Your road to Greenlane…
Apparently, lot more people are becoming conscious about sustainable living. Kudos to the emerging focused groups, awareness programmes and meet ups that happen globally every year. Whether to reduce plastic pollution or try to work on inner wellness, individuals are relatively more concerned regarding the actions they take, that in turn is a small step towards creating a large impact. But if you are the one who wants to be actively involved and contribute but lack a sense of direction on where to start, here’s my take -
Realise what’s feasible
Assuming that you’re someone who is taking his first step into a better direction of leading life, start with realising what’s needed and what’s feasible for you as an individual or group. For e.g If we talk about waste management, as an individual you can take measures like properly recycling your waste, avoiding consumption of non degradable materials like plastic that goes into waste per day, or even start producing less waste. On the other side, as a community or group, you can deal with larger issues like better waste management for your locality or identifying areas near you where garbage is dumped and solving that collaboratively with community support .
Originate discussions
Following the realisation, moving forward, as a next step, start initiating conversations and discussions with people in your personal network. If you live in an apartment or a gated community, reach out to your neighbours and other people from same complex and talk about it. Not everyone is conscious about living sustainably. It starts with educating people, having discussions and actively being involved to counter issues like water conservation, plastic pollution etc in order to lead a cleaner, greener life. More of what defines you, comes from the environment you live in. Use this as an opportunity to build a healthy ecosystem for yourself and future generations. One such platform that helps you discuss everything around sustainable living is GreenLane. To give you a glimpse, GreenLane helps you be more connected and have conversations with people who share the same views as you, regarding sustainable living. Do try it here.
Act
As per legendary saying and it’s true — your actions speaks more than your words. If you really want to create an impact, start acting. Without this everything falls apart. Start with small actions — For e.g. start growing vegetables either on your terrace or balcony or any other place you have access to. Consuming organic food is equally important for sustainability. Reuse waste water from water purifiers for gardening or watering trees. Even eating less meat have direct and indirect benefits. Start pooling to commute or use clean energy equipped vehicles if available. The more you can contribute in smaller ways, the more it will help reduce the overall carbon footprint. A small impact always lead to a larger change. After all, we have to take actions to address the mayhem we have created round the globe either it’s climate change or increasing death reports of marine species due to plastics found in oceans.
Acknowledge the change
What’s equally important as the actions you take is to measure and acknowledge the impact of your actions. What’s better than realising that you’re on a path that’s affecting your life positively? If you’re shifting your diet to consume more organic food, observe the health changes. If you’re consuming less resources and moving towards using renewable energy sources, notice the difference in your overall utility bills. It will not only inspire you to become even more conscious, but also it will give you sense of achievement and satisfaction for your contribution towards the society and a vision of creating more sustainable planet.
Let others know about your actions
Positive actions are always contagious. It feels great, when other people admire your actions and in a little way, they too can feel inspired by looking at your contributions towards the society. But for that to happen, your actions need to be visible to people around you. Talk to people about the actions you take in order to live more sustainably. Share your small achievements on social media. Let the people who follow you, know what you’re upto. That will at least drive them to consider a path towards sustainable living and influence the society in a positive way, like you do.
Although these are essentially the main how-to’s, but ofcourse thats not all. Ideally, you should be in constant loop of practicing, encouraging and discussing things around sustainable living. I would definitely recommend you to become an active contributor and seeker on GreenLane — a community that helps you discuss things with other people around sustainability in a very forward and conversational manner. The platform is highly oriented to serve people like you to come together and solve holistically the problems we face around sustainable living. I would also like to encourage you to share this platform with friends and family, if that helps you in any possible way -GreenLane
On the closing note, I would just like to quote this -
If you want to change the world, change the world. Don’t settle
Remember, the actions you take would inspire other people, directly or indirectly. Just take that next step towards sustainable living. Go Green!!!
