eco education
July 2007
A year ago I was working in the travel industry, promoting luxury tourism and regularly flying out to Italy. I would only occasionally shop at a local organic store (when I felt I could afford it) and, despite some misgivings, I continued to buy food flown in from the most exotic and remote locations because they provided the rich and diverse tastes to which my palate had become accustomed. I had always considered myself an advocator of the alternative lifestyle, but my habits spoke to the contrary, and one day the reality of my hypocrisy dawned and I could no longer justify my way of life. So I left my job in London and moved to Bristol, a city defined to a large extent by an ever-increasing number of exiting ecological initiatives. My involvement in those initiatives has grown since I arrived last October, and I realize more fully as each day goes by just how many choices we are all responsible for taking to reduce our carbon consumption and tread this earth more lightly.
I have made the decision to stop shopping at large retailers and support my local organic stores where the produce is fresh and locally sourced. I’ve also spent some time volunteering on an organic farm learning more about the origins of the food we eat and increasing my sensitivity to the care needed to provide every mouthful of food that we, more often than not, tuck into quite thoughtlessly. Whereas once upon a time I would gasp at the price of organic food, I now realize that the low cost of supermarket food necessarily signifies a high cost to the wellbeing of the planet and I see it as my responsibility to act through non-cooperation with those seductive attempts by supermarkets to lure me into their stores and share in their mindless destruction of the planet.
Of course, I miss some of the foods I have chosen not to eat in an effort to reduce food miles, but I have discovered a whole range of new food stuffs and have had fun experimenting with them. It’s a bonus that I look and a feel a lot healthier too. I now know that I want to dedicate my life to promoting the sustainable way of life as the only acceptable state of being rather than as an ‘alternative’ lifestyle choice. I am in the process of oganising a series of educational events on behalf of Slow Food Bristol in an attempt to engage the future generations in ecological discourse, and I have the dream of one day opening my own small school in which ecological literacy will underpin the entire curriculum. It is my belief that education is necessarily environmental, and that the huge shift in human behaviour required to safeguard the earth must start with the education of those in whose hands all future decisions lie. My dreams are big but they began with a small realization one day while sat on a plane. I want to encourage people to be more mindful of the seemingly small and trivial choices they make everyday, like where they go shopping and what they put in their shopping basket, as each one of those choices has an environmental impact. It’s easy to get disheartened about the state of the world but I am optimistic that the tide of human consciousness is changing. Big changes happen first in the minds of individuals, so let’s all try and be a little more mindful in our everyday lives and then it will be only a matter of time before dreams of a better, more sustainable world, become possible.
By Olivia Desborough
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