The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

— Edmund Burke.

In previous sections, we’ve talked about how we desperately need systemic changes, and in particular changes in the way corporations do business.

And it’s absolutely correct to focus on the damage large companies have done to our planet. One only has to look at the damage caused by state oil company Pemex, which managed to set the freaking’ ocean on fire, to see that there’s a problem.

But it’s not just corporations — small- to medium-sized businesses have environmental impacts too.

And what are businesses, but organizations made up of people? People like you and me?

Sure, you might not be a CEO, or in the C-Suite at all, or even at the middle-management level. But even if you’re just a cog in the proverbial machine, you do have a voice. And it’s time we all started using our voices at work.

Here are some ideas for using yours. Remember to frame your suggestions or push for changes in a way that demonstrates the benefits to the organization:

• Sit down with a pencil and paper (or your phone, or whatever) and start thinking objectively about how you do your job. Are there ways to make it cleaner and greener? (For example, if you are a courier, are you shutting down your vehicle when you make a delivery or are you leaving it to idle? What would happen if turning it off was company policy? How much pollution would that remove from the equation? How much would it save the company in fuel costs?)
• Think too, about your section, unit, division, department, or whatever they’re called in your company. Maybe your specific job is pretty clean and green, but what about the bigger picture?
• What consumables is your organization constantly having to reorder? Could they be replaced with reusables? Or done away with completely?
• What happens to stuff that doesn’t get sold at your retail job? Does it get destroyed? Is it thrown in the dumpster? Can you push to have the stuff donated? Can you tally up how much the company is wasting and send a report up the chain?
• Are you in charge of ordering supplies? Can you influence what gets purchased? Can you push for more ecofriendly versions of the things you use regularly?
• What processes routinely produce a lot of waste in your company? Can you find a way to fix the process so it generates less waste in the first place? Can you find a way to reuse or recycle that waste?
• What’s energy use like where you work? Are people constantly leaving monitors and lights on? Leaving windows open while the heat is on? What solutions can you propose at the next staff meeting that would be more efficient and save the company money? Typically, posting signs around the office doesn’t work, but maybe having, for instance, the IT department implement a computer network power saving policy that shuts things down automatically might.

So, we’ve covered some basic actions we can take to improve things. These are generally safe to do, and might even be good for your career if you’ve done it in such a way as to demonstrate initiative and a willingness to help the company’s bottom line.

What about bad companies?

But what if you’re working for a company that is genuinely a bad actor rather than being merely careless? You know the kind: flouting regulations, dumping illegally, not looking after the health and safety of its workers or its community. Or even just in an industry that’s been proven to be bad for people or the planet, even if they’re theoretically doing everything “by the book?” (Remember that old adage: Just because it’s legal, doesn’t mean it’s right.)

What you do in these cases largely depends on your financial situation, your conscience, what legal protections you have and so on.

If it’s safe for you to do so — that is, you believe you’re in a position to push for change without losing your job and imperiling your family in the process, you could make those suggestions. (Just remember that businesses might demand loyalty, but rarely give it back, so assume you’re not truly secure).

If it’s not safe for you do so, then your priority should be to find a way to leave the job. Yes, leave it. You don’t have to be part of the problem. (And if you’re a young person just joining the workplace, don’t sign up to work for bad actors or industries in the first place.)

That might mean sacrificing evenings to attend night school and reskill; or if you already have transferable skills, start applying for new jobs; and getting your finances in order so you won’t be bankrupted (which is just a good idea anyway) by a change in, or complete loss of salary.

In other words, find a way to get off the treadmill that forces you to accept a status quo that is endangering us all.

Pulling in big bucks and being able to afford that house or nicer car won’t help you when your town sets temperature records and then burns to the ground, or when there are food shortages because you have a record-setting plague of mice.

And while I would never suggest that anyone break the law, I will say that whistleblowers are key to getting corporations and systems to reform. Fortunately, for anyone contemplating blowing a whistle on the activities of their organization, there are lots of articles freely available online on how to do so and protect yourself.

There are even search engines like DuckDuckGo that don’t track your activities, or special browsers like Tor, which helps you stay anonymous online. And there are a lot of news organizations that have anonymous tip boxes available too.

Drive through any city, and you’ll see suburban houses with neat and tidy gardens out front, probably a decent number of tree-lined streets, and maybe some veggie plots. All looks pretty “green” in the environmentalist sense, right?

Possibly not.

