1. Slower travel. Also, as influencers, photographers, and travel bloggers, are we creating a culture that glamorizes fast travel, fast fashion, and constant jet-setting? Let’s slow down—both for ourselves and for our audiences—and celebrate more mindful travel. I 10000% could be better about this although I do try to batch my travels to certain areas of the world.
2. Choose eco-materials and thoughtfully made products. I’m happy to see this becoming more common in the swim industry and fashion industry as a whole. Vitamin A, Patagonia, Athleta, MATE the Label, Reformation, and TenTree are just a few that I like. What we wear goes directly into the ocean via our washing machines, and fashion as an industry is one of the largest polluters in terms of microplastic particles in the oceans. Here is an awesome VOX article that explains it.
3. Read and research. These are complex issues. Hard to know what to change if we don’t understand what our impact is.
4. Less packaged food. Buy local, eat local. I’ve had a lot of fun going to farmers' markets, which are readily available here in Hawaii.
A recent video actually changed my mind a lot as it showed that ‘organic’ isn’t always the best option and that eating locally and seasonally is the best for the planet and for your health. Reconnect with where food comes from. There is no shortcut for understanding what is going on, and regionally, what is “sustainable” can change. For example, living on an island in French Polynesia, I ate fish, breadfruit, and coconut two meals a day for the entire trip. A diet that would be highly unsustainable elsewhere made sense due to their abundance of sea life and the immense environmental cost of shipping things in.
5. Beware of fish and shellfish. The fishing industry is a major polluter when it comes to marine debris. We also tend to eat only certain “prized” pelagic (deep sea) fish, creating imbalanced ecosystems. Support small local fishermen, spearfisher men/women, as these have low impact and no bycatch.
6.Don’t be wastey. Respect your resources. (For example, if I do forget something or need something—shampoo bottles, a bottle of water, etc.—I make it a point to use it completely.) Shut off lights or AC when I'm not in a room; create mindfulness around consumption.
7. Reef-safe sunscreen. Look for non-nano zinc as the primary ingredient. Raw Elements, Love Avasol, All Good, and Amavara Skincare are some I use that I like. The first two get bonus points for having plastic-free packaging options.
8. Carbon offset. Not a perfect solution, but something I think wayyy more of us should be doing. A. It’s not very expensive. B. Beyond carbon sequestering through the planting of trees or investing in sustainable alternatives, this shows that we as consumers are willing to put our money where our mouth is. It shows companies that creating products that reflect these values are worthy of investment.
9. Lead with empathy. In all conversations. In all things. Meet people where they are, encourage the good they are doing rather than nitpicking ways to do better.
10. Invent your own ways. It is vitally important that we move the needle on this in our lifetime, and we NEED all the creative thinking out there.
11. Eat less meat. Specifically, red meat.
12. Plant a tree. Heck, plant like a thousand trees. Good for the planet, good for you.
13. Carpool, use a bike, skateboard, run, etc. for alternate forms of transit. :)
14. Volunteer. Think globally, act locally. You know what your community needs most. This also connects you to a network of invested humans, and it is so much easier to be inspired and maintain momentum TOGETHER.
15. Support companies doing good. B Corp certified is a great place to start.
16. One adventure, one bag. I LOVE that I’m seeing more of this in the outdoor community. It is both a good exercise in noticing and investing ourselves in the places we play.
17. Upcycle, recycle, break the cycle. Don’t buy new just because it’s “eco” or trendy. Use what you already have. Break the cycle means supporting stronger legislation and refusing to use single-use plastics. We have to stop it at the source; by the time it’s in stores, we’ve already sort of lost the battle.
18. Divest from fossil fuels. Move your money to banks and investment funds that don’t support oil and gas industries. Aspiration is a bank in the US that does this for you.
19. Reduce digital waste. Unsubscribe from emails you don’t read (reduces server energy), delete old files, and be mindful of excessive data storage in the cloud.
20. Smart laundry habits. Wash clothes in cold water, use a microfiber-catching laundry bag (like Guppyfriend) to prevent microplastics from entering the ocean, and air dry when possible.
21. Grow a food forest. Ok not that easy or BUT - even small urban spaces can be converted into edible landscapes that support biodiversity and reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. This is a dream of mine!
When I was growing up no one talked about plastic pollution. Fringe people talked about climate change. There were no jackets and bikinis and backpacks made from recycled fishnets or scraps of nylon. No one I knew of worried about what was in their sunscreen or how the reefs were doing. I grew up knowing very little about these things. In many ways I feel like I still don’t know nearly enough. However it HAS been massively inspiring lately to realize what a profound difference two decades has made in all these areas of conversation. Now we live in a time where a 16 year old girl is leading millions of people in international weekly climate strikes. What a change.
How to live mindfully is something I’m constantly trying to assess for myself. A big part of this is how do I reconcile the fact that just being alive as a human comes with an environmental cost. How do I navigate the murkiness of wanting to do good and yet as I write this I’m literally hurling across the atmosphere in a plane spewing carbon emissions.
Let me be clear I am not trying to be some sustainability queen or zero waste something or other - although I 100% think that’s amazing. I hold immense value in the power of the outdoors and the power of travel and the power of self expression through clothes and art and the power of technology to radically change the world. These things have value and they also extract value from our planet. There isn’t really a way around it. So I accept that footprint and what I’m really here to do is figure out how to do better. I’ve always been a practical kind of human which isn’t great for “branding”; being moderate - on the internet at least - usually means most people think you’re either not doing enough or you’re a hypocrite or annoyingly preachy.
So here it is. Little ways to save the world. They’re easy and reasonable and require an ever so slight amount of forethought and commitment. Basically, anything less than this is lazy - at least according to my attempting-to-be-mindful middle-roader :)
