Last week, on a cold winter evening I was served piping hot food — soft rotis, flavourful aloo ki sabzi (potato curry) and peas pulao. My tummy was full, but more than that my heart was bursting with joy as I was sharing this meal with my kids (students I taught) and was prepared by one of their mothers'.
Between 2011-2013, on my first job out of University, I became a Teach For India (TFI) Fellow teaching Class V and later Class VI students in Pune. More than 10 years since, I went back recently to see how my kids were doing. All grown up, and pursuing professional courses from colleges around the world to working at impressive jobs, they have come a long way.
As we sat around reminiscing their school days, I particularly wanted to know if they remember any of the lessons in sustainability I taught them — a topic in deeply passionate about.
Education and Environment are the two pillars of my life. All my growing up years, I've been inspired by my family to live consciously and in synch with nature. That thought process led to a strong foundation of me being committed to a life in environmental sustainability both personally and professionally.
Beyond my own self and through a few odd eco-clubs I was a part of over the years, it was at my TFI classroom that I could first engage with a larger group and perhaps influence a community to see the world through the lens of sustainability.
A decade since then, during our supper conversation last week, my kids recalled learning about waste segregation, waste management, avoiding single-use plastic and concepts of reduce-reuse-recycle. I am so glad that we together planted those early seeds of thought and action.
Climate change needs to be read with economy. As most of us are aware, the perils of climate change though least contributed by the marginalised or economically-weaker communities, effects them most adversely.
An unbearably hot summer where we have an air-conditioner in every room- well, many don’t even have a fan or a cooler to survive it.
On a beautiful monsoon day, when you post a picture from your window or balcony reading a book and sipping hot chocolate (I am guilty of doing it, too!), many might have a leaky roof and no dry place to even sleep.
The point is not so much as to sacrifice your creature comforts but to ensure your actions are not adversely affecting someone else, though you may not directly see the struggle.
Why is environmental action relevant and the responsibility of each one of us?
Let us consider the first activity of our day- brushing. We change about 4 toothbrushes a year, and the population of earth is over 8 billion and let us assume the average age of the reader is 25 years, so even by the most conservative estimate, 4 (brushes) X 25 (years) X 4 (billion people in the current and the last two generations who might have ever used a toothbrush) we would have trashed about 400 billion toothbrushes around the world.
A plastic toothbrush takes at least 400 years to decompose depending on the environmental conditions, which would mean a toothbrush we might have used as a toddler would outlive all the present and upcoming three to four generations. Mind you, this is only the first activity of the day.
If you conduct a personal waste audit of accounting for all the activities we do, the purchases we make, and the lifestyle we have over a few weeks, we will know how much each one of us is responsible for environmental degradation.
This of course is alarming, but may it also serve as a reminder of the role we all have to play in the rapidly depleting environment.
While big conglomerates, developed countries, resource-guzzling billionaires may be the highest greenhouse gas emitters and are responsible for the majority of the climate crisis, we cannot shy away from individual responsibility and hopefully also see the benefits of collective, consistent and committed action.
At Teach For India, we had distinguished individuals from various fields who would come speak to us about their work and impact.
One such person I had the fortune of listening to in 2013 was Sir Robert Swan, who is the first person to have walked to both the North and the South Pole, and is an advocate for climate action and the protection of Antarctica.
Following his footsteps coupled with a strong purpose of why I was doing it, I went to Antarctica in 2018 to understand the impact of human action/inaction on the fragile ecosystem of our planet.
A phrase that intuitively came to me and stuck
with me since then is ‘positively insignificant’. The planet can take care of itself as it has done many times before — maybe with a great flood or a meteor hit.
We know of how life came back even at a devastating place like Chernobyl Exclusion Zone since the nuclear accident. So, everything environmentalists are attempting to do is to save humans, ourselves and hopefully restore the environment so that we are not merely struggling and living but thriving with the best and the most beautiful things the planet has to offer.
So, while we maybe insignificant in the larger scheme of things, we also can choose to play a positive role while we tread only the only planet we can call home.
A childhood cartoon show that was exceptionally brilliant, Captain Planet, where the superhero says, “The Power is Yours”, we all must put on the hat of an environmentalist in everything we do and everything we are.
You can be a chef cooking with locally grown produce and a plant-based menu which is less resource-intensive and kinder to the animals and the planet, as an investment banker you may choose to favour environment-friendly investments and loans, as a parent you make responsible choices for your family and children that are not just focused on accumulation but care, as a teacher you could influence a whole generation for climate action.
We all have our sphere of influence and may we influence them positively. I resonate with the lines: "Knowing is not enough, We must Apply; Willing is not enough, We must Do!"
(The author is an environmentalist both personally and professionally, and a strong advocate of climate action, veganism and low-waste lifestyle. More about these topics can be found on her podcast: Praana Café found across multiple streaming platforms.)
