Persuading Others to Go Green

Ever tried to tell someone how easy it is to recycle just to be brushed off, or in some instances be called a hippie?  These days people take it as if you are trying to spread a political message when you are trying to teach people how to be green and eco-friendly.  I am writing this post not to convince people to shove "going green" down peoples throats, but instead help people understand why we all should be green.

One of the arguments business owners use to explain why they continue to pollute is because many are convinced that there is no such thing as global warming and that it's simply a natural phenomenon not at all impacted by human behavior.  To them this nullifies the idea that humans are able to make a sizable impact on the earth through their pollutants and eco-friendly ways equally.  Even if this is your view, I completely respect your ability to decide for yourself what you agree with or disagree with.  However, you don't need to be convinced of global warming to go green just as people don't need to be convinced they are fat to get healthy. Just in case that you are wrong, or just by realizing that we have technologies that allow you to do the same job without polluting wouldn't you want to do that instead?  Isn't it nicer to breathe fresh air instead of smog, not just for future generations but for yourself as well?

Another one of the common arguments for not making a change is that one action by one person isn't going to save the world.  While that is true, this argument is invalid since there are already many people making the efforts needed to reduce the pressure on the environment.  Each and every other helping hand will start to make a bigger and bigger impact upon our polluting ways.  If they are able to get their entire company involved this means that not only are they themselves reducing their carbon footprint but they are reducing their consumers carbon footprints as well.  Our actions don't just follow a straight line to their consequence, everything is interlinked and by making one change many other elements are affected as well.  Thus if you take a mug instead of a disposable cup for your coffee every day not only are you saving many pieces of plastic from being thrown out, you are also slowing down the demand for their production, saving an animals life, reducing the need to drill oil, creating jobs for mug vendors, and so much more.

Going green is easy if you take small steps.  Many people believe that its expensive and you need to buy heavy duty equipment such as solar panels to even make a dent.  Although those products do help, you are doing just as much good by recycling, purchasing bio products, and spreading awareness.  Businesses are afraid that high numbers on their sustainability reports are going to make them look bad in comparison to other businesses and thus they completely give up on going green.  Instead I suggest making small cheap changes until you are ready to make the larger changes to get better numbers.  This should not be considered a competition - being good to mother nature is good no matter how much or how little you do as long as you are trying to make a difference.

I am no stranger to people opposing my ways, these are just some of the arguments that I use to convince people otherwise to understand being green from my perspective.  Unfortunately there will always be certain groups of people that don't want to hear any of our "nonsense" because they have better things to do than protect the planet, they have other places to consume consume consume, they are above going green.  They are not the reason to give up, they are the reason to continue to be green because you know not only are you making up for your waste but you are making up for theirs too.  In a perfect world everyone would come together to start making changes because they realize the gravity of the situation but until we find the solution for  a perfect world keep progressing through the difficulty and be the one to stand up and do the right thing.

If you are struggling to find supporters to your green movement, or you are trying to convince your business partners to go green... don't forget if it doesn't work now sooner or later the laws will catch  up to them and that's when real change will start happening globally; when its no longer down to choice but up to necessity.