BLOG TEXT #5
How to become active and improve your carbon HANDprint along with those around you?
In all of our previous texts on this blog, we have always labelled the EcoFootprint Romania Project as a space promoting education and ecological awareness. In its very essence, this assessment is correct – our project deals with the enhancement of eco-awareness and produces products and events that help this in an educational manner. However, while education is a key element in understanding both the ecological problems we are currently facing and their intensity, education by itself does not necessarily result in a more sustainable world. In other words, education must give birth to action, and while the intensity and scope of it will depend on you and those around you specifically, it is important to remember that every step and every action counts towards a more sustainable life and towards the health of our planet.
The ecological action, or action towards a more sustainable world that we described above can be put into two categories: individual and collective action. Individual action refers to changes in your own lifestyle only, while collective action can be described as a lifestyle change that impacts a certain group of people, which can be anything from a group of friends to an international company. Before we describe these two groups of action in more detail with examples provided, let us quickly review the meaning of the ecological and carbon footprints and handprints, as these will be essential in our understanding of any type of ecological action.
The ecological and carbon footprints measure the negative impact that a person or a group of people have on the environment. This impact can include energy usage, amount of waste created, emissions one is responsible for, among others. The ecological footprint is a more general overview of this negative impact, encompassing all possible impacts, while the carbon footprint relates specifically to carbon-related impacts, or greenhouse gas emissions. The ecological and carbon handprints, on the other hand, measure our positive impact on the environment and serve as a tool that encapsulates whether our lifestyle changes have actually led to a more sustainable lifestyle. In every situation, one must analyse their ecological foot- and handprints to see whether the positives outweigh the negatives. The intention should always be to have a larger hand- than footprint, but we understand that this can be very difficult in our current society.
To circle back to our discussion of individual and collective ecological action, let us start with some examples of individual action. The term individual ecological action encompasses all lifestyle changes that result in you using less of the resources that the Earth offers and causing less harm to our planet. This can entail small changes, such as switching off the lights when you leave a room, making sure the taps are closed when not in use, timing your showers so that you don’t waste too much water, or only purchasing local, organic products. There are also options for larger changes, which may have a larger impact on your ecological handprint (not to say that the small changes are not important!) – for example, starting a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle, or switching from your car to exclusively use transport methods which harm the environment less significantly. In fact, your transport choices may have the greatest effect on your carbon foot- and handprints. Cars are extremely harmful to our planet, as their operation requires massive quantities of non-renewable energy resources and produces a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions. If we all made the switch from cars to bicycles or at least to public transport, we would make our planet suffer much less.
With this in mind, we can turn our attention towards collective action. Collective action is almost always rooted in a single or multiple individual actions, which are spread around a group of people through the power of education, or the joint concern and understanding of ecological issues. In other words, collective action often arises from a person discovering an individual method of enhancing their ecological or carbon handprint and then shares this knowledge with a certain group of people around them, who also adopt this action into their lifestyle. This is what collective action looks like mostly in families, households or friend groups. The other method of popularising a collective method is through activism. This activism does not necessarily equate to joining eco-friendly groups or participating in demonstrations (although that also qualifies as collective action), activism in this case can also mean advocating for a sustainable lifestyle change in a more professional setting (your workplace or university, etc.). For example, you can achieve a positive impact on your company’s foot- and handprints by advocating for more vegetarian or vegan options at the cafeteria. While some of your colleagues might still prefer the options entailing meat, some might consider choosing the meat-free option – and by that, you as a collective would reduce the negative impact of the meat industry on you.
To conclude, the two most important things one should always remember when discussing the topic of ecology is that firstly, education and action are both incredibly important and secondly, any ecological action (small or big) can have a great positive impact on the environment and our planet. Whether you take individual action to reduce your own ecological footprint while improving your ecological handprint, or you advocate for a collective action to those around you, your contribution matters significantly. We are all in this together and together we can make meaningful change!
Zoard Honeczy