Use This Pause to Reflect

As we practice social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re faced with moments of stillness and solitude. Working professionals have already set up their home workstation, and others are co-working with members of the household or roommates. Those who are working parents or caretakers find themselves trying to balance more than one hat during the week.

While 75% of Americans are ordered to stay home, I got a call from a close friend. She’s a working professional in her 50s and described a first-time experience with such awe and amazement. As she was working from home the other day, she heard and saw birds sitting and singing on her balcony.

This pandemic has forced many of us to pause, and really observe and reflect on what’s around us. This moment of inner evaluation can be applied at the individual level and at a community level via business leaders and our public officials; it can truly be a gift in disguise.

Millions are doing their part to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus by staying home and self-isolating. This is a commendable effort that’s yielded noticeable, albeit possibly temporary, positive results throughout the world, such as decreases in air pollution. These side effects on our planet's health aren’t talked about as often but we should celebrate them during this time when negative news tends to outweigh the positive news.

The world is currently experiencing a pandemic, but the way we interact with Earth once this is over should be on all of our minds. I know many of you may be dealing with challenging times right now, but I encourage you to reflect on how we interact with our planet.

For months, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has pleaded with the public, world leaders, and corporations that the way we’re damaging our planet has to stop before it’s too late; many are not listening. In a TED Talk by global health expert Alanna Shaikh, she connected COVID-19 as a by-product of global warming; we’re setting ourselves up to create prime opportunities for more disease outbreaks in our future.

While the current restrictions put in place by officials aren’t sustainable for environmental progress, there are practices we can put in place on the individual and corporate levels to create positive environmental impacts. Social responsibility is self-enforced, but the implementation of steps doesn’t need to be monumental right off the bat.

A business can impact an entire region and with that power comes social responsibility. As the world begins to make its way toward a new normal, businesses should consider re-evaluating corporate social responsibility practices. Implementing work-from-home policies or corporate carpool programs can help reduce emissions from road traffic. Employees want to feel good about the company they work for, supporting local conservation efforts and nonprofit initiatives is a great way to foster environmentally-friendly involvement in the community. At my company, we implemented eco-friendly efforts through our Rose Goes Green initiative; something we regularly evaluate and update.

As we continue to fight through the COVID-19 pandemic, and progress towards a sense of normalcy, let’s take a moment to reevaluate our relationship with Earth. In the name of progress, are we overlooking our responsibility to our planet? Climate change has the potential to become an international crisis that could affect millions around the world, much like a pandemic. This stillness should be a mass awakening in terms of creating compassion towards how humans interact with nature and animals. As a whole, our current way of doing things and industry practices could be more damaging and more costly to our way of life if we don’t take the time and effort to improve our relationship with our planet. We’re morally responsible to leave the world better than we found it for generations to come. The responsibility falls on all of us, at the individual and corporate levels; we can’t afford to wait any longer. It’s time for us to wake up, and use our power to create and demand change.