“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur…. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens – and when it happens, it lasts.” ~ John Wooden
The debut of "Little Gray" as part of the Sea Life Aquarium's "Beach Trash: A Whale of a Problem" [Photo courtesy of Green Diary
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post to help put our litter into perspective. At the end of the post, I listed a few ways for people to minimize their environmental impact. Today, I want to focus on the people who have made a change in their every day lives and thus have become stewards of the environment.
These people did not grow up as vegetarians, nor did they only have tie-dyed clothing. Like you and I, they bathed regularly, drove cars or took public transportation, held jobs, bought coffees in the morning and lived a regular life. One day they each decided to make a change, but couldn’t see how they could “give everything up” at once. So to make it easier, they each decided to challenge themselves to either a) make one environmental change a day, no matter how small, and stick with it; or b) make one challenging change and figure out how to uphold it for the year.
Having kept up tabs on a number of environmental bloggers and websites off and on since 2007, the ones that have impacted me the most are the ones posted by people who are making concrete changes. People like No Impact Man, Envirowoman, and Green As a Thistle, just to name a few, were blogging about what their challenges were from day to day. They told of the triumphs and pitfalls along their journeys towards a sustainable lifestyle. They provided tips and ideas, lead by example and through their exploration of environmental idea(l)s, helped people make real change in their own individual lives. Today, there are many many many more people blogging and sharing their inspirations online and I encourage you to check them out. Of the three I mentioned, No Impact Man is the only one that is still being updated regularly and I encourage you to check out his blogroll for more resources and to find someone who can inspire you to make small changes everyday.
I revisited Envirowoman’s blog today for the first time in a year, and from her, I bring to you the Ecological Footprint Quiz. Living the way you currently do, what is your ecological footprint? Mine is 2.77.
It may seem odd that I’m posting about changing one’s lifestyle on a blog focused on shoreline litter, marine debris and community cleanups, but living a sustainable lifestyle and becoming more green are not isolated actions that people take. Everything is interconnected.
Most of the litter found along shorelines and in waterways originates from land and land-based activities. This means that we are the ones who can control the litter that we find along our shorelines. We may not be intentionally littering our shorelines, but the amount of litter that results from our current lifestyles need to go somewhere.
Here’s a video of Sea Life Aquarium’s “Beach Trash: A Whale of Problem,” a project that highlights how shoreline litter affects the ocean and the importance of their individual and collective contribution.
