Compassion and Intersectional Awareness in Promoting Sustainable Lifestyle

Living sustainably in an unsustainable world is almost impossible. Many are eager to make changes, but mainstreaming sustainable lifestyle remains a complex challenge. As campaigns and efforts emerge, it is essential to remember to imbue compassion and intersectional awareness when promoting sustainable lifestyle.

Trends and Challenges

For a long time, climate change remained only a myth for the general public. As the planet gets hotter than ever and extreme weather events occur more often, it’s getting harder to deny the reality of climate change. After decades of effort, most people, especially youth, now perceive climate change as a legitimate concern that even dips into eco-anxiety for some.

So, people have begun to recognize that how they live impacts their surroundings. This perception shift then leads to a trend shift, in which people are becoming increasingly willing to adjust their lifestyles to be more sustainable.

Then, why is it still hard to promote a holistic change and globally mainstream sustainable lifestyle?

There are several reasons, but one of the main factors is the high cost. With the ever-increasing cost of living and the income generation that doesn’t follow, many don’t have the financial resources to make all-encompassing changes to live more sustainably. Sustainable living is supposed to be more cost-effective in the long run, but the substitutions one needs to make at the beginning can be expensive or time-consuming.

Other factors include the lack of systemic support and access to sustainable options. This may be due to geographical location, lack of infrastructure, non-supportive policy, and many other reasons. In short, products, services, and habit switches for a sustainable lifestyle are, at this stage, largely for healthy, able-bodied, upper- and middle-class communities.

“Easy Targets”

Individuals are ‘easy targets’ in the global campaign to make the world more sustainable. However, sustainable lifestyle has always been more than individual choices. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) defines sustainable lifestyles as “clusters of habits and patterns of behavior embedded in a society and facilitated by institutions, norms, and infrastructures that frame individual choice in order to minimize the use of natural resources and generation of wastes while supporting fairness and prosperity for all.”

The disproportionate focus on individual choices over major systemic overhauls is not helpful, especially when major global companies are reportedly not doing enough to limit the global temperature rise.  

The primary targets of sustainable lifestyle advocacy, like the overall fight against climate change, are the world’s governments and major corporate entities. They make up the global systems that have been pushing the planet into environmental destruction and the climate crisis, all in the name of short-term development and profit. Therefore, they have the biggest responsibility and ability to make the necessary changes to mainstream sustainable lifestyles.

Mindfully Promoting Sustainable Lifestyle

Beyond encouraging individuals to make more sustainable choices, promoting sustainable lifestyle involves enabling them to do so. For instance, changing people’s waste behavior at the household level requires systemic interventions from the municipal government and the private sector.

Still, increasing public awareness of the urgency of sustainable living is important. This step then needs to be followed by providing useful information on how to begin the changes to live more sustainably.

Ultimately, it is essential for activists and enthusiasts to remember that climate change is a class issue and there is no universal sustainable lifestyle. What is sustainable for one person in one place may not be sustainable for others in different conditions. Some examples include:

• The use of single-use plastic straws for people with certain disabilities.
• The use of single-use things in healthcare, such as masks, gloves, and syringes.
• Meal-prepping or buying groceries in bulk instead of small packages can be inaccessible and unaffordable for people with limited time or money.
• Menstrual products can be highly personal choices, and period poverty is a persisting issue.
• Eating less meat or having a more plant-based diet are suitable campaigns for high-income countries and households, but getting enough nutrition is the main issue for others.
• Repairing what you have instead of buying new might be a conscious lifestyle choice for some but a necessity habit for others, such as those in low-income households.

The main principle of sustainable development is to leave no one behind. Therefore, advocacy efforts for sustainable lifestyle must reflect that principle of inclusivity and compassion. From combating greenwashing to pushing for better climate policy to inviting friends to start bringing their own reusable bottles, promoting sustainable lifestyle should help everyone make informed choices that are better for themselves, the planet, and the future. 

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