World Environment Day: What Can We Do?

Reducing waste, choosing tap water, avoiding compulsive shopping , using 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.

World Environment Day ( June 5) is a good opportunity to reflect on these aspects . Without being swept away by the current of clichés, weak thinking, conformism, and marketing. And by avoiding 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, tainted by its misuse and the coincidence of three factors, all unfortunately negative: wars (from Ukraine to Gaza) that bring death, destruction, and increased military spending (to the detriment of spending on sustainable development); the pettiness of the ruling classes, in America as in Europe, prisoners of their presentism and terrified that the right environmental and social choices could lose votes in the short term; the burdensome economic climate in which wages and salaries have been stagnant for too long , and the purchasing power of families has only diminished in recent years. On the other hand, there are things we can all do, every day. For the environment, of course, but also to lightly improve our lifestyles.

To read the book The Shattered Myth: 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 simple number: every minute, 1 million plastic bottles of all kinds are purchased on the planet. 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 unnecessary items, like straws and cotton swabs . Our 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 drugged consumption , inspired precisely by the logic of waste , is just a way to artificially boost the engine of capitalism, to trick it. And in the end, sooner or later, the chips come home to roost, as we've seen since the outbreak of the Great Depression. On the contrary, moderate consumption is more solid, constant, necessary . And 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 the 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 purchase water in plastic bottles. Choosing to drink tap water not only significantly reduces waste but also saves on groceries.

• 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 treating yourself and giving a gift of the most important encyclical written by Pope Francis during his pontificate, Laudato si'. A beautiful and comprehensive text, dedicated precisely to the themes of an integral ecology , which rests its influence on daily actions, on the small gestures of every day. The title itself, Laudato si', is revealing, as 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 our consumption.