I Don’t Want to Get Rich but I Do Want to Change the World
There is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
I’m not saying I would mind getting rich. It simply isn’t one of my priorities. I certainly wouldn’t want to change my lifestyle to achieve this sudden turnaround in my fortunes. Instead, my objective is to make the world a slightly better place.
As the world is in such a shitty state at the moment, one would think that changing it for the better would be quite an easy thing to do. In fact, it is incredibly difficult. Little by little, I have been forced to lower my ambitions and opt for easier targets. Right now, I have reached a point where just changing myself seems like a good place to begin. Baby steps, right?
I buy nearly all of my clothes second-hand. My underpants, I buy new, but even those have started to develop holes that I regard as being aerodynamic.
This drives my wife nuts. My mother was the same. One of her most deep-rooted fears was that I might get run over and rushed to casualty. It wouldn’t matter that both my legs were broken and that there was blood gushing out of my ears. What counted, as the emergency staff cut away my blood-drenched clothes, was that I should be wearing clean underwear, free from any signs of wear and tear.
I want to give you a tangible example of why I engage in such altruistic and wonderful behavior. To produce just one cotton T-shirt requires more than 3000 liters of water. Textile dyeing is the second-largest polluter of water in the world. I could go on to discuss the use of chemicals on the cotton crop, abuse of cheap labor, pollution generated in the transport, and much, much more, but let’s just stick with water for the moment.
If every person in the US and Europe were to buy just one used T-shirt per year instead of a new one, we would save 3234 000 000 000 liters of water.
Do you know how many Olympic-sized swimming pools that equal? Nor do I and the math would only bore you. There could be a swimming pool on every corner. Our kids might step away from their screens to go swimming and take a break from psychopathic war games, thus improving mental and physical well-being. And all of this, because you ditched that new tee shirt that was made using child labor and which will probably lose its shape the first time you wash it.
This is, of course, a massive oversimplification, but what I hope to show is just how powerful baby steps can be if we can get more people to stop shrugging their shoulders and saying ‘what does my little effort amount to?’
Persuading people to change the way they purchase is always going to be difficult. Environmentalists like myself, are up against huge corporations who control entire marketing machines designed to persuade you that you need that crisp new tee shirt. I am trying to persuade you that you don’t, on an average Medium monthly paycheck of around seven dollars.
There is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Last week I went into the local supermarket where they were running a ‘green special.’ You could trade in your old second-hand jeans for a brand-new pair made from recycled material.
After a quick check with customer services as to the quality requirements of the trade-in, I sprinted home and dug out three pairs of jeans from the rag box. (By the time I am finished with a pair of jeans they are so badly worn that I am too ashamed to put them in the charity bin. I use them for cleaning paint brushes instead.)
I am not naive enough to believe that the largest supermarket chain in France cares too much about the state of our planet. What I do believe, is that they are starting to respond to baby steps taken by myself and millions of others that feel the way I do.
As I sit here in the first pair of new jeans I have worn in ages, I am pleased with that achievement.
Now if I can only get them to trade in my holey underpants, I really will feel I have started to change the world. You can too.
Thank you for reading.
If you are a lover of the environment, nature, and wildlife, you may enjoy the following articles published in The Environment.
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