There are a number of problems with modern urban landscaping, and these issues are contributing to — not improving — habitat degradation, biodiversity loss, and surprisingly, air quality problems.

Let’s start with habitat.

(And yes, this includes those plants you have on your balcony)

Garden centres, nurseries, and landscaping contractors sell ornamental plants based on two factors: how easy they are to look after, and how pretty they are.

But unless those plants are ‘native’ to your region, they’re almost useless to your local wildlife.

(As is your veggie garden, because you work to keep those “pest” free. Which is reasonable, so let’s keep this about ornamental plants.)

Butterflies, for example, require certain host plants on which to lay their eggs and to eat as caterpillars. As adults, they need other plants to feed on.

Now, you might be thinking that no bugs is not such a bad thing, because who wants a lot of creepy crawlies around? And bug-chewed plants aren’t super attractive.

Well, all of the other plants that need pollinators (including food crops!) want those bugs around. As do all the birds, frogs, toads, and other insects that eat those bugs. And certainly all the creatures that eat birds, frogs, toads, and bigger insects need something to dine on too.

To put it another way, imagine if you were surrounded by buffets that either had completely empty trays, or were only filled with things that you were allergic to (or just can’t stand to eat). That’s what your garden looks like if doesn’t have any native plants in it.

Worse, some of the plants that are sold in stores can be ‘invasive.’ That is, they escape the garden and get established in the wild. There, they can sometimes flourish, outcompeting native plants and destroying habitat. They do this by seeds (which can be relocated miles way by birds or wind); cuttings or through a weed pull where the debris isn’t baked by the sun or composted into mush; through ‘runners;’ or rhizomes. So, even if that invasive plant looks like it’s behaving itself and staying put, it probably isn’t.

Which brings us to biodiversity loss.

If we’re losing bugs and the things that feed on them, we’re reducing the biodiversity of the ecosystem. What that means in plain English is that the whole system becomes a lot more fragile. When you have lots of different bugs, and plants, and animals, and birds, one single disease, or one food source reduction isn’t going to turn the whole area into a desert for you too. The fewer creatures you have in your system, the more vulnerable the whole thing is.

What was that about air quality? Surely plants, which are key to the carbon cycle, sucking down CO2 and breathing out oxygen, are good for air quality?

Yes, it’s true, we definitely need more plants, and trees especially, to put carbon back into the earth. But unfortunately, urban planners have been favouring male trees for a very long time (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/how-urban-planners-preference-for-male-trees-has-made-your-hay-fever-worse). This is because female trees tend to shed seed pods and fruit, which costs money to clean up and looks messy in the meantime.

But what do male trees produce? Pollen. Lots, and lots of pollen.

So, we’ve developed a situation where we have way more male trees, so way more pollen in the air, and fewer female trees to catch the pollen. Is it any wonder your allergies have gotten worse?

You Can Do Something About This!

That’s the bad news. The good news? This is something you can definitely fix.

Let’s go back to your garden. Figure out what you have already, either by asking gardener friends, snapping pix with the iNaturalist app or using Google Lens, and getting identifications. (You might also have receipts you can look at, or you could ask for a local landscaping company to come and do an audit.)

If you have anything that identified as invasive in your area, target that stuff immediately. Pull it up, cut it down, stick everything in black garbage bags, do the bags up, and leave them in the sun to cook for several days. (Be sure to clean up seeds as much as possible). You want to make sure there isn’t any live material or seeds or cuttings that could spread once you dispose of it. Once it’s thoroughly cooked, you could compost it, or if you must, put it in the trash.

Next, target anything else that isn’t native and consider replacing it. Here’s where you can make use of free resources like your local library, your local state or provincial environmental departments, gardening groups, and horticultural societies. Or you can even do a search online for the term “plants (or trees, or shrubs) native to my area.” In some districts, enthusiasts have started “plant this, not that” lists, which give you similar looking plants to the ones you want to replace.

You don’t have to do everything all at once, of course, as time and money will be considerations. But here again, check out the free resources. Many libraries have started “seed libraries,” where you can “borrow” seeds in the spring to start plants and then you harvest seeds from your plant to take back to the library. There are almost certainly plant or seed exchanges where you live too.

A few words of caution. Be careful of plants labelled “native” or “pollinator friendly” in nurseries or garden centres, because they might not be. For example, “butterfly bush” does attract and feed butterflies, but it’s originally from Asia, and has been declared invasive in several regions of North America. I always take a list of what I want to buy with me, using those hard-to-remember Latin names, so I know I’m getting the real deal. There are also now nurseries specializing in native plants, so check their reputation and then you can shop for everything there with confidence.

