Is sustainability just a trendy buzzword?

A corporate checkbox for public relations?

A personal virtue badge we wear with pride? 

Or does it mean something deeper?

More challenging, and yet, far more critical to our shared future?

Sometimes, it feels like a ritual designed to soothe our guilt while the world continues burning. We carry reusable bags to the grocery store, then fill them with items wrapped in layers of plastic. We drive electric cars, mostly powered by coal. This disconnect and lack of awareness can turn sustainability into a fleeting trend with no real accountability.
So here’s the real question…

What exactly are we sustaining? 

Because if sustainability isn’t about looking good or ticking boxes off a chart, then it has to mean something, right?

Well, it means refusing to live a life that thrives at the expense of everything else. Of other people, ecosystems, and even generations we’ll never meet. Remember the “Save The Turtle” campaigns that held every VSCO girl’s heart?  Many jumped on the trend without knowing the science or reason behind it. That some alternative options were even worse for the environment. Labels replaced actual knowledge. 

Most people mean well, but we need to start learning what’s really going on. Ask ourselves the questions:

1. Am I preserving comfort for myself while many others bear the cost? 

2. Who and how many gain from the way I live today? Do WE live today? 

3. Who pays that price and WHAT is the cost?

When we sit with these questions, sustainability stops being a purple dry-erase marker and starts becoming something real. A responsibility. An awakening. A chance to choose differently for a brighter future.

Now.

Because individual choices indeed matter. 

Individual choices not only affect you, but also trends, social groups, and cultures will shift when enough people start moving. If you do it, someone else might. If they might, their neighbor might. The butterfly effect suggests that reducing waste, conserving energy, and choosing ethical products aren’t just extra chores to make life harder. They’re valuable actions! The more people who practice sustainability, the better the world will be for everyone. 

Our individual actions are also within a much bigger picture. We need to consider the full life of a single item. From the raw material extraction, to production, to use, to disposal. At every stage, the true costs are often hidden or ignored. Sometimes even just disregarded. It gets even darker when we figure out that we have exploited workers. Poisoned ecosystems. Future generations are and will be left with the bill. Animal and human life alike. 

True sustainability asks us to reshape the systems that sustain our very lives.

It depends on us to: 

1  Advocate for bold climate and environmental policy.

2. Push for ethical supplies and materials. 

3. Demand corporate accountability.

4. Support regenerative agriculture, clean energy, and fair access to resources.

This isn’t just environmental work. It’s justice work. It’s humanity rising to meet its moment. Living in a way that acknowledges our interdependence with each other and with the planet. It asks us to live like we’re not the only species that matters.

To look seven generations ahead and choose their happiness and prosperity. 

To measure success not in profits or convenience, but in whether we leave behind a world worth inheriting.

This is a call to live with intention.

To speak when it matters.

To keep learning and growing for the future we dare to fight for.

So, what is sustainability to you… now?