⭐ be 'big picture' eco-conscious
This morning in an Airbnb magazine I saw a picture of a trash-filled beach in Bali. It was accompanied by a plea to adopt a zero-waste lifestyle by doing things like rejecting single-use plastics and replacing them with reusable water bottles and the like. This got me thinking, since I like to consider myself at least somewhat eco-conscious (in intention), even if I haven't made many radical lifestyle changes to prove it.
Later, I had to drive more than an hour (round trip) to a doctor's appointment that only took a few minutes and could easily have been replaced with a video call (or even an email), which made me think about all the ways we are wasteful without knowing it. When discussing our ecological footprint, we often talk about things like living a zero-waste lifestyle or going vegan. But we seldom talk about the waste generated by things like unnecessary in-person appointments, pointless business trips, or meetings that could have been emails. While this type of mindful wastefulness isn't as easy to diagnose, glamorize, or solve, it still burns huge quantities of resources: just my innocuous appointment today wasted a few gallons of gasoline and even more crucially, hours of my (and others') time.
To be clear, I still intend on making changes in my life to get closer to a zero-waste lifestyle and a vegan diet, but it's important not to fixate too much on the small things and lose sight of the big picture. There's ways we can all waste less, even if they don't fit neatly into today's trends.