And, if you have pets, make sure you’re not planting anything that would be toxic to them in places they access. Your veterinarian can likely point you to a list of things that are bad for cats and dogs.

What About My City Plantings?

This is something you can influence too. Get together with existing gardening and horticultural groups, and start pressuring city hall to adopt more “allergy friendly” and “native flora” planting policies. As always, see if you can find a way to make it about tax savings, property values, and quality of life. You don’t have to like the system, you can learn to work it!

NEXT POST: What’s Happening Where You Work?

The lawn as we know it is a fairly recent invention. You can find its origins in the manicured estates of the European aristocracy. Devoting acres of land to high maintenance turf was a way to flaunt your wealth. It meant you had so much land that you could take some out of crop production and devote it entirely to being decorative. And further, that you had the staff to maintain it to exacting standards.

The standard suburban turf grass lawn — green, neat, tidy — is still a status symbol. It implies that the owner is comfortably middle class or higher. It still requires staff to maintain it too: many a weekend is devoted to trimming, weeding, rolling, spraying, aerating, raking, watering, and fertilizing. If you are especially wealthy, you can afford specialized equipment for the job, or you can have a service in to all this work for you.

The lawn as a concept is so ubiquitous that some 128,000 square kilometres is devoted to it in the USA. According to NASA, that’s three times more acres of lawns than irrigated corn. 

Here’s the thing, though: from an ecological standpoint, that green lawn is a desert. Its also a huge contributor to carbon emissions. 

Let’s address the first point. We clip our lawns very short, so they don’t provide a decent habitat for anything but the smallest of ground dwelling insects. We’re careful to roll everything flat and fill in holes, so nothing dares burrow. We spray for “weeds” and eliminate any flowers for pollinators. We also don’t fancy bugs very much, so we kill grubs and other critters with pesticides.  So from a wildlife point of view, that’s tens of thousands of square kilometres that are essentially no longer habitable or food bearing.

As for carbon emissions, we can look at direct and indirect production. Most of us still use gas lawnmowers (and gas-powered weedwhackers and leaf blowers), which are highly inefficient. The US Environmental Protection agency (EPA) estimates that hour-for-hour, gas-powered lawn mowers produce 11 times as much pollution as a new car. The government of Canada suggests that a single lawn mower produces 48 kilograms of greenhouse gas in a season.

Oh, and they’re noisy and smelly!

Meanwhile, think of all the additional emissions generated to bring you: grass seed, weed killer, bug killer, and all the tools and machinery you use. While we’re at it, let’s think about how wasteful it is for every single household to have a dedicated lawn mowing machine. A number of lawnmower maintenance sites suggest that the average lawnmower is used for about 60 hours per year. That means it just sits around in your garage for 99.4% of the year.

Lawns are also water hogs. Landscape irrigation (lawn watering) is estimated to account for nearly 1/3 of residential water use, or an average of 27 billion litres every day (EPA). 

Finally, all those lawn chemicals contribute to waterway pollution and fertilizer run-off, which creates algae blooms that kill wildlife.

So, there’s very little to love about lawns. 

All of that said, it’s easy to see why we still have them. They’re ‘normal’ to us, because we grew up with them. Kids and dogs like playing on them. We like imposing order on our surroundings. 

How to make our lawns ‘greener’

Fortunately, there are a lot of easy fixes, many of which involve *less* work than what you’re doing.

