Our Greatest Battle Begins at Home

© Marine Di Lena

Making the decision to take care of the planet, so that it can take care of us, means first and foremost taking control of our own lives. Although we want to make changes on a daily basis, it's not always easy to do so when those around us aren't at the same stage as we are. The already difficult environmental battle begins at home.

I've always had a very strong bond with nature, as anyone who knows me knows, but since the birth of my daughter and the fact that I live in the middle of the forest, this bond has become stronger. My external link to her has become internal, I've become nature again. If someone attacks her, they attack me, and that really hurts.

This connection isn't necessarily easy to explain to others. On the networks, it's easy, you find lots of people who follow the same environmental fight and fortunately we have that, it allows us to motivate ourselves and find the strength to continue. But although the people around me are aware and sensitive to the cause, the fact that I've taken a much more involved turn changes everything.

It's part of my life, but it's also part of my job now. I've been a creative director for 12 years, and became a certified green designer, and I spend a lot of time studying to bring the best to my customers. As a result, I see everything that's going wrong around me, a lot of things that many people don't see. It's as if I've ended up becoming the "killjoy", "radical" and "boring" of those around me.

For example, when it comes to food (it's one of my own battles, but everyone's free to defend the environment in the way that seems best and most feasible to them), I've been trying for several years now to reduce meat consumption at home, and believe me, being married to an Argentinean doesn't make it easy! After several attempts and good recipes made without meat or with substitutes, I finally convinced him to switch from meat every day (that was before I met him) to 1 or 2 times a month.) My first victory!

Because although he loves meat, he's also aware of the environmental problems it causes and everything we put animals through to satisfy our cravings. But for the past few months I've been trying to minimize my use of plastic and find alternatives to dairy products too, because the treatment of dairy cows revolts me and it's not the healthiest anyway.

When people ask me if I don't eat meat anymore, for a long time I've felt the need to say "oh yes, of course", as if I wanted to reassure the person in front of me that "don't worry, I'm not going to go crazy", when in truth I hardly eat any anymore. Because let's face it, when you talk about vegetarianism or veganism, it puts immediate pressure on you and makes you feel panicky.

People who start to become "a little too" invested in and aware of environmental issues are still too often seen as slobs, people who "do too much", because you understand "we're all going to dig out of something and anyway the world is already too polluted so there's no point in making any effort". We should be the norm, the questions should be "what, you don't recycle?" "wait, do you eat red meat every day? But no, we're still a long way from that, and we have to justify ourselves every day and explain our approach.

Recently, I've been daring to assert my choices a little more, without fear of being judged and taking the time to explain why. Despite the fact that we still have a lot to do, I feel that people are increasingly aware and want to change too, but don't always know how. Our role, for those who are already involved, is to explain our choices and above all to assert them, which I'm finally starting to do.

Because it's only in this way that our entourage, our first challenge, will become our greatest support and help us to move forward even faster. If we want nature to take care of us, it might be time to take care of her first, don't you think? And when we do it as a family, it's even better.