When I was eleven, I read a book called Exodus by Julie Bertagna. It was a dystopian story about a small island village who live on what was once a mountain. The protagonist, Mara, didn’t find herself in an empty nuclear wasteland or living in a world of unfeeling androids - this world was our own and it had been drowned. As I followed the journey of Exodus’ unlikely hero Mara, I was left truly unsettled and thoughtful of what life would look like on this little blue planet in the near future.

Exodus is not just a dystopian fiction, it is a story of potential. This past summer, the fourth largest ice shelf - over 1 trillion tonnes, 160 times the size of Manhattan, broke off of Antarctica.

The Caribbean has been battered and broken by storms in recent months with 6 major hurricanes (category 3+), causing damages upwards of $186 billion (USD). Houston was underwater for weeks. Florida had to go into lockdown. South-East Asia typhoon floods killed thousands of people. The West Coast was on fire and is now being pounded with rainfall and landslides.

Forest fires, cyclones, avalanches, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and hurricanes - they aren’t just ‘natural’ disasters - it is becoming more and more clear that they are the product of our own behaviours. Do those stats make your eyes glaze over? And why should you care? 1672 Pg of organic carbon is estimated to be stored in the Northern Arctic permafrost - 50% of the Earth’s carbon. According to the Clausius–Clapeyron equation: for every degree Celsius the temperature rises, 7% more water can be held by the air. To put it bluntly, the warmer our planet gets, the more drastic the storms, the higher likelihood of super-storms and extreme weather, the faster coastal cities will drown. Global warming will only accelerate and we are nearing a point of no return according to many climate scientists.

This topic is certainly bleaker than my usual subject matter, and I hope it doesn’t come across as preachy. We can all do better. It takes time and awareness to adjust our predisposition towards convenience to a conscious choice for what is healthier (for ourselves and the planet). So before I bore you with the doom and gloom, let’s get to the good stuff. Below you will find 60 simple steps to save the world. Someone once told me, we are the first generation to feel the effects of global warming, but the last who can do anything to stop it. So let’s get to work:  

Basic Household Chores

Retail, Fashion, and Beauty

Transit

Food

Extracurricular Activities

Some of these tips and tricks might seem straightforward and common-sense, but I suppose that’s the point. Being eco-friendly isn’t hard… it’s just about adapting a new frame of mind and setting new habits. So, considering it is still January and hopefully we are all still in the mindset of setting resolutions, perhaps incorporating some of these small but meaningful changes into your life is something we can all try to do. After all, they are just a few simple steps to save the world.