World Environment Day: What Can We Do?

Reduce waste, prefer tap water, avoid compulsive shoppingUsing less plastic, learning to compost: these are just a few examples of simple actions we can all take to make a concrete and useful contribution to the environment, and therefore to ourselves as part of it.

La World Environment Day (June 5) is a good opportunity to reflect on these aspectsWithout being swept away by the current of clichés, weak thinking, conformism, and marketing. And by ignoring appearances and (false) hymns to a sustainable world: the reality is that the environmental crisis, closely linked to the social crisis, has worsened.

Sustainability has even become a difficult word, contaminated by its false use, and by the coincidence of three factors, all unfortunately negative: the wars (from Ukraine to Gaza) that bring death, destruction and increases in military spending (at the expense of those for sustainable development); the weakness of the ruling classes, in America as in Europe, prisoners of their presenteeism and terrified by the fact that the right choices in the environmental and social fields can cause them to lose votes in the short term; the heaviness of an economic framework in which wages and salaries have been stagnant for too long, and household purchasing power has only decreased in recent years. On the other hand, there are things we can all do, every day. For the environment, of course, but also to improve lightly our lifestyles.

If you want to read the book The Myth Shattered: How False Sustainability Has Made the World More Unjust click here

Have you ever thought about how much garbage we produce every day? Take a look at the garbage cans, both indoors and outdoors, and you'll discover that we're now living submerged in waste. In 2024, per capita municipal waste production in Italy was approximately 496 kilograms per inhabitant, recording an increase in 0,5% compared to the previous yearIn Rome you arrive at 587 kilos per capita per year. An enormity and a way to send any garbage disposal system haywire.  Yet it would be enough to ask for fewer cards and fewer envelopes when we go shopping. Get less packaging for your in-store and online purchases. And learn about composting. About Find some useful tips to reduce your waste.

 

• Replace the plastic

We live in a world suffocating in plastic. A number for everyone: every minute, 200,000 plastic bottles are purchased on the planet. 1 million plastic bottlesOf all kinds. These bottles then end up as waste in the sea, on beaches, or in the bellies of animals, like the whale we saw suffocated by 80 plastic bags. Plastic is useful, it has its uses, but we can significantly reduce its use by replacing it with other materials and eliminating useless objects, such as straws and cotton swabOur relationship with plastic has the same fundamental flaws as our relationship with consumption in general.

• Avoid compulsive shopping

Consumption is necessary, indispensable, even for the restart of the economy. But the drug use, inspired precisely by the logic of waste, it's just a way to artificially boost the engine of capitalism, to rig it. And in the end, sooner or later, the chips come home to roost, as we've seen since the Great Depression erupted. On the contrary, moderate consumption is more solid, constant, necessaryAnd it bears fruit in the long run. It's pointless to have a wardrobe with a third of clothes we don't use, just as it's absurd that in Italian homes there are, on average, eight unused appliances. Rather, the new economy should push us to recover the art of maintenance (which means jobs) and the industrial and individual capacity to recycle objects, to always give them a second life. This is theThe circular economy, a piece of the new development model we are building.

• Choosing tap water

Every year, each of us consumes, on average, about 220 liters of drinking water per day, and at the same time, 7 out of 10 families buy water in plastic bottles. Choosing to drinktap water It not only allows you to significantly reduce the amount of waste but also saves on shopping costs.

• Fewer printed documents

In the office, but also at home, you know how much letter we waste every day using the printerThere are so many unnecessary sheets of paper we waste every day. So, before printing, let's ask ourselves: do I really need it? This good habit can help us reduce paper consumption by up to 6 kilograms each year.

• Read and give the Encyclical Laudato Sii as a gift

Celebrate World Environment Day by giving yourself and others the most important encyclical written by Pope Bergoglio during his pontificate, Laudato sì. A beautiful and complete text, dedicated precisely to the themes of aintegral ecology, which relies on daily actions, on the small gestures of every day. The title itself, Laudato si', is revealing, because it echoes Saint Francis's Canticle of the Creatures and thus our commitment to protecting Creation. But when man wastes, when he senselessly discards things and even people, he does the opposite: he destroys and does not preserve. Not wasting also means this: taking responsibility for an earth whose future, and its quality, depend first and foremost on us, on our lifestyles and from ours consumption.