• If you’re constrained by local bylaws or a homeowners association, and can’t (easily) change the composition of your lawn, you can still decarbonize by switching to electric mowers and tools. The latest generation of tools have enough power and torque to handle most lawns and there are even decent electric riding lawnmower options now. You could also shop around for a ‘green’ lawn service that uses electric machines. If you have a small lawn, you could also just use a reel mower. 
• On that note, you can call around to your local lawn service companies and ask if they use electric equipment (even if you already know they don’t and/or you can’t afford to use a service anyway). If they feel they’re losing potential customers by using fossil fuels, they might start decarbonizing their fleets.
• You can reduce or eliminate your fertilizer needs by adding nitrogen fixing plants to your lawn. Clover, for example, used to be standard in lawns until weed management chemicals killed them off. 
• Speaking of which, consider accepting imperfection, and give the weed killers a miss. If you must control weeds, switch to corn gluten application in the spring to stop most weeds from sprouting in the first place. 
• Get your lawn tested and investigate what local mycorrhizal fungi you should add to your lawn. These fungi have a symbiotic relationship with certain plant roots, and help plants absorb phosphorous, potassium, calcium, copper, and iron. They also help with water uptake.
• You can reduce or eliminate your water bill by setting up rain barrels to catch rain water and save it for dry days. You can also reduce evaporation by watering very early in the morning or late at night when it’s cooler. More water gets to the plants this way.
• Other water saving options include setting up ‘rain gardens’ and ‘grey water systems.’ A rain garden uses roof run-off and rain water to nourish water loving plants like lilies and reeds. Always use what’s native to your region. A grey water system reuses water from things like showers, sinks, washing machines and dishwashers. Be sure you’re using environmentally-friendly soaps and not dumping anything bad down the drain.
• You can also just let your grass go brown in peak summer heat. Grasses have a natural dormancy cycle they use to conserve nutrients, and they can generally stay that way for as much as a month. 
• If you have looser local regulations, consider over seeding with a regionally-appropriate “low mow” or “no mow” seed mixture. These produce short grasses and flowers that need only a few lawnmower passes per year, or sometimes none at all.
• You can reduce the total area of lawn you need to mow by planting native shrubs and trees.
• You can also convert sections of your lawn to native flower gardens. Or go all out and convert everything! It doesn’t have to be a meadow wild riot – it’s possible to have an orderly wildflower garden if that suits you more. 
• Finally, you might be able to get past local regulations by converting everything to food production. While this isn’t ideal from an ecology point of view, it does save on greenhouse emissions, and you get produce out of it, which will help you save on your grocery bill.

When we talk about cars — and transportation in general — we have to recognize that the benefits they offer are real, and that the solutions proffered by some environmentalists aren’t universally applicable or practical.

For example, the admonition to “just use a bike instead” only works if you:

• Are fit and healthy enough to use a bike
• It’s safe and reasonable to use a bike 
• You can afford the extra time it takes to get to destinations
• The weather conditions are reasonable

A single mother suffering from asthma, living in a smoggy city with long winters, is probably not going to be able to cycle to work very often, if at all. (To say nothing of bicycle theft being a very real problem!)

At the other end of the spectrum, driving electric is definition an option open to more people than ever before. It’s still fairly expensive to buy in, though, and again, it’s not universally available. And depending on how your local power supply is generated, it might not be the greenest option available… yet. 

So, let’s go over what you can do to be greener on the transportation front.

Easy and Cheap

The first recourse is simply: do it less! You can use your existing vehicles less often by:

• Grouping errands and trips and not giving into the temptation to just “run out for something”
• Changing up your standard routes. Are there ways to get where you’re going that are even slightly shorter? Involve less idling? Remember the law of numbers. Even if you only cut a couple of minutes off a trip, if it’s one you’re always making, those few minutes add up to significant savings over time.
• Skipping the drive thru. Unless your vehicle is newer and shuts off to avoid idling, you spew a lot of pollution (and waste a lot of money in gas over time) grabbing that morning coffee. Park and go in, or make something to go at home.
• Take public transit when you can
• And yes, walk or bike when you can
• Carpool when you can — including with your life partner. Two-vehicle families have become the norm, and you might not actually need two. 

When it’s Time to Replace the Car

• Buy only what you need. Take a hard look at how you actually use your existing vehicle. How many people do you have in it at any given time? How much cargo do you routinely transport? Where do you drive it? We get sold based on things like off-road capability and towing capacity, but what do we really do with our cars? Probably go back and forth — alone — to work and the grocery store. Worse, we pay through the nose for all that unused capacity: in gas bills, insurance bills, maintenance bills, and yes, the environmental cost. Remember: you can always rent a vehicle for special needs or trips!
• Buy used. With stricter quality control processes and inspections for emissions standards, there are fewer “beaters” or “lemons” on the road these days, and you should be able to find a reliable used vehicle. There’s no need to continue to fuel the demand for “new, new, new!” while perfectly viable cars sit around in lots. You’ll save on the overall purchase price, on interest costs if you’re financing, and insurance as well.
• Buy based on best mileage for the class. 
• Buy hybrid. If electric is not yet an option for you, then do go hybrid, as there’s really no reason not to these days. Yes, they’ll feel a bit different to drive at first, but you’ll get used to it soon enough — especially when you can make a tank of gas last for much, much longer. Incidentally, you’ll be able to get better prices for gas because your window to refill is so much longer. 

Do Take a Look at Electric

First, in the interest of full disclosure, I personally drive electric, and have done so since 2017. 

