World Environment Day | From Awareness to Action
Every year on June 5th, the world collectively celebrates World Environment Day! This is a chance to shed light about the environmental challenges we face from climate change to water scarcity to pollution. It’s a call to action, encouraging individuals and organisations, alike to make changes, big or small, to protect our planet. Whether it’s planting a tree, reducing single use plastic or supporting sustainable businesses, every action counts!
As a business rooted towards climate action, sustainability chatter is an everyday occurrence. Be it team meetings dedicated to discussing eco-friendly practices or causal tea meetings, sustainability never exits this room. Against this backdrop, everyday feels like Earth Day.
With June 5th right around the corner, we are gearing ourselves towards World Environment Day. A powerful reminder of our collective responsibility to protect our planet. This year the theme is even more important to us, as we focus on Land restoration, desertification and drought resilience.
As an organisation based out of Bangalore, we experienced hardly any rainfall last year, thereby increasing the water concern during summer time this year. According to IISc, the city experienced the worst drought in the last 30-40 years. Many residential areas introduced water cuts, bans on swimming pool usage, mandatorily introducing water aerators among many other measures.
The year before last, i.e., 2022, the city saw heavy rainfall, leading to flooding across multiple parts of the city, leaving many homes submerged in water. According to the well renowned environmentalist, Leo Saldanha Bangalore received sufficient rainfall, and in the year 2022 alone, the city recorded over 120 mm of rainfall. However, the free fresh water that the city received goes into the drain, gets contaminated, mixes with lakes and eventually spoils the groundwater as well. Ultimately resulting in a cycle of contamination.
Each year, the number of climate issues are steadily on the rise, nudging us to move in a direction of contemplating change and implementing it as well.
Discussions that drive change:
Over the course of the last two months, Bare Necessities hosted very many sustainability themed workshops. A recurring topic that most of our partners requested us to address was the water crisis and tips to conserve it. While the issue of water is deeply concerning, the fact that more and more organisations are waking up to the reality of the crisis that face us is reassuring.
Upon discussing this with workshop attendees, we saw the collective sense of concern and individual responsibility amongst each of them. The conversation involved sharing concerns, unique experiences, tips to conserve water that was super beneficial to everyone in the space.
Individuals propelling change:
In moments such as these, our commitment to continue to raise awareness and spread the word about issues that plague the planet strengthens only further. By building capacity in sharing knowledge, there is a fundamental acknowledgement of the issue at hand while looking towards potential solutions too. Therefore, extending sustainability onto one’s shelves is a great way to further on personal level change.
In this context, we believe that businesses have the power to be a force for good, paving the way for a healthier planet. By making sustainable living accessible for everyone, we are empowering everyone, from a seasoned eco-warrior to someone starting their journey, to make a difference. It’s not about perfection, it’s about progress.
This World Environment Day, let’s build a more sustainable future together, one responsible choice at a time.