My enviro “aha!” moment

By Lisa Horvat
Manager, Online Communications
I was in a meeting with Kevin, an awesome guy, wonderful animator and man of many talents. He was telling me about how his wife gets clothes for their children from a friend with slightly older kids. Kevin is passionate about the environment and knows that second hand clothes have less of a footprint. But he still couldn’t help feel sort of ashamed that his kids are wearing second hand, because he works hard for a living to provide his kids with the best.
But then it hit him: he really is doing the best for his kids by not polluting their world even more by buying new when used alternatives are available.

I had my own aha moment a few years ago. I’ve been ‘green’ for a long time and had already been working for WWF for a few years, but I still needed to have that moment where it all suddenly clicked. I had just bought an old house and had inherited a BBQ. This was the first BBQ I had ever owned, and it was a treat to be able to grill fun food whenever I wanted.
Now, like a good environmentalist, I consider the impact of my choice of food that I put on the table. In fact, I agonize about the very use of the BBQ as it puts harmful pollutants into the air – but one still has to live and have balance in life, so I BBQ.
Before I first used it though, I went to Canadian Tire to purchase a brush to clean the grills. When I got to the BBQ brush shelf I was faced with eight options. I reached for the cheapest, sturdiest plastic one on the shelf – and that’s when it came to me, right in the middle of a hardware store: I need to consider the environment in everything I do, even this little brush buying decision. To not just think about the obvious environmental questions (should I drive less, should I plant a tree, am I recycling properly) but to make the environment part of my decision making process, just like price and the other criteria I use hundreds of times a day.
So, which brush actually had the smallest impact on the environment? With this new question in mind, I rescanned my options. Maybe it was the brush made with the wooden handle rather than plastic. Maybe it was the one that allowed you to replace the bristles. I don’t know if I chose the right brush that day, the one that when all was said and done would have the least environmental impact. But I proceeded to the checkout feeling enlightened.
Of course, the complete environmental impact of our daily decisions is super hard to measure, but chances are, that now that I’ve added that thinking to my decision making criteria, I will get it right more often than not.
Little changes can make a big difference when we all do them together. Visit our Living Planet Community to see how Canadians have saved 134,144,496 kg of GHG – that’s equal to 22,357 cares taken off the road for one year. Talk about an aha moment!