If you haven’t considered electric before now, you should. And when I say consider, I mean: talk to actual electric vehicle (EV) owners (or lurk in their online forums), read about the vehicle specs, take a few different models for a test drive. 

I say this because there is a lot of old information and/or deliberate misinformation about EVs online. I get it: new technology can make you feel uncertain, we have a culture that celebrates gas powered vehicles, and oil and gas companies aren’t going to go down without a fight. Here’s a list of common objections/myths about EVs.

We don’t have the charging infrastructure yet

Depending on where you live, you might be surprised. Take a look at the Plugshare app, and look at the Tesla supercharger network. Charging stations are popping up all over the place. You can have a charger installed in your garage, and some vehicles just use a standard plug to power up from your house supply. Charging stations are also appearing at malls, and in some locations in apartment or condo parking garages. 

The range is no good

As of this writing, a Tesla Model 3 has a range of 353 miles or 560 kilometers. The American Driving Survey says that the average person drives about 29 miles a day. 

They’re no good in the cold

It’s true that battery performance is affected by the cold. You can temporarily lose a fair amount of potential range when temperatures plummet. However, given what I noted above about total available range vs average range actually driven, there’s still a lot of margin. You can also do things like warm up the car before your trip, recharge at one end, and use the seat heater to stay nice and toasty (rather than more inefficient cabin heat). Consider this: Norway has the highest market penetration of electric vehicles per capita in the world, and also has the world’s largest plug-in segment market share of new car sales, 74.7% in 2020^⁠1. They know from cold in Norway.

They take too long to charge

For the most part, you will be plugging your vehicle in overnight, or while you’re doing something else (like shopping at the mall). On longish road trips, you’re going to want to stop for coffee, bathroom breaks, meals and leg stretches anyways. A little bit of planning takes care of both things at once. The actual charge time will depend on the charger and the car.  Older models of both will take longer; my car takes about 45 minutes to get to near total capacity on the supercharger network. Newer generation fast chargers and batteries can get to 80% capacity in about 15 minutes. 

They’re not actually greener

This is a common myth. Although it’s true that a new electric vehicle and a new fossil fuel car both incur carbon footprints to manufacture them, a fossil fuel car will emit pollutants for it’s whole life. Where the electrical grid is “clean,” the electric vehicle doesn’t go on to emit more pollutants. A battery recycling infrastructure is developing as more and more EVs are on the road too. 

Child labour and mining pollution

In social media comments, you quite often see claims about child labour with respect to EV battery components like lithium and cobalt, which come from mines. Strangely, these arguments are typically used to argue against EVs by people who are posting comments with devices that use lithium-ion batteries. Or who are unaware that cobalt is used in the desulfurization of oil. This is why I recommend reading original sources, not getting your information from social media.

Child labour and pollution are definitely things to be concerned about, however, and we should definitely push international governments to enforce existing laws on such things in every industry. EV manufacturers have also made efforts to source their elements from responsible regions.

They’re expensive

The price to performance ratio has definitely been on the high side… until recently. As more and more people have gone EV, the price has come down, while performance has gone up. There may also be government rebates available in your region, so check that out.

NEXT POST: Let’s Talk About Lawns

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

– Jane Goodall

In an earlier section, we talked about how about 100 companies are responsible for most of the emissions being released right now. We also noted that we as consumers don’t really buy from them directly. So how do we fight back at the individual level? How can we curb emissions and cut other kinds of pollution?

By drying up the market for the products that these companies backstop. Voting with your wallet.

Again, I’m not talking about temporary boycotts. Nor am I talking about standing around in the grocery store debating the morality of choosing Brand A over Brand B while the kids are bugging you for chocolate bars or plushies. 

What I’m suggesting is a longer term solution and a systematic approach, whereby you take a look at one purchasing habit at a time, fix it, and then move on to the next habit. 

Let’s use an example. Consider this: Every toothbrush you’ve ever used in your life is almost certainly still around. 

Numbers vary, depending on the conditions and type of plastic, but most figures suggest that it takes hundreds of years for plastic to decompose. (And mostly it seems to go into smaller and smaller bits of plastic.)

Kind of a scary thought, yes? It gets worse if you start doing some math. 

Let’s say the average person changes out his toothbrush once a year. Now consider a small city with 1,000,000 people in it. That means one city generates a million used toothbrushes every… single… year.  

Thus, we’re creating mountains of used toothbrushes that will still be around in ~450 years.

