bad excuses for not caring about the environment

One of the things that I care about a lot is the environment. I quite like the world that I live in and I would like it to be around for a long long time. I think that humans have done a lot of damage to the earth, but I do have hope that if we change our ways we can turn things around.

What I hate hearing is excuses for why people don’t care at about this world that we live in and think that they have the right to do whatever they want. Today I am going to share some of the excuses that I think are unfounded and don’t help their causes at all.

Note: Some of these “excuses” may be reality to some people based on circumstances, and privilege. These are just the things that I hear in my daily life from people who do have the option to do something different.

1. Wasting water from having to wash items
   
   Whether it is dishes, cloth rags, reusable diapers or pads, it always comes up that you are wasting water by having to wash them. In reality it takes a lot of water to create items, package them, ship them, and get them into your home. The water it takes to wash items is much less than what it takes to get single use items to you plus you are saving items from the landfill. An extra load of dishes or washing machine load is not too much water, but the amount of resources to make these items to only be used once isn’t sustainable.
   
2. It costs too much money
   
   If you go on Instagram or YouTube you will see so many curated pictures and videos with matching items and people that make it seem like you need to go out and buy a million products to save the environment. This is not the case and you probably don’t have to spend much at all in order to have more sustainable items. Your travel cutlery can just be the cutlery you have at home and I have collected so many glass jars from used pasta sauce and the thrift store.
   
3. I want to live life my way
   
   This is one of the worst excuses in my life, because I can’t imagine not caring about anything except yourself. You can see how the world is changing in our weather, our crops, and the sea levels rising. While the world may not completely end in your lifetime you are just one person in this gigantic world and it is more than just about you.
   
4. What I do doesn’t matter anyway
   
   The opposite of this is feeling like one person can’t make a difference and that the main pollutants are corporations anyway. While this is true there are many things that we as regular people can do, from voting with our money in what we do, and do not buy, and going further to contact companies, governments, and talk to the people who really do make a difference.
   
5. I don’t know how to start
   
   Starting to care about the environment can be a bit overwhelming as there are so many things and you can easily get stuck in a rabbit hole of videos and internet blogs of all the things that you need to do immediately. Just start with one thing that you can stop buying or change your habits and work in other things as you have time. You don’t have to do it all in one day.
   
6. We’re too far gone anyway
   
   Until there is nothing left, there is still the chance to change the world. I have heard the quote before “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today”. The same thing can be said about caring about the environment, just try to be a little better today than you were yesterday.

Caring about the environment doesn’t have to be hard or expensive, but it is something that we need to stop making bad excuses for not doing.