I Commit to Change With An Earth-friendly Advocacy

Lately my teenage son called my attention when he told me that I have been too engrossed writing about our travel that I was already breaking off from my “earthly” theme for which I explained to him that “earthly” could mean a lot of things. Then I came across with the I Commit to Change Facebook page through an email by Nuffnang and it all seems like reminding me too about my advocacy for blogging just what I wrote in my previous posts at the start of this year. Okay, I am not writing about committing to change my blog but I commit to change by living up to what I promised to do and one of them is to lessen our family’s carbon footprints as I wrote at the start of the year. With all the devastating scenario left by typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) late last year, the most recent El Niño phenomenon, the heat wave in parts of America, and other natural calamities happening around the globe which most studies claimed as caused by climate change, I affirm that “I was totally moved and very much eager to give my own share of commitment for our planet’s sake”.

I think my posts and my guidance somehow influenced my children to become more “earth-friendly” because if it didn’t, my son could not care enough to remind me of what I should be writing about, my little daughter could just throw away the biscuit wrapper anywhere instead of asking me to throw it in the garbage bin for her or they would not be too eager to help me in my gardening. I also noticed the change in my husband whenever he comes home and surprises me with pots of roses instead of bouquet of roses or any other flowering flora after I told him that I prefer to have more flowers in my modest garden and that I really like to have them longer unlike those bouquets that would last only for some days and would only end up as trash. Somehow I knew that my family is making some progress little by little. Sadly there are times that it seems too hard for me to stick to that promise and that is why I decided to make this commitment. I think I should make a list of what our family has already done to offset our carbon footprint and what other things we intend to do for the environment,

1. do gardening with the kids during weekend or special holidays, I also made a pledge to plant a tree when I signed up for the Ten Million Movement, hoping my project will push through as planned

2. always remind my kids and ourselves to be conscious of every piece of litter that we have most especially when we are in public places and to throw them properly in garbage bins

3. always practice the 3R, reduce, reuse and recycle. Somehow done that with plastic and paper clutter at home

4. replace energy-intensive appliances and limit the use of electricity inside the house as much as practicable

5. be mindful of the products I use at home by buying earth-friendly goods as much as possible

6. Be more active in earth resources preservation and conservation effort and movement such as Earth Hour and Earth Day and put into practice and share with others whatever is learned from that experience

Above things could be so little effort and might also have very little impact to undo the damage we have done to earth but as they say, collective effort may go a long way. There are many other simple things that we can do to help our ailing planet. In our case, our family already made the first step and what we should strive to achieve is to keep on doing what we have started and to be truly committed in this undertaking and I just hope that our actions be far greater than the carbon emission that we put through to pollute this earth. I also hope that all my writings about the environment also create a positive influence on people who stumble upon my blog. I just want to reiterate what I wrote in one of my posts “I hope that true concern for each other spring forth within us and when most of us already decided to pledge some serious time and effort for the benefit of the environment the damage is still reversible and we can still be able to heal the earth.”


You can also write about your commitment and share it with the whole world, visit the I Commit to Change Facebook Page now.



~ Photo Illustration:
When you sail alone in vast ocean and you know that you will face rough waters, commitment is what fuels you to keep going to reach your destination. Faith in God is what gets you there.