10a. Turn your personal climate efforts into political climate efforts with 3 easy steps
Buy organic. Bring your own bag. Go vegan. Go zero waste. Buy solar panels. Shorter showers. Take public transport. Avoid palm oil.
Neoliberalism has tricked us into fighting climate change as individuals, while the systemic problems, the use-and-throw-away-culture, go unresolved, and the most guilty of ecocide, like Big Oil, go unscathed.
But it doesn’t have to be either/or. You can turn your personal efforts into climate activism in 3 steps. The keyword is “share”. If you share your effort with a company, organisation or local government and ask them to also take responsibility for the planet, that transforms your personal effort into climate activism. Even just sharing your efforts with friends and family or in facebook groups is multiplying the potential impact of your efforts. Doing good is good, but doing good and influencing others to also do good, is even better.
The 3 steps are the following:
- Take a picture of yourself doing your climate effort
- Pick a company or organisation to target
- Post the picture to their facebook page (or send it in an email) with a text, asking them when they will take responsbility for the planet.
Here are some examples:
“Hello Rema1000, we are a group of customers who enjoy shopping in your supermarked. …We write to ask if it is possible to include nutritional yeast in your product range. … We would love to buy it if it was available in the shop.”
“Hello KitKat. Every week I take a walk in my neighbourhood and collect trash along the sidewalk, and very often I find KitKat wrappers among the trash. Plastic takes years to break down in nature and it oftens ends up as microplastic in our rivers and oceans, contributing to the global ecological crisis. Also, only 55% of plastic can be recycled, and this single-use-packaging is a waste of resources, and contributing to the climate crisis. It would be great if you could make your wrapping out of a biodegrable material, and/or a material that is 100% recyclable. I hope you will help take responsibility for the planet we all live on.”
“Hello Rema1000. I try to buy as little plastic wrapping as possible when shopping as possible. This limits how much single-use plastic is produced. Plastic takes years to break down in nature and it oftens ends up as microplastic in our rivers and oceans, contributing to the global ecological crisis. Also, unlike other types of packaging, only 55% of plastic can be recycled, and this single-use-packaging is a waste of resources, and contributing to the climate crisis. It would be great if you could sell more products with packaging that is either biodegrable, recyclable or even without packaging. I hope you will help take responsibility for the planet we all live on.”
“Hi Maersk. When I was a child I did not like biking. However, as an adult, as I became more and more aware of how transport emissions contribute to the climate crisis, and so I switched to bikes. You are one of the 100 companies who are responsible for 70% of global emissions. It is time you take responsibility for our planet, and reduce your carbon footprint, like the rest of us are trying to do.”