5 Things You Can Be Doing To Be More Sustainable

Happy Earth Day everyone! How grateful I am for this beautiful Earth today, our one and only planet and home. It is incredible to see how within a few weeks of us being indoors, nature has started restoring to its original beauty - waters and oceans becoming more blue and clear, the air in heavy metropolitan cities clearing up where you finally see blue skies instead of smog, fish and dolphins are being seen in the canals of Venice for the first time and a lot more. As we begin to see the Earth flourishing in the absence of our usual activities, it is the perfect time for us to reflect and re-evaluate our daily choices and understand how we were impacting the environment. Change begins with small, incremental steps - whether it be using a reusable bag for groceries or carrying your own mug for your daily coffee runs. There are many small changes we can make to ensure that we are taking care of our planet. 

This is also a great time for Creatives to re-evaluate their choices and principles. Designers have a huge responsibility of spearheading a lot of change globally through the choices they make and if we think about it - a lot of the things around us are a result of strategic planning and design, whether it be city planning, designing of automobiles, designing the user interface of how we interact with the objects around us or even our day to day products. I urge you all to begin thinking about this and how together we can continue to nourish our planet for the generations to come. 

Here are some ideas on things we can do, to make this change :

• Donate to a charity. 
• Plant a tree or even grow your own produce with seeds you may currently be disposing of. 
• Keep a reusable bag handy for your next grocery run (check your current local rules on reusable bags during this pandemic. Some states are temporarily banning the use of reusable bags).
• Keep a travel coffee mug for your future coffee runs ( Over 125 tonnes of coffee cup waste is produced every day which is approximately double the weight of a fully-loaded aircraft and this is one country alone and on just one product! )
• Think about the sustainability of your design choices. Research and consider implementing a change in how or what you do that is more environmentally conscious.

These are just a few of the many steps we can all begin to take. Let’s all observe a moment of gratitude for our beautiful planet and continue helping to create a better place to coexist in.

What are a few things that you're doing right now to practice sustainability? We'd love to hear from you in the comments below!