable development and its scope in our lives? Not enough times to actually carry it out in your own lives. So here is one more person paying for all our mistakes by writing another long article. But I’ll make it easier for all of us by turning this into a much needed reality check. It is 2018, it’s high time we stopped kidding ourselves, woke up and smelled the goddamned coffee. If you cannot handle harsh reality, I suggest you stop reading this buy/build yourself a time machine and go back to the Neanderthal age. For the rest of us, buckle up for a ride.
Sometimes I wonder if life systems on other planets and galaxies look at us and have inside jokes and stand up acts running on how stupid we are as a species. We have this huge star in our solar system around which we continue revolving year after year. Its rays are so powerful that even after being filtered by the layers of atmosphere they still have the potential to cause significant damage. And what do we do to utilize this energy source? We invent sun screen and rose tinted sunglasses. So that we put these on and believe that life is in fact rosy. Newsflash it isn’t and neither is it going to be if we keep skipping and turning over those public service announcements telling us to install solar panels and switch to the more sustainable form of energy.
As an entire race I feel like we produce waste to directly match or override the waste we are in the name of contributors to the environment. A landfill is supposed to be a crater/hole/cavity that can be filled with waste to level it but instead landfills for us now look like tiny hills.
Many sites in and around Delhi and other metropolitan cities have been used beyond capacity to dump the waste we continue to churn out. The solution is to turn to practices that minimize the production of waste and to start thinking about recycling and reusing the waste. The kitchen garden mom plants that we are so quick to bring into conversation whenever someone drops the word environment. But have never actually helped tend to, that garden is one of the very efficient ways to use up kitchen generated waste. Recycle plastic or find other alternatives to it (take cue from the Rajasthan Govt. who banned plastic bags in 2010).
Take a leaf from M.K. Gandhi’s books by being the change you’d like to see in the world. There are so many organizations working tirelessly to bring sustainable products into the mainstream from making recyclable cutlery to making paper from recycled papers. One such organization that I recently came across is 21 Fools. They’ve come up with ‘Kyaari’, a calendar made of paper that can be planted. Each month is a new plant so that by the end of the year you have a kyaari of plants.
Source: 21fools.com
As we begin another year, I request you to not make a resolution but instead make a lifestyle change to make sure you are slowly but surely turning to a more sustainable way of living. What will be our legacy if the next generation does not have any trees left to make posters with our beautiful faces printed on them? Consider this a PSA pleading to the vanity thriving in all of us.
And if by some miracle this article has provoked you to include more sustainable alternatives in your daily lives then check out www.ripple-effect.in. For fashion accessories that make you feel environmentally responsible head over to https://lifaffa.com/. If you are one of our woke readers and know of some other organization/product that more people should know of do spread the word in the comments!
About The Author
I read books, I finish reading books, I feel sad about finishing the book so I read more books to fill up that void. I also snack in between, make puns and try to survive the horror movie we call life.