I noticed something strange on the internet in the last months of 2018: People in comment sections asking for someone to save the world. For someone to solve all the world's problems. And while I understand the sentiment, it also worries me. If we're all going to cry for help, nothing is going to happen except a whole lot of crying for help. We need to take action, which honestly isn't as difficult as it often sounds. In fact, I think it takes just four easy steps to change the world for the better.

I know, I know. There are so many problems. The world is a shit show right now and we can't blame it all on Trump, Brexit or megacorporations. Besides, those are symptoms rather than causes. The real causes of why we're living in such a mess are too many to list, and that's what makes this first step so tricky: Before you know it, you're in over your head and can't see the light anymore. So choose one problem that's close to your heart. One problem, whether that's women's rights, environmental protection, getting people to vote, you name it. For me, that problem is plastic pollution and environmental protection (hence the pictures of nature, because some people don't seem to realize how beautiful nature is). Choose your one problem and tackle it with all you've got.



Now that you've identified the problem, it's time to read up on it. Of course you already know the basics, otherwise you wouldn't be doing something about this particular problem, but there's so much more information out there that will help you save the world! When I first got involved in the whole hating on single-use plastics thing, I knew the situation was bad. I just had no idea exactly how bad it was though. I also had no idea what I could do to change the situation or which charities to follow and support. At the time, I was still working an office job, so I always had a tab open in the background with a Google search for plastic pollution. Whenever work was slow (which was almost all the time), I'd read a new article or website. Within no time, I knew almost all there was to know and had a list of helpful resources and great charities.


Knowledge is power, but power is useless if you don't do anything with it. So get off that couch and start changing the world for real! And no, I'm not talking about sending a tweet or two. Raising awareness is a good thing, but not if it's the only thing you do. You've got to put your money where your mouth is. If you did well in step 2, you'll know exactly what you need to do.
In my case, this step meant cutting out as much single-use plastic as I could. I switched from slimy shower gel to old fashioned soap from Lush. I choose plastic-free alternatives whenever I can. And because I felt that that wasn't enough, I started raising money to donate to charity. My mom helped me out with this. In the Netherlands country we have a bottle deposit scheme: you pay €0,25 on top of the product price for every big plastic bottle you buy and get that money back when you return the empty bottle to the supermarket, so it can be recycled. These bottles often get dumped in parks or around supermarkets. In those cases, my mom and I pick them up and bring them to the supermarket. That way we raised over €150,- in 2018, which we split between 4Ocean, the WWF and the Ocean Cleanup among others. Donating the money was very rewarding, but what made it even better was imagining the sheer amount of plastic we recycled: A mountain of about 600 plastic bottles that would have ended up in nature, landfills or incinerators otherwise.

Even though I'm proud of my family's accomplishments, I'll also be the first to admit that step 3 was the hardest one. It's the most rewarding one too, not just when you're working on it yourself, but also when you see your friends do their thing. Take Nabila from Hot Town Cool Girl for example, who campaigned like crazy for the midterm elections in the US, even though she's too young to vote. Or Kanra from The Lunar Descent, who organized a tree plantation drive in med school; they ended up planting tons of trees! Charlene is doing whatever she can for animals by raising money for several animal charities all year. And while all these things might seem small, all small efforts put together will make a huge difference in the end.



Want to maximize your impact? Spread the word and convince others to join the cause (and yes, this is definitely the perfect moment to send those tweets!). I'm lucky enough to have parents who immediately joined me in raising money and looking for plastic-free alternatives. We might only be three people, but that's still more than one.

Still feeling a little discouraged? I totally get it. It's a big scary world out there and it's difficult to make a change. Sometimes I feel like I should give up, that all my efforts are for nothing, that I'm not changing the world one bit. Whenever I feel that way, I remind myself of a passage from Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illumiated, in which a kid goes through an existential crisis. His dad asks him the question: "If you picked up one grain of sand in the desert and put it down somewhere else, would that desert still be exactly the same as before?" The answer is no, of course. Every change, no matter how small, is a change and can lead to an awesome chain reaction. If I pick up my grain of sand, the desert won't be the same anymore. If all my friends pick theirs up, a sand dune could collapse. If we all do it, we can move the freaking desert. So tackle a problem. Stand up for what you believe in, for what you think is right. Come on guys, we've got a desert to move. We've got a world to change. We've got a planet to save. Let's do this.