Quiet Environmental Activism: 13 Ways to Rebel At Home & How To Strike Without A Crowd
We share sustainability-related quiet activism we can all do while staying home and avoiding crowds, from subversive acts of making and doing to having our say online, asking those in power what is being done, questioning the status quo, striking digitally, and learning about and talking about environmental issues.
I first heard the phrase quiet activism from Polly Barks, one of my favourite zero waste bloggers who talks a lot about why zero waste is more than a plastic bag. Zero waste is broader than the waste in your bin at home. It includes not wasting any of the Earth’s resources and promoting a circular economy over an extractive, linear, single-use economy.
It usually starts at home, but we should not stop there. We need to take it into our community, creating a sharing economy and resilient communities, and include it in the governance of our councils and countries so we have single-use plastic-free councils and states, circular economy strategies being implemented country-wide, and renewable energy and compostable packaging being used over polluting, exhaustive, and non-regenerative fossil fuels like coal and gas and plastic.
Quiet activism comprises quiet forms of activism that can bring about change through everyday acts of kindness and subversion. Laura Pottinger describes it as
“small, everyday, embodied acts, often of making and creating, that can be either implicitly or explicitly political in nature” in her paper, Planting the seeds of a quiet activism. These acts “critique, subvert and rework dominant modes of production and consumption”.
In this blog post, we share sustainability-related quiet activism we can all do while staying home, social distancing and avoiding crowds, from acts of making and doing to having our say online and through learning about and talking about sustainability and personally asking those in power what is being done.
This is not saying that loud activism is not needed or not the way to go about it. It has an important role to play. These are simply alternative acts we can do to keep speaking up for a liveable planet for future generations while we can’t get together and get loud and when we don’t have the capacity - mental or physical - to get out and in people’s faces.
1. Talk about environmental issues
Just by speaking to friends and family about environmental issues that have you worried, you could encourage them to change their behaviour. You could help them realise the extent of the particular environmental problem, that it will affect them personally, and that their personal actions do make a difference and will help.
Most people don’t talk about uncomfortable topics like biodiversity loss, plastic waste, and the climate crisis. However, according to research, talking about climate change, for instance, leads to greater acceptance of climate science, with peers being the best messenger. Importantly, this isn't achieved through arguing but by bonding, connecting, and inspiring. You can watch Katharine Hayhoe’s TED talk on this and read articles by her on it on her website.
We’ve also found that simply setting an example by being a renegade and doing things in an environmentally friendly way yourself - like using reusables when out and about, choosing eco-friendly products, and taking leftovers home from a restaurant to eat later - can quietly influence others to start doing the same.
You can also talk to family and friends about fun new projects and swaps you’ve been trying out on your zero waste journey like making your own peanut butter, trying a shampoo bar or deodorant paste, and attempting to regrow food scraps like spring onions. They might want to try it too or ask to join you the next time you are homemaking a beauty or cleaning product or food product so that they can learn how to do it too.
2. Support the push to make ecocide a crime and other environmental campaigns
If I had to choose one campaign to ask everyone to support it would be the push to make ecocide a crime.
Why is this so important? Ecocide is the mass damage or destruction of the natural living world. And by making this a crime at the International Criminal Court alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, it will be a criminal law rather than a civil law, which just results in financial penalties. If it’s made a criminal law, company bosses would face going jail, which might make them more hesitant to take part in this destruction.
It is a powerful way to stop industries from polluting because:
“a crime of ecocide prevents big business investors from financing harmful practices and prevents insurers from insuring them and people in positions of superior responsibility such as CEOs and government ministers become prosecutable as individuals for ecocide which they cause or permit”.
You can support this by signing Stop Ecocide International’s petition and becoming an earth protector here.
Of course, there are many other important environmental campaigns that deserve everyone’s support. Support as many as you can through donating, volunteering, or simply sharing their message.
We regularly update our Act Now page with petitions you can sign, open letters you can put your name on, templates for letters you can send to show and voice your support for causes.
3. Practice the radical act of repair
Repairing is a radical act.
“Why is repair such a radical act? Fixing something we might otherwise throw away is almost inconceivable to many in the heyday of fast fashion and rapidly advancing technology, but the impact is enormous” — Rose Marcario, CEO of Patagonia, which has an amazing ethos of repair
Marketing and planned obsolescence are continuously trying to get us to replace and buy new, when we should be repairing and buying second hand. Go the alternative route, reject being a consumer and become an owner who looks after and proudly repairs their things, and support brands like Nudie Jeans, BioChef and Beekeeper Parade that go out of their way to repair and reuse.
