Intro : The Attenborough Effect. I am your average 20 something from…
By: The Lazy Enviromentalist
Tags: Environment, Entrepreneurship, Single Use Plastic, Plastic Pollution, Environmental Issues

I am your average 20 something from Liverpool. I'm living in a house share in London. I have a normal job and consider myself just another person who has very little influence over anyone else outside my friends and family. Even then this was limited due to the stubborn and strong willed tendencies of Scousers.

In 2018 I (like many of us) tuned in to Blue Planet II hosted by, the man, the legend and the person we all not so secretly wish was our grandad: Sir David Attenborough. He highlighted an issue that most of us (myself included) hadn't really ever put much thought into. What happens to all those single use items we use daily? Well…I guess now we know.

After this episode I did what many of us did — I went about my normal life: got up, went to work and used countless single use plastics. I had always been rather happy in my own little bubble, only thinking about what mattered to me in the moment. But, on this particular day I couldn’t stop thinking about all those plastics floating around in the ocean. It wasn't even that I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I couldn’t stop talking about it. Telling anyone who would listen about how awful it was. It went on and on like this for weeks until my boyfriend couldn’t take it much longer and asked me what I was going to do about it? My answer to this question was that I didn’t know.

It started small in the form of some research. My initial thought was if everyone could make some small lifestyle changes we as a world would be better off. Isn’t that the start of all things? You start small like a tiny seed and let it grow into a tall, beautiful tree. But then I had to take a good hard look at myself and realise that if this “epiphany” was so easy and great then why hadn’t I ever bothered to do it before?

A book called Sapiens, gave me some interesting concepts about the development of humankind. Before I jump into this I would just like to point out that I listened to this book during my commute to work over an 8 week period and that I am not some great scholar who can devour the content of a book in days — I like my napping and the pub too much so self discipline isn’t my strong suit. Anyway back to my point. I had learnt in this book that mankind is partially driven by the desire for ease and convenience. We don’t really want to sacrifice our creature comforts and make things harder when it doesn’t need to be. Thus came my second “epiphany”. What if I could make small environmentally sound changes to my life without feeling like I was missing out on the good stuff. This is where the term The Lazy Environmentalist came in.

It seems the problem is our societies acceptance of single use items. Our world war predecessors with the mentality of “make do and mend” would be completely shocked by the sheer amount of single use items which for the most part are completely unnecessary. There are many small and easy lifestyle changes that can be made that can really make a difference.

My plan is to make small changes wherever possible. I will try and test out products that are not only sustainable for the environment but also easy to use, and sustainable for the average person. Then hopefully a small handful of people will read my journey and see that change can be easy. Greta Thunberg has my favourite quote so far: no one is too small to make a difference. Hopefully that what I can do too.