Our children are fans of Go Jetters. Over a year ago they watched episode where the Go Jetters visit the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This changed our lives. After this, any bit of plastic around our house was noticed and talked about. The kids became very good at reducing our use of plastic and recycling what we could. The regular refrain still is “we don’t want this plastic to end up in the ocean!” They are not yet Greta Thunberg, but they are quite aware given neither of them are yet 6.

While many of our humanitarian organisations will have environmental policies of sorts, I do wonder when we will have our Greta moment. When will understanding our ecological footprints be common practice in our responses? We’ve generally moved to thinking mobile-first, when will we shift to being ‘solar-first’? When will diesel generators be a thing of the past? When will we make simple shifts like insisting on catalytic converters on all our vehicles even if they are not legally required?

The tools and data exist to understand the small and big things we can change and yet we rarely do. We contribute to the environmental and climate disasters to which we also respond.

We can change, we just need to decide to. The choice is up to us.

Photo by Chelsea