Read more about the fight for the right to repair and find out which brands respect this right here.
4. Write to your representatives and companies asking them to act on the ecological and climate emergency
Call or email or send letters to your representatives or council members and companies to let them know you want them to act.
Ask companies why they are using plastic and ask them to switch to more environmentally friendly packaging or reusable packaging. Barilla removed the plastic window from its pasta boxes after its customers told it this was what they wanted. Ask your council to do something differently to improve the sustainability and resilience of your suburb. Yarra City Council implemented a plastic-free campaign after this was suggested by concerned citizens who presented the idea to the council via a petition.
When suggesting changes like these, it is best to include examples of other companies or councils getting it right, which shows how it can be done and that it can be done.
Asking representatives to act on climate change and to preserve local natural habitats is extremely important.
You can often find templates for email messages if you aren’t confident about writing it yourself (for instance @earthbyhelena is sharing around an excellent template email you can use to demand a better post-covid world or keep an eye on our Act Now page) but it can literally just be telling them why something matters to you and why something should be done about it and asking them to please do something about it.
Remember that your representatives and your council work for you. Tell them what you want.
5. Use it all, forage, eat local, eat more plants, eat your leftovers, and get composting
Change your relationship with food and food scraps by looking past the supermarket shelf to the system behind this food ending up on your plate.
Start questioning if you’re eating all the parts of the plant you could eat - stalks and leaves are often edible too - where your food is coming from - is there a locally grown or made option? - if the people involved where treated fairly, if the environment was harmed in its making, and the emissions output created by your diet and the food you (and supermarkets and restaurants) are disposing of.
Educate yourself about the supply chain of your food choices so you can make an informed choice and choose what you eat rather than being sold unhealthy, unethical, Earth and soil-destroying food through advertising.
6. Create some activist art
Make protest signs, badges, stencils for stencilling, stickers to slap (you can buy already-made waste-related sticker designs from Activistickers to print), or posters to plaster walls with, get out some chalk and decorate the sidewalk, or draw or paint something to share on social media or an entire art installation for display.
Use art in whatever way you like and can to get a sustainability related message out there and to keep it top of mind.
Reuse materials to make this art wherever possible like using cardboard boxes to make signs and stencils and look for second hand art supplies before buying new.
7. Foster a love of nature in your family and friends
We protect what we love. This is why it is important that we love and feel connected to nature - so we will protect it.
A love for and connection with nature can be fostered by spending time in nature and discovering its immense beauty and intricacy. Go for a walk or hike, make up and take the kids for a scavenger hunt, go birdwatching or frog hunting, or learn how to forage. All these activities bring about an appreciation for and interest in the natural world.
Being in nature also reminds us that we are nature and by protecting the Earth, we are protecting ourselves.
An interest in the natural world can also be created through at home activities like growing seeds, keeping a plant and wildlife observation booklet, making a collage with leaves and flowers, making sunprints, building an outdoor shelter, making or getting a bug hotel to observe, learning cloud identification, and making a flower garland.
8. Look for a local option and support small businesses
Ensure the survival of small businesses and ensure we continue to have this choice by supporting these small local businesses over chain stores. Going out of your way to research a local sustainable option rather than just buying from a business that you immediately associate with the product due to marketing practices is a rebellious act.
Supporting small local businesses makes a community resilient by keeping money local, meaning it is invested locally, improving the local economy and resulting in better public services, and the money goes to a person that needs it and not a billionaire who doesn’t.
Big business harms communities in many ways according to studies, which can be read up on here, while purchasing from local small businesses further strengthens the economic base of the whole community.
In addition, it is easier for smaller businesses to be more sustainable themselves and for them to change how they operate to allow their customers to be more eco-friendly, for instance minimising packaging and allowing the use of reusables.
9. Love yourself as you are and reject the need to buy unnecessary beauty products and fast fashion
“In a society that profits from your self-doubt, loving yourself is a rebellious act.” Author unknown
Ask yourself why you buy certain beauty products, why you wear makeup, why you dye your hair, and why you shave. Is it for you or is it to try to attain unrealistic beauty standards?
Shrug off societal expectations and simplify your beauty regime and wardrobe. Learn to love what you have and what you were born with. You don’t need it or need to do it because that’s what you’ve been led to believe. Buy less. Use less.