And of course, since you’re reading this, I probably don’t need to tell you that most plastics come from fossil fuels, and that fossil fuels are responsible for CO2 emissions, air pollution, and that oil spills are incredibly devastating. 

So, is there a perfect, zero-impact replacement for plastic toothbrushes?

No. Not yet anyway. But there are products that are arguably better. 

And indeed, that’s the case with nearly everything we’ll look at in the coming sections. 

Nothing proposed will be perfect, and there’s probably no such thing as zero-impact. Given the size of the human population, the law of big numbers will mean that everything we do will have outsized effects on our planet.

But we no longer have the luxury of waiting for heaven-sent solutions. We have to start moving everything we do to at least less bad right now while en route to those solutions that are sustainable or regenerative.  

We’ll start with some of the biggest impact items in your household. One will be obvious, and you’ve probably been thinking about it already. The other might surprise you. 

NEXT POST: Getting From Point A to B

As long as politics is the shadow of big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.

― John Dewey

Whether you’re a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist or an ardent socialist, it’s fair to say that large businesses – multinational corporations especially – have incredible power. It’s also fair to say that that power isn’t always used for the greater good.

John Bunzl and  Nick Duffell, writing in The Simpol Solution, suggest that we are in the grip of what they call “destructive global competition” or DGC. As long as there is one jurisdiction that ‘competes’ by offering low corporate tax rates, lax environmental regulations, soft labour laws, or some other incentive for corporations, then all the other jurisdictions have to do something similar. Otherwise, corporations move jobs elsewhere. No jobs results in no votes for politicians, and of course, unemployment for the citizen. 

DGC is why even progressive-leaning political parties seem to promote the status quo. They can only push so hard in this environment, before losing votes and thus losing the power to change things. 

This must change. It is completely unsustainable, no matter what timeline we consider. 

So what can we do? As a consumer, we’re often told we can punish companies by boycotting their products. That is still true in certain industries, especially for small- to medium-sized businesses, if you can get enough people on board for a boycott. I’m sure you can think of many examples where public outcry and a drop in sales reversed an announced policy or changed a specific company practice. 

It’s not terribly effective in the long term, however, as public attention is fickle. Neither is it much of a bother for large or multinational corporations. Consider The Procter & Gamble Company, which owns something like 65 different brands, with dozens of individual products under each brand line. You could boycott one brand of laundry detergent in favour of another, only to discover, once you read the label carefully, that they’re both owned by P&G. So not only is it hard to avoid that company’s products in the first place, they have so many that a temporary drop in sales for one brand won’t hurt them much.

Boycotts are also only truly available to the privileged: those who have the time and the money to be able to make considered purchases. A single mother working two part-time jobs, and who is reliant on public transit to get groceries, doesn’t have nearly as many choices as a double-income family with two personal vehicles. So while you may be able to avoid one corporation’s products completely should you want to, that corporation is still able to make millions of dollars from other consumers. Thus, we need to do more than just temporarily avoid a product for a while.

How to Take Action:

1. Complain directly to that company’s customer service channel. A drop in sales can be attributed to too many other things: a dud advertising campaign, a new competitor, a sudden price sensitivity, the end of a trend. If you’re going to stop buying a company’s product, you have to let them know why. (Note: Don’t be rude to the customer service rep for any reason. They’re just doing their job.) In a blog post, grocery store chain owner Galen Weston once noted that the most angry emails they’d ever received was when they started wrapping their cucumbers in plastic. A flood of complaints does get attention.
2. Publicly call the company out on social media. Not only is it harder for a company to ignore something being done publicly, but other people will see you taking a company to task, and might be encouraged to avoid the product and voice their displeasure as well.
3. Do both of the above even if you have never bought the product and don’t intend to. For example, I never buy soda, but I have complained to soda manufacturers about their continued use of plastic o-rings to distribute their products. If you see something, say something.
4. Bring the problem to the attention of a larger organization or media outlet, too. For example, it wasn’t widely known that retail clothing stores were actively destroying and dumping millions of unsold items, until it came to the attention of the media and advocacy groups. Now there’s considerable pressure against these “fast fashion” practices. 
5. Rethink your investments. If you are fortunate enough to have a retirement fund, have a hard look at where you’re invested. There’s no point in avoiding a company’s products if you’re actively supporting their current stock market valuation with your mutual funds!  Many brokerages and banks now offer “ethical portfolios,” and while there’s a lot of greenwashing out there, these are worth a look. Talk to your advisor about establishing an investment policy.
6. Push an investment entity to divest. When big investors, like the Vatican, for example, announce they’re no longer going to invest in anything related to fossil fuels, you can bet it makes a difference. Pick a bank, a mutual fund, a private equity firm, your government’s pension plan, and tell them to divest themselves of environmentally-destructive companies.
7. Do the same to your insurance company. Big investments come with big risks, which big insurance companies underwrite. There have been a number of successful campaigns to pressure insurance firms into declining to insure things like pipelines. 
8. Support eco and social justice lawsuits. Individuals don’t have the resources to fight corporations in court, but non governmental organizations (NGOs) do, especially if you donate to their legal funds.
9. Finally, rather than boycotting, which is temporarily abstaining from purchase, permanently and proactively switch to ecofriendly products and services. Indeed, we’ll talk about how to do just that in later posts.

