Earth Day 2022 – Invest in Our Planet
What are you doing this Earth Day to make a difference?
If you have never heard of Earth Day and you have no idea what it is then you aren’t alone, so don’t feel bad. Pop over to the Earth Day website www.earthday.org which explains this years April 22nd Earth Day far better than I can in this short blog post.
To try to give you a basic summary, their mission is to diversify, educate and activate the environmental movement worldwide, working with over 150,000 partners in over 192 countries to drive positive action for our planet. As their website states “This is the moment to change it all — the business climate, the political climate, and how we take action on climate. Now is the time for the unstoppable courage to preserve and protect our health, our families, our livelihoods… together, we must Invest In Our Planet. Because a green future is a prosperous future.”
There are hundreds of Earth Day 2022 events happening online or in person all over the world that anyone can get involved in so again take a look at their website to see what is happening in your area that might be of interest, you could join in with a meat free Friday for example or take part in a group cycle to work event.
I imagine most of us will be in agreement with the Earth Day mission and the moment to change things being now – but in practical terms it is often hard to know how to actually make a difference or to change things or to ‘invest in our planet’.
Earth Day 2022 is officially April 22nd, however in reality I consider every day to be an Earth Day. By starting to think about the environmental impact and ripple effect of what you spend your money on before you actually part with your cash you are taking the first step towards ‘investing in our planet’. Simple.
Let me try to explain this. The minute you stop and think about what you are spending your money on and actually consider the bigger picture and impact of spending it, and how by spending your money on a particular product or service you are ‘voting with your wallet’, then the strapline ‘invest in our planet’ becomes more easily understood.
Let’s take the simple act of buying a cup of coffee (take away or not) from a high street chain as an example, each time you spend your hard earned cash with them you are voting with your wallet, investing in the way they do business, and are supporting their whole operation from their supply chain, to their values, to their ethics, and to the impact they ultimately have on the planet.
There are many things that would never cross our minds during such a simple act as ordering our usual latte, and it isn’t really our fault that we don’t consider them, but as we become more aware of the damage we have inflicted on our planet and the impact a relatively simple act can have then it becomes our responsibility to start spending more wisely and carefully, and to consider the vote we are casting when we spend.
Let’s take the cup of coffee example once more, the way to ‘invest in our planet’ and vote with our wallet and reduce our impact isn’t necessarily to stop buying coffee altogether (although our waistline and wallet may say otherwise), the answer instead is to stop our auto pilot consumption habit and start to consider who we are buying from and what we are buying. By choosing an independent coffee shop for example who carefully sources ethical, fairtrade, sustainable coffee that does not contribute to deforestation, does not offer single use takeaway cups, and considers its environmental impact, you are voting for their operation over a big conglomerate who puts profit before everything else. You have effectively invested in an operation which puts the planet and ethics before profit and in doing so have ‘invested in our planet’.
We can all do something this Earth Day, and every other day, to consider our environmental impact and make simple changes to make a difference.
Every business has so much scope and opportunity to make a difference. Earth Day is a great trigger for every business to consider its own environmental impact and start planning changes to allow it to ‘invest in our planet’.