Don’t be a slave to fashion and beauty products. Make up your own mind about what you really need to feel beautiful.
“Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mould to which all must conform. It is grotesque.” — U.G. Krishnamurti
10. Make and grow your own and save seeds
Becoming self resilient is a rebellious act. Increase your self-reliance and the resilience of your community by growing your own food, starting a community garden, learning how to make your own bread and other food products you would normally buy, saving and sharing seeds, increasing the quality of the area’s soil through compost, and learning what you can forage and eat in your area and passing on this knowledge.
The Heritage Seed Library and a local seed swap event in Brighton, UK, Seedy Sunday see individual seed savers’
“quiet acts of growing and sharing as part of a broad movement to conserve biodiversity and challenge the corporate control of food and seed systems”.
11. Educate yourself on the systemic and intersectional issues
Educate yourself on the important issues, the stats, and the ways in which to make people care and the ways in which you can make a difference and the ways the government should be making a difference and learn about amazing solutions that are being implemented to get inspired by reading books and articles and listening to podcasts.
Learn the truth about plastics, the clothing industry, intensive agriculture, the health of the planet’s soil, biodiversity loss, and climate change and then demand that this truth be told.
We have a list of recommended books here and recommended documentaries and series here.
“Experts have a responsibility to educate. Voters have a responsibility to learn.” — Tom Nichols in his book, The Death of Expertise
12. Replace single-use items with a reusable alternative
Consumeristic culture wants us to have to buy something over and over again. Take control by buying once instead of being forced to buy over and over again.
Reusable products like wax wraps instead of clingfilm, cloth instead of paper towels, hankies instead of tissues, stainless steel razors instead of disposable razors, and menstrual cups, period underwear, and cloth pads instead of single-use menstrual products are liberating.
Set yourself free from and break the chains of having to continuously buy when you can buy once and reuse.
In addition, buy quality products that are built to last and that can be repaired or upgraded, such as a Fair Phone, avoiding products that have planned obsolescence built into them (most - probably all - other phones), which necessitates the waste of the resources used to make the first item just so that a company can ensure repeat business.
13. Buy less overall
We’re citizens not consumers. We aren’t born to buy to keep the economy running. We don’t need half the products we are being sold. The Earth is being destroyed and resources are being wasted producing products no one needs.
“The capitalist spiral of ever-increasing, ever-expanding production/consumption/accumulation is driving the exponentially increasing degradation of the environment,” — Michael Löwy in Ecosocialism - A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe
He continues: “Contrary to the claim of free-market ideology, supply is not a response to demand. Capitalist firms usually create the demand for their products by various marketing techniques, advertising tricks, and planned obsolescence.” How to tell an authentic need from an artificial one? According to him, ask yourself “whether it can be expected to persist without the benefit of advertising”.
Reject your status as a consumer by buying only what you need, only purchasing items that align with your ethics, and valuing people and experiences over things, valuing being over having.
How to Strike Without a Crowd
The COVID-19 health crisis has meant that the traditional way of taking to and striking in the streets is no longer possible right now. But, it is important to keep this up because the climate crisis is going nowhere (and only getting closer), in times of crisis environmental laws are often rolled back while we’re not looking, and we need to push now for a better world rather than going back to destroying the environment and the future of future generations.
So, how do you strike and use your voice from home on your own?:
join online strikes , for example take a photo with a sign and share it on social media each Friday for Fridays for Future's digital strike or take part in online rallies like the Stop Adani Movement's Marsh dump Adani online rally
call or email/send letters to your representatives or council members and companies to let them know you want them to act - you can often find templates for email messages if you aren’t confident about writing it yourself (for instance @earthbyhelena is sharing around an excellent template email you can use to demand a better post-covid world) but it can literally just be telling them why something matters to you and why something should be done about it and asking them to please do something about it
sign online petitions
write a submission to have your say when laws are changing
vote in elections
boycott brands that don’t produce and sell products/provide services in a way that aligns with your values and let them and others know why you refuse to support them
make and put a sign up in your window
make activist art
join a local action group and ask how you can help right now or start one
speak to friends and family about environmental issues that have you worried. According to research, talking about climate change leads to greater acceptance of climate science and the best messenger is a peer. This isn't done by arguing but by bonding, connecting and inspiring.
Let's fight today for a better tomorrow! How will you be quietly activist and what rebellious act will you being doing for the Earth and future generations?
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