Earth Day

[musings]

Celebrating the Earth Day 2020 amidst the lockdown is perspicacious of the fact that our footprints have grown more significant than what the earth can contain. The instability that human interferences can cause to the fundamental functioning of the planet is primarily a result of the neoliberal way of organising societies and its needs. Such realisation comes in the wake of human causality due to the spread of a virus that originated in one part of the world but has spread everywhere. Such a situation is bound to stir up some emotions, but we mustn't let this time of crisis go in vain. It is time to give some thoughts to understand this spread and undo our mistakes to make earth resilient again.

The first thing is to reduce the unnecessary use of plastic. I don't like the packaged vegetables sold off the shelves at the supermarkets. It comes with a warning that transparent film is not recycled. Then why put unnecessary pressure by producing and using something that we cannot recycle. My second observation is that we must reduce food miles, and by that logic, one must eat the food that is produced locally. By consuming what is grown locally, we save so much carbon emission that gets accumulated within the environment. These are two things that I am going to practice myself.

[cathm]

Hi @musings 

I try to reduce my use of plastic and eat locally grown food as much as possible.  

[SunsetRunner]

With the shelter in place order, I find myself re-visiting some of my mother’s and grandmother’s ideas from the Depression. If I do use a plastic bag, I wash and reuse it. Hubby and I have found we were wasteful with our use of all paper products. We cut back on TP use, don’t use paper towel unless desperate, and cut our napkins in half.  A soapy dish cloth can take the place of paper towels most of the time. And I switched to glass food storage containers ... easier to clean than the plastic ones ... they last longer ... and best of all, we can easily see what’s inside so there is less food waste.