UNCOVERED: Fascinating new anti consumption facts - The Untold Story

Bored Panda got in touch with Gediminas Kondrackis, Climate Activist & Baltic Sustainability Awards Changemaker, to ask about his work and hear his thoughts on being more sustainable. "I'm dedicated to helping people and businesses become more environmentally friendly, which is a simpler way of saying "more green". This involves guiding them to make their trips, events, and parties greener, in a way that respects the Earth.”

“At my organization, we've developed easy, accessible methods to help make being green less of a chore. We offer straightforward strategies to help people and businesses cut down on their environmental impact. To reach a wider audience, we use different platforms like the Climate Museum and the tvariau.lt website. Our mission is to make sustainability something that everyone, no matter where they are in the world, can understand and adopt into their everyday lives.”

“Sustainability” can seem like an overused word these days, so we wanted to hear how an actual expert would use it. ""Sustainability" is a word that gets tossed around quite a bit, and it can mean different things to different people. In my view, sustainability is about not hurting our planet, especially our climate. A simple, practical way to look at it is to measure how much CO2, which is a gas that harms our planet, we're releasing into the air.”

“Some might say my perspective is too narrow or focused. But when it comes to big, important issues like climate change, I believe it's crucial to have straightforward, easy-to-understand goals. This helps everyone grasp the problem and take steps to solve it.”

Reading through the posts in this article, it might feel like there isn’t much an individual can do, so we wanted to hear what suggestions Gediminas had. “The best thing you can do to create less waste is to only use what you need. This applies to everything in our lives. For instance, reducing food waste is more important than eating less meat. Also, buying lots of things you don't need, like excessive clothes or gadgets, is a bigger problem than replacing your phone or laptop every few years.”

“The same principle applies to transportation. Use cars or planes only when necessary. We should think of transport like a food pyramid. Healthy activities like biking, walking, and train rides are at the base. Bus rides and carpooling are in the middle. And plane trips and driving alone should be rare treats at the top. In short, eat, buy, and travel mindfully. Every small change helps!” You can learn more about him and his work here and here. 

The depressing truth is that most of us have unsustainable spending habits. And I’m not talking about finances, although for many that can be an issue as well. No, many of the products we buy and buy and buy are not even close to being environmentally friendly and are often shipped halfway across the world, adding to their carbon footprint. 

As disheartening as this sounds, it’s important to also highlight all the progress certain people and groups have made to try and stem the tide of rampant consumerism. For example, the Italian city of Prato has grown into a world leader in recycled clothing, all because of an old law prohibiting the importation of raw wool. Now its methods could be key to redesigning the fashion industry into something that won’t end the world.

One area where progress has been more visible is the electrification of driving. One sticking point is the batteries that power the whole thing. Now, if you’ve ever tried to eat a battery, you would know that they are pretty toxic. They also get worn out and need replacement. Fortunately, the US has passed battery recycling incentives that mean that most of them do not end up in a scrapheap, but instead are remade and reused. 

Speaking of electric cars, while not the standard, EV sales have exceeded new diesel cars for the first time in the EU, in a trend that is likely to continue as infrastructure develops, prices decrease and incentives grow. There may be a time in the near future when gas stations end up being less common than charging stations were at the beginning of the EV revolution. Children will bemusedly listen to old people speak about physically pumping gas into a car and roll their eyes. 

While it’s easy to close our eyes to factories in faraway lands, one often does not have to look further than a river near any town or city to see what plastic and human laziness have wrought. In the Netherlands, one innovator has created a method to trap and catch plastic that ends up in waterways. It utilizes a “net” of bubbles to create a barrier that still allows water to flow but traps all the junk that we deposit in rivers, canals, and lakes.

Modern humans are also aware that pollution doesn’t just come from not throwing trash away properly. Through carbon announcing, we can see very accurately just how much damage a simple flight can do. So one company is attempting to undo this damage by turning CO2, the cause of much woe, into profitable jet fuel. Perhaps it’s more wise to mitigate human damage instead of accepting that people will actually change their behavior. 

Fast fashion is almost too nice of a name for business practices that use a massive amount of water and produce huge amounts of waste. Some countries are now trying innovative ways to limit clothing ending up thrown out, for example, France is paying out bonuses to sewing workshops and shoemakers who repair and remake items, creating a demand for “old” clothes. This way, that cheap H&M shirt doesn’t end up in a landfill, but gets reused. 

In South Africa, fashion designers are in turn taking old clothing and designing entire fashion shows around them. Aspiring designers, Khumo Morojele and Klein Muis pick out used clothing that ends up shipped to South Africa and refurbish and develop certain pieces. While upcycling might limit the waste caused by fast fashion, it’s initiatives like this that might actually make it popular. 

And it’s not just clothes, ‘Deconstructing the Sneaker’ is a brand attempting to make shoes with materials sourced from sustainable wild rubber. Their goal is to make sneakers that take as little as possible from the environment, with materials and energy that is renewable, in contrast to most shoe manufacturers that produce as cheaply as possible and pump most of their profits into marketing. 

Of course, even if we do all start only consuming from sustainable sources, there is still a lot of trash already floating around the world. One Nigerian school has a novel approach to cleaning up its environment: it will allow people to exchange recyclable bottles instead of paying school fees. These sorts of initiatives not only help push people to clean up a bit but provide low-income households with a way to get their kids an education. 

These are all good solutions to help limit a lot of the damage that is being done to our planet right now, but it’s important to not lose track of the fact that the average person does a lot less to harm the environment than just a handful of companies. And at the very top of every company is a person who profits. In the US, there have been proposals to tax the ultra-rich and funnel these resources into climate initiatives. If they aren’t going to change how they do business, they should at least pay for the damage.