Credit to Cambridge Institute of Sustainable Leadership
Both Cambridge and Oxford dictionaries define restore as a way to return something to a previous good condition or position; or “to bring back into use something that has been absent for a period of time”.
But we can only restore something if we acknowledge it has been deteriorated. As mentioned in my first post, Beginning, recent global warming has been caused by Anthropocene’s activity. Although these past 14 months economic activity has dropped deeply, emissions have only dropped slightly as a large amount of activity became digital, accelerating the digital transformation that many organisations were reluctant to join more significantly. As brick-and-mortar shops closed to contain contagium, the transport induced emissions increased due to a higher adoption of Covid-19 safer home deliveries. In some places electric delivery vehicles surged. A good time to show remote workers some of their products were sustainably delivered, but it hasn’t been enough.
As the Earth day approaches and lockdowns started to ease, which action are you taking from Earth’s day onwards to also contribute to #RestoreourEarth? Well, in case you haven’t thought of one, and haven’t become aware of your carbon footprint, I recommend you to use the carbon FOOTPRINT CALCULATOR (henkel.com) from Henkel, analyse your results. At the end you’ll find your footprint in comparison to the European Average, the Global average and the target carbon footprint, giving you an opportunity to think how much you need to change the unsustainable actions by sustainable ones and influence the people around you. This carbon footprint calculator contributes to a research #Henkel is doing with the aim of providing more sustainable goods in the near future. According to Henkel, the collected information remains anonymous.
Once your awareness has increased, you should consider some new sustainable habits to improve your Carbon footprint. (You may want to watch this 2015’s Nasa video showing a year of Carbon dioxide and monoxide emissions across the globe: NASA | A Year in the Life of Earth’s CO2 – YouTube).
Remember that to be sustainable means that resources are used efficiently, with reduced extraction and longer usage, allowing future generations to also access and use it. You can do so by:
- Reusing – stop the single use of all items which don’t convey a health risk.
- Repairing so it can be used for longer (a good example can be an electric equipment that only needs its engine to be repaired, allowing a longer usage and less plastic or steel to be produced and consequently less GHG emissions released);
- enable its Reincorporation in other manufacturing processes;
- Recycling and contributing to a longer lifecycle.
Reduce the resources to be consumed and contribute to restore our planet! Remember that not all food locally produced suggests an adoption of a sustainable production method. Also, bear in mind, that less usage means less extraction, which consequently means less disturbance to ecosystems and higher biodiversity. The latter is at risk of huge loss with subsequent great impact in our wellbeing, if we don’t limit global warming to 1.5º C.
SustainAbility in Habit 