Tis the season to be jolly” is the tune on everyone’s mind at this time of year. There is a lot of festive cheer and thankfulness for the past year, and hope looking forward to what is to come up ahead. Let’s take a minute to think of the earth, about what she has given us the past year and become mindful of how we treat the environment in future.
“It is the season for station- ery” ! While growing up, I remember the excitement receiving all the beautiful cards on thick cardstock, the colourful calendars and the smell of freshly bound diaries come December. Many today view this as a non-sustainable model and there is a shift to using digital greeting cards. E-cards have a much wider reach with lower impact on the environment and energy usage. To constantly calculate carbon footprints or compute how much energy has been used for every one of our acts is difficult. Think about it — your greeting card requires a tree to be cut which is then transported to a paper mill to be processed into paper (using electricity generated in coal fired power plants), printed upon (with electricity, chemicals and dyes) and then transported to reach the addressee by a postal or courier service using fossil fuel. Once the card has done its job of conveying the message, it becomes a lost soul on the planet and winds up in a landfill where it takes several decades to biodegrade, or with many more units of energy be recycled into paper and board. The same process repeats again! It’s a pretty large carbon footprint at the end of the day, and we would have meanwhile stamped our feet all over the earth wishing happy holidays to a few friends!! So, it definitely makes sense to switch to digital cards as it has a much smaller carbon footprint.
Thinking green is a complete shift in lifestyle. It is inspiring to see people walk around today with fitbits and apple watches calculating t daily energy spend. These persons would like to know daily, how many steps they walk, their number of hours of rest and sleep and so on.
Being a sustainable individual requires us to take this awareness to the next level — think how much energy our everyday existence is taking up and all the resources it takes to make simple things a reality today. Maybe the fitbits of the future will enable us to calculate the carbon footprint of everyday acts – so we can truly understand the difference between sending out a New Year greeting on the internet instead of sending someone a card?
2015 is winding down and 2016 will soon be upon us. As the year ends and the New Year dawns, do become sensitive about the environment and concerned about the future. Every drop makes the ocean. You are the world and your efforts count.