Teachable moment
Lessons from COVID-19 can help us change the world by starting small, Derek Stephenson and Tom Scanlan write.
During a recent interview, Samantha Power, once Barack Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, said that people overwhelmed by a monumental crisis often lose sight of how to enact meaningful change. Her solution is intriguing: “Shrink the change.” Try something manageable and see where it takes you.
Which is exactly what
COVID -19 has us doing. We are responding to the need for major changes to fight the virus by making minor ones in our own lives — in how we work and how we relate to each other. We are physically distancing, staying at home and helping our neighbours, all for the greater good. As a result, we are also helping the environment: lower carbon emissions, less pollution and even some much-needed peace and quiet for West Coast orcas because boat traffic is down.
But now we are starting to relax the measures we’ve taken and, once the virus is on the run, factories will swing back into action, traffic congestion will return and global temperatures will start to rise.
It doesn’t have to be that way. We have fought the virus by listening to our scientists. Why don’t we do the same with climate change? It’s a pivotal moment, so let’s use the lessons learned from COVID-19 to pivot green.
Leading environmentalists are calling for drastic measures. But there is also a golden opportunity to pitch in by thinking small. Will it make a difference? We think so, for one simple reason: We’ve seen it happen before.
In 1976, we helped form an environmental foundation called “is five.” The name evoked synergy (the notion that two times two can equal five), and its strategy was simple: Mount positive action on a personal level. Help people reduce energy use, build a garden without chemical pesticides, drive less, eliminate waste. We launched dozens of projects. One of them caught fire.
Back then, to recycle glass bottles or jars in Toronto, you had to cart them to one of perhaps a dozen drop-offs across the city. Beginning with a few streets in the Beach district, we offered to pick up the glass if residents left it at the curb. Our recycling staff (of two) and their beat-up pickup were soon overwhelmed. People were so grateful that some left cookies along with their bottles. Before long, we were expanding the program.
From these baby steps, the world-renowned blue-box recycling program was born. Kitchener was the first to provide its residents with those unmistakable containers, which soon were seen across Ontario, then the country, before being exported to the United States, Europe and most recently (according to posters spotted in a rice paddy) Vietnam.
Was it a fluke? We think not. COