The desire to live sustainably

The sustainability movement is now decades old. The desire to live in harmony with nature and curb its indiscriminate exploitation is unfortunately a moving target that keeps getting pushed forward as humans fail to make adequate progress toward this goal. 

If we ask the question - "why try and live sustainably at all?" - the answer is usually something about how the exploitative nature of societal living comes at a cost to our planet, resulting in damage that could ultimately be damning for our species and the rest of ecology. 

This is correct. But it's an appeal from reason and science. And Marketing folks will tell you emotional pitches can be way more impactful than logical ones.

So, what is the emotional argument to living sustainably?  Below is a list aimed toward the everyday individual.

Why live more sustainably (an appeal to everyday individuals)

1. Holiday: This is typically when most urban dwellers come in contact with nature. It could be mountains, beaches or even a desert, but the desire to be close to nature is a big part of what motivates many to take a holiday. Why? Why do we usually seek out nature for our vacations, and not a hotel in the middle of a city. It's because we all possess an instinctive want to be closer to nature. 
   
   
2. A concrete rejection: Even in cities, the value of nature is demonstrated by how tree-lined neighborhoods fetch better property prices than an urban sprawl of cement, steel and glass. Malls and commercial building make desperate attempts to add decorative plants and trees for ornamentation, to attract people and business. Property developers showcase features centered around a healthy living that's closer to nature - like a jogging track, fresh water & clean air, open lawns, green patches and shady trees. This is further evidence of our unbreakable connection with Mother Nature and somewhat desperate attempts to integrate our daily lives better with it.
   
   
3. Hyper consumerism: Rows and rows of aisles full of stuff you don't need but still buy is an unfortunate outcome of the capitalist age we live in. This is not a slight on capitalism - it's still among the best socio-economic models there is. But the relentless diversification of product lines and categories, the incessant multiplication of smaller and smaller SKUs (stock keeping units) to make everything appeal to (and accessible to) everyone might seem like a good thing at first. Democratization of goods, some would say. But what it is in reality is the facilitation of unnecessary consumption whose primary motivation is the economic growth of the organizations that are part of the manufacturing and supply chain. This offers limited consumer utility at best and at worst is turning us into mindless consumption-addicted zombies - slave to advertising and stuck forever running on the hamster-wheel of buying and working to fulfill our consumption habit.
   
   
4. Trashy story: What comes in must also go out. An average household produces a surprising amount of trash every day. And there's millions of them. From food and grocery delivery to e-commerce and other purchases, packaging (especially plastic packaging, which is most of it) accounts for the bulk of waste we are producing. Wet or organic waste - that is actually easier to dispose and has real utility - is a much smaller component of our lives. Does this not indicate the imbalance we suffer in our lifestyles?
   
   
5. Dark side of tourism: One only needs to see the bits of plastic floating below the surface of the ocean in Indonesia while snorkelling, or an Indian tourist city mountainside littered with thousands of crushed plastic bottles and wrappers or beer cans and snack sachets thrown carelessly at the base of some beach-side foliage to give one an acute sense of the very real and visible damage humans are causing their ecosystem. Our apathy is translating into the problem of micro-plastics flowing into the oceans, then the food-chain and then back into our bodies. We have all seen the viral pics of dead seagulls or fish cut open to reveal an inordinate amount of plastic inside their stomachs.
   
   
6. Pace of life: Do you register the times of day and change of seasons? When was the last time you truly enjoyed just the fruits of nature alone, without any man-made accompaniment. Feel the gentle soothe of a cool breeze, soak in a quiet afternoon sunlight or marvel at the handiwork of a bird building a nest. And found pure joy in just this. No desire to capture it in your smartphone or tweet/ post something to your online network. Would you say something in life is amiss if you've not had an experience like this recently?
   
   

There are many other ways in which one can see how far along they've drifted away from nature, and the tremendous cost of their choices on their home - the planet. A mere hundred or so years of "human progress" has come at a great expense to nature and everything in it, including us. 

We all aspire to a life where our individual lifestyle doesn't put a strain on natural resources, where we are connected and feel the soothing touch of mother nature every day, where we can holiday guilt-free and where stuff is a means to an end and not the end in itself. With every dollar we spend, we cast a vote on the kind of a world we want to live in and leave behind for our children. Vote wisely!