GATHERING OUR FRIENDS AROUND THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT
When we gather our communities around our passions and goals, we create support for ourselves and the issues we care about. Encouraging our friends to get involved in climate conscious action strengthens our collective support for the environment and ourselves. In addressing the climate crisis it is crucial to start small, local and within our own community. In doing this, we start to see the larger picture and how these small steps we choose to take interlace with larger global systems. In the following article, we explore tangible ways you can gather your friends around the climate movement.
Local clean ups are an accessible and hands-on way to make a difference in your community. Whether you're drawn to beach clean ups, river clean ups or just picking up litter in your neighborhood, your actions are important. Sometimes the size of a problem, like our global waste systems, can be quite daunting, but we can find peace in addressing small localized portions of the issues we feel connected to. Find an ecosystem in your community you feel passionate about and rally your friends around that cleanup site.
Another climate conscious way to gather our friends is a clothing swap party. The amount of clothing going to waste in the US has doubled in the last 20 years, let's make it our mission to reverse that statistic within our communities. Gather your friends and ask them to bring along some clothes they no longer desire. Everyone will find something new they love while diverting clothing from landfills.
Similarly, you can also host a mending party. Ask your friends to bring any clothes that need a bit of love. Maybe it's that sweater with the hole that's never been fixed or that shirt that's been missing a button for the past year. By taking better care of our clothes, we’re able to avoid fast fashion and the exuberant waste that coincides with it.
Look into local volunteer work you and your friends can sign up for. Some of my personal favorites are community garden days, compost drop offs, wildlife rehabilitation centers and tree planting events. Try creating a calendar within your friend group for volunteer days, climate marches and any other climate positive activities you’re interested in.
Another example of showing up for the planet, our friends and ourselves can be as simple as hosting a potluck harvest dinner. Group dinners are a great way to divert food waste and tend to our friendships. Fostering nurturing relationships with ourselves and our peers is essential for mirroring those values in our relationship with nature.
Individually we can cause ripples that flow into the larger patterns of the collective. I encourage you to hold onto your community and peers while facing the challenges ahead. Try not to underestimate the power behind a small group of friends' ability to change the world, this is how it's always started. Through building relationships of reciprocity with each other and the planet that sustains us, we garner enough support to carry us into a brighter, greener and more loving future.
