Fair February

Once upon a time, when the grass was green and the sky was blue, I was a Master’s student working the days away on my thesis in the university library. Day in, day out, I would be glued to my computer going through periods of frantic data analysis, obsessive writing alternating with complete writer’s block. The experience was excruciating – not because I hated it (I didn’t) but rather because I was trying to understand whether I was willing to commit to another 3-4 years of academia if pursuing a PhD was going to be my next move.

One of those days, I came home and decided that I needed a creative outlet project besides this life-consuming thesis. This is how my travel blog Abroad and Beyond was born (serving as my mental refuge at night – because who needs sleep), which I ended up working on for the following few years. An aspiring travel blogger with a dream of exploring everything this planet has to offer, I eventually decided to put further academic pursuits on the back-burner and give the corporate world a go. My professional life landed in financial services and slowly took a direction towards sustainability-related research – an area that, as I figured later, combines both of my passions – and brought my blogging career aspirations to an end.

And I’m truly grateful for how it has panned out. This line of work gives me a compellng reason to get out of bed every morning, even it feels like the planet house everything is constantly on fire. My job has provided me with a lot of exposure opportunities related to the broadest spectrum of environmental, social and governance issues: from deforestation and waste management to human rights abuses and anti-competitive practices. While I was deep-diving into them as well as learning a great deal about innovative solutions and emerging best industry practices, my climate anxiety, coupled with political depression, has skyrocketed.

Over the course of 2023, I caught myself getting more and more radicalised: every day, you wake up to news of yet another region succumbing to extreme social polarisation, yet another natural disaster, yet another violent conflict. Weren’t we supposed to get a break after covid? And so, I would think about how much of an impact my work made – or, probably, did not actually make. Without any practical way of measuring it, I will never know.

Fast forward to early 2024, I was on my way back from an extended holiday, which was full of somber reminders of how many privileges can be taken for granted. While I didn’t make any new year’s resolutions, I set some intentions for my transition back into the routine back home instead: dry January rest of winter, Spanish lessons, guided journalling. But when talking with my friends about these (in my mind, perfectly manageable) intentions, I soon realised that they are 1) of purely internal nature and 2) as such, in no way address the anguish that followed me through last year. Nor do they capitalise on the privileges available to someone like me.

And this is how the idea of this blog was born¹. If my far-reaching impact is very limited, I should focus on what is within my reach. To accomplish the premise of Fair February being an impact-focused mission, I will build on my current environment- and community-conscious habits. What can I could do more of? Where can I put my professional background into practice? What areas have I been neglecting? What do I want to try but lack knowledge of to take action? These are some of the questions I will be trying to consider during the coming month.

In order to understand where I am in my own sustainability journey now, I compiled a list of habits or swaps that, in my opinion, already contribute ². It includes the following:

• Pescatarian diet since 2018, almost no seafood since 2023 (even though I didn’t grow up next to the sea, my love for it is such that I sometimes have dreams about seafood… I’m working on it)
• Bulk purchases where applicable (household products and some types of food)
• Reusable (foldable) silicone cup for on the go instead of paper or plastic ones
• Silicone baking sheets instead of paper or foil
• Refillable water bottles instead of bottled water
• Metal straws for on the go instead of paper or plastic ones
• Beeswax wraps instead of paper and plastic ones
• Weekly food prep, including homemade lunches in containers if working from the office
• Practically no use of heating at home
• Biking when in Amsterdam, otherwise public transport – no driving (I don’t even have a driver’s license)
• Energy-efficient appliances and LED lights at home
• Dishwasher in use only at full capacity
• Laundry in use only at full capacity + cold washes as much as possible
• Air-dry laundry
• Canvas/fabric bags instead of plastic ones
• No disposal of any food (apart from peels/scraps)
• Boiling only the water I need (explanation)
• Recycling everything (relatively easy in Amsterdam due to wide availability of different types of bins, tight regulations and hefty fines)
• Volunteering for social and environmental causes that resonate with me

For the sake of full disclosure, I also have to address the main source of my carbon emissions at the moment. In 2023, over 80% of my total footprint came from flying: I took two intercontinental flights, plus a couple trips to the edges of Europe. While I tried to justify them (to myself) through the lack of travelling between 2020-2022 and trips to my hometown being off the table for the foreseeable future, there is no denying that it is a major contradiction. Of course, overseas travel is far from a necessity in my case; nonetheless, with travelling being a backbone of my living since childhood, I need to re-evaluate my choices and align them with both my values and lifestyle. And that, I believe, is one of the biggest challenges in itself.

1. ^{I find it almost funny that my mental torments take on new shape and forms, yet the first solution I could think of is the same as the one exactly a decade ago} ↩︎
2. ^{Here, potential refers to an average lifestyle and living conditions of a foreigner living in the Netherlands; the difference between locals and foreigners, of course, is in that my family lives far away from me} ↩︎