Become Earth’s friend #1
Well, well, well, here is my fourth blog post in a row! I must say, I am pretty proud of myself for this (and yes, I do like to praise myself when I accomplish something, and so should you! So here is my command of the day: praise yourself for something you have accomplished today, it can also just be to have gotten out of bed! This can be a massive accomplishment already - so, as much as it is about you praising yourself, also from me to you, well done!)
And I am already digressing, well done Clara >.<
Can you tell I have ADHD yet? Hehe
Back to the point: becoming Earth’s friend. What do you mean by that, Clara? In my personal opinion, practicing self-care is also taking care of our environment, and that includes our beautiful planet.
It always makes me laugh when I hear jingles or promos such as ‘I now buy food in bulk, and that is my contribution for the planet.’ Now, there are a few elements in this sentence that I struggle with:
I seriously hope this is not the only thing you intend to do; every step counts, don’t get me wrong, but there are so many things you can do, and as tricky it can be to change certain habits (although, could that be a limiting belief that we carry around? What if we actually believed that habits are easily changed? What possibilities would that open? I’ll let you meditate on that), I do believe that each of us has a responsibility in humanity’s future and I hope everyone strives to make better choices.
Have you noticed that I insisted on humanity’s future and not the planet’s, as is implied in the afore-mentioned jingle? Something many people seem to struggle to understand is that the planet will absolutely survive everything we make it go through; humanity, on the other hand, might not. Our planet knows how to defend itself; sure, some species might die in the process, which is dreadful, but others will appear as a result, and our planet is perfectly capable of creating a brand new ecosystem (it already has). Our ecological efforts, therefore, are not completely relative to the planet’s future, but it is to our survival and to the survival of our descendants. Trust me, when the planet will have had enough of dealing with our foolish behaviours, it’ll find a way to sweep humanity off the face of the Earth.
Now, I am aware that this does not sound very optimistic, but I thought it might be necessary to clarify that our behaviour is actually mostly detrimental to us and our current ecosystem.
BUT there are things we can do to change this (like buying food in bulk, for instance).
Here are some tips I would like to give you that will cost you nothing (or almost); now, how fun does that sound?
Ecosia
Let me present to you one of the best search engines out there: Ecosia.
The way Ecosia works is, for every 45 searches or so made on the search engine, a tree is planted to fight deforestation; pretty cool, right? And Ecosia has now expanded its activity to multiple other projects all in relation to supporting the environment. It also uses the revenue generated by ads through our searches to fund some of those projects. Furthermore, Ecosia does not sell any of your personal data to third parties, in case you were worried about confidentiality!
Now, the search engine is still being improved constantly to expand the search results; occasionally, I go back to Google search if I do not find what I need, but I have already noticed a massive improvement in the number of search results I get on Ecosia in the last few years. Also, you might be surprised how quickly you can complete 45 searches. They have also developed an app! So you can complete even more searches to plant trees on the go! How exciting is that? So, if you haven’t yet installed Ecosia, what are you waiting for?
Ecosia website: https://www.ecosia.org/
AmazonSmile
Okay. Amazon is not the best website to use for ethical purposes, there is no doubt about it.
However, have you ever heard of its cousin/brother/whatever you want to call it?
Smile.amazon.com is a sub-service that allows you to choose a charity you want to support through your purchases, so, as much as it is not entirely free since you have to order something to do so, you are funding a charity without spending more, which I do find pretty darn cool. My personal choice has been WWF, as it is an organisation I have been following for over a decade and that I genuinely believe in.
If you are in the UK, here is the link for this sub-service: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/
Switching your energy provider to a sustainable one
Talking from my experience of living in London, it has been incredibly easy for me to switch to a Green energy provider. I just went on a comparison website (probably comparethemarket.com) to see what my options were: switching to a renewable energy provider ended up being cheaper than what we had been paying in my flatshare previously, and also proved extremely easy. The one we went with is PurePlanet, but there are multiple different ones available nowadays. I was initially scared that they might need to come and do some works to change the electricity system in the property, very naively, but there was absolutely none of that! They do not need to come round to your place or do anything fancy to switch, it is all done automatically! How cool is that?
This is definitely something I am recommending you look into, you could be charged less than you currently are, as well as adding to your ‘contribution for the planet’ (…) in doing so, I only see benefits right there!
And that’s it for my ramble of the day; I do hope you have found some of this useful, and I look forward to sharing some more tips on the topic in the future!
Sending you all lots of hugs and love xx
Clara