NEXT POST: Yes, You Can

“The idea is to change the nature and value system of the nation as whole” 

― Sunday Adelaja

It’s a frustrating time to be a progressive voter. On one hand, the existing power structures seem inclined to corporatism and incrementalism, when what we need are sweeping changes, fast. On the other hand, the opposition parties in many countries seem actively regressive, and so the choice seems to be vote for the status quo and hope to inch it forward or risk sliding backward. 

It also doesn’t help that world leaders spend a lot of time pointing fingers at each other, insisting that the other country needs to go first when it comes to cutting emissions and reducing pollution. While it’s true that certain countries have outsized numbers because of the size of their population (e.g., China) or the size of their economy (e.g., the USA), the truth is all of us, particularly the rich, so-called “developed” nations have terrible numbers on a per person basis. For example, Canada emits 16.1 tons per person versus India at 1.9 per person.^⁠1 In fact, on this basis, Canada is worse than China and India combined! So don’t assume your country is doing well based on overall numbers. Dig into the data, and use these numbers when you take action. Speaking of which:

How to Take Action

1. Vote! The nail-biting closeness of the 2020 US elections is evidence enough that every vote does count. Make sure you vote in every election that you can, at every level, but especially the national level.
2. Work against gerrymandering, which can happen anywhere. Make sure your voting district hasn’t been tinkered with such that it favours one party over another. 
3. If you can’t vote to move forward, at least vote to prevent harm (to yourself but especially to vulnerable and marginalized populations). Do consider what splitting the progressive vote in your district might do before marking that ballot. The same goes for deliberately spoiling your ballot or abstaining from voting. It might give you a temporary righteousness boost, but it won’t change a damn thing, except maybe to make things worse.
4. Email or call your current national representative and be sure they know how you feel about environmental issues. 
5. Change things from the inside: actively join the party that has the best chance of forming a government and start grassroots work to make the party platform progressive. 
6. Join big organizations that change things from the outside. Groups like the World Wildlife Federation, Greenpeace, and others have enough members (and funding) that they can browbeat governments into being better from time to time. 
7. Protest! Join or organize peaceful demonstrations. 

In our next post, we’ll discuss the power behind the throne: big corporations. 

NEXT POST: Corporations

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

– Margaret Mead

In the last section, we talked about how if we want to effect real change, we need to push for system-level change.

We’re going to start with local government.

Why? Two reasons:

1. Your local, municipal-level government is the one that is going to be (or already is) hardest hit by environmental problems, and the related social problems. Polluted water? A problem for your local water treatment plant. Flooding? Your local EMS teams. Heat waves? Also your local EMS teams. Terrible air quality? Your local hospitals, overcrowded and struggling. Too much trash? Your tax bill, inflated by waste management fees.
2. Your local government is the one you have the most direct access to, especially if you live in a smaller community.

So, how can we get systemic change at the local level?

First, pick a single issue and a desired outcome. Yes, there are a lot of things you could try to fix, but if you approach your local government with a laundry list you’ll get exactly nowhere. One thing at a time.

Here are some suggested issues and desired outcomes:

• Plastic pollution: Ban the use of any plastic item (or even all single-use plastic items in your municipality). Sometimes people laugh at plastic straw or plastic bag bans as being silly, but every time one of these goes into effect, it shrinks the market for plastic products, and sends a message that we’re fed up with plastic pollution.
• Air pollution: ‘No car’ zones in your municipality. This reduces air pollution, increases use of public transportation, and starts forcing your city planners to think in terms of making your city more walkable or better for bikes. (This also improves health outcomes).
• Electrified transportation infrastructure: Are there enough car chargers in your city? Are there by-laws in place to prevent fossil cars from parking in charging spots? Are there by-laws in place to help condo and apartment dwellers secure charging spots? Are your public transit options based on renewable energy?
• Electricity supply: Has your local utility upgraded to renewable energy or is it still burning coal? Are you allowed to set up your own microgrid or is that against the law?
• Trash: Does your municipality have an organic waste (composting) system? Is recycling collected more often than trash? How much stuff can be recycled in your city?
• Native vs invasive plants: Does your city have any by-laws about what plants the local nurseries can sell? If they’re not selling native plants can you at least get a ban on harmful, invasive plant sales?
• Invasive plants part two: What steps is your city taking to tackle invasives like phragmites, dog strangling vine, knotweed (or whatever is a problem in your region)?

How to Take Action

There are three ways you can take action at the local government level.

1. Email your representatives. Email them all, either all at once, or one per week. (Put it in your calendar!) Describe the problem, describe your solution, show how your solution would benefit to the taxpayer. Forward news stories from other cities where your solution has been successfully implemented. If you can work out which bureaucrats and front line workers would be responsible for implementing your solution, email them too.
2. Form an action group! Get a bunch of people emailing councillors, attending meetings, circulating a petition, chanting in front of city hall, and so on. Remember, there’s strength in numbers! (Pro tip for getting other people on board: Invite them personally, don’t just put out a general call.)
3. Run for office. This might sound daunting, but you just need to remember that there’s nothing particularly special about the people who have run for office before. You don’t even have to win a seat (although obviously it’s better if you do). Running for council gives you the chance to go door to door to talk to people about your issue and get them on board.

Remember: be specific. Don’t just talk in general terms about zero waste or climate change. Give your local council something they can action. Give them something that would make them look good to voters.

What issue are you going to approach your council about? Comment below.

NEXT POST: Regional Government

One’s got to change the system, or one changes nothing. 

— George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Not long ago, The Guardian^⁠1 reported on a study that suggested that just 100 companies were responsible for 71 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

100 companies. 71 percent.

Which sounds like an actionable bit of knowledge. Just boycott those 100 and we’re good to go, right?

Except that it turns out those companies are coal, oil, and gas producers that, in general, you and I don’t buy from directly. 

So, that means we have to take a two-pronged approach:

1. We need to make systemic changes.
2. We need to make personal changes.

Systemic changes are up first, because while we can definitely influence things by making small personal changes, we must really kick the system hard to get the actions we want as fast as we need them.

Let me use a real world example to illustrate what I mean.

You probably already recycle your plastic bottles, right? Or maybe you don’t even use them. That’s awesome, and you should be congratulated. It’s important that you keep doing that.

But … as long as the system continues to produce plastic bottles and also doesn’t account for the hundreds of thousands of people who either can’t or won’t recycle them, and also doesn’t account for the bad actor companies that just dump what they’re supposed to recycle, we still have a huge problem.

Well, I hear you say, we just need to get more people to recycle. Education! Awareness!

To which I say: hogsnarfle.

For one thing, we’ve been running education and awareness programs for decades. They only work if people are receptive to the message and can act on it. (Spoiler alert: The system makes it really, really hard to act on it.)

But more to the point, there’s just too many of us!!

Let’s do some math. Don’t worry, I’ll do all the heavy lifting here.

Coca-Cola^⁠2 says that they sell 1.9 billion servings of their drinks in 200 countries every day. 

Now, let’s assume we do such a great job of recycling that a whopping 90% of those serving containers are recycled.

That still leaves one hundred and ninety million containers in our landfills, oceans, and by the side of the road.

190,000,000. 

Every. Single. Day.

(And yes, you could argue that not all of those servings are individually packaged, what with bigger bottles and fountain drinks, but even if you slash that number in half or by two thirds, it’s still mind-boggingly huge. It’s also just the drinks from one company. Think how many other products there are out there?!)

Now let’s be honest with ourselves here. You’ve seen the comments on any social media post. You know what your co-workers and the people in your community can be like. 

Can you really see any future in which we have 90% of people doing the right thing 100% of the time?

No, me neither. And I’m an optimist!

So that’s why we need to tackle the systems first. We must have systems that account for real human behaviours, both good and bad. 

This is the last explanatory/introductory post. In our next section, we’re going to start kicking the system, beginning with your local government.

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¹ https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change

² https://www.coca-cola.co.uk/our-business/faqs/how-many-cans-of-coca-cola-are-sold-worldwide-in-a-day

NEXT POST: Local Government