With 2025 about to begin, you might be considering how to be more sustainable in the new year.
Here's a few ideas that use the Empowering Environmentalism™ framework to amplify your impact across your own sphere of influence, contributing to a more sustainable world in your home life, relationships, place of work, and your local and global communities.
What are 3-4 things you could do in your personal life to be more eco-conscious in the new year?
Try to spend a few months working on each - for example, if you choose 4 things to do, you could focus on one each season/quarter. If you choose 3 things to do, you could spend 4 months on each this year. New habits take time to create, as they require practice, trial and error, and finding out which ways work for you. Plus, trying to do too much at once can be overwhelming, and not meeting ambitious goals can be discouraging. Starting with one area and gradually adding more can help your sustainability efforts become a sustainable practice.
Ideas: commit to learning about your locality's recycling rules and practices; begin home or community composting; sign up for a CSA box to support local farmers; swap your cleaning supplies to eco-friendly or DIY options (maybe even choosing one type of cleaner/cleaning task per month); try using your local public transportation options; consult a local nonprofit or expert to boost your home's energy and/or water efficiency; plant a raingarden or wildflower meadow at your home...
What are 1-2 things you could add to your place of work or school to be more eco-friendly this year?
As a place you visit nearly every day, your place of work or school is somewhere whose systems you know well, and with a community of people you have established relationships with. This familiarity can give you invaluable perspective of what this organization's habits, practices, needs, and capacity are, and how more sustainable practices could be easily applied. There may even be existing initiatives or teams that you can contribute to without having to start from scratch or re-invent the wheel. Plus - by choosing just 1-2 goal(s), you can add a reminder to your phone/calendar/planner in six months to either swap goals or check-in with the one you've set for the year.
Ideas: create a way to make recycling easier for your office, classmates, or team; ask how you can help spread the word about existing initiatives; join or start a sustainability working group for your team, project, or department...
What are 1-2 things you could do in your local community this year to be more eco-friendly?
"Community" can mean lots of different things for different people and circumstances. You can think of it based on locality - the town or village you live in, the block you live on, or the apartment building you live in. You can think of it based on interests, activities, or relationships - a friend group, a local sports league, a gym or fitness studio, a local theater, etc. You might also think of formal existing community groups, like nonprofits, charities, or a place of worship. Whether these are communities of relationships you've created, or a more formal organization with a mission and vision to pursue, these groups of people can work together to create collaborative, locally-minded solutions with relevance and meaning to your community. And just like your place of work or school goal(s), you can add reminders to check-in or swap goals mid-way through the year (or whatever interval feels supportive for your situation).
Ideas: host a clothing/homewares swap for your friends or community group; gather a group of friends to take a tour of a local green intiative; shop at your weekly farmer's market to support local farmers; donate to a local environmental organization that supports your neighborhood; pick a monthly volunteer day to join local organization(s); attend a town forum on a local environmental topic; attend a conference, speaker, or event about your locality's environment; participate in a clean-up day in one of your community's natural spaces...
What’s 1 small action you could take at a national or global level?
While it can sometimes be hard to think about how massive global environmental challenges can be, it can also help us connect our own small actions to the larger community of people who care and act for the environment. It's not just you alone sorting your recyclables; it's you and your neighborhood, and others nearby, and people around the world who are all making concerted, committed efforts both individually and collectively to make a difference.
Ideas: visit a national park, spread the word about your trip, and make a small donation; find a conservation organization that protects a plant or animal you care about and spread the word, volunteer, or donate; see if there's a group that works on a cause you care about in another location, and see if/how you can support their work; create a news alert for a project or initiative that interests you to stay updated on its development...
Altogether, these small goals can make a big difference for you, your community, and the environment in the coming year!
By choosing more goals in your daily and personal life than at the big, global scale, you'll be able to see your impact more concretely and more frequently.
And, by choosing small goals with longer time frames, you have time to build new habits, identify new opportunities, and make adjustments to your plans so that your new actions can be encouraging and empowering efforts.
Wishing you all the best for your environmental efforts in the new year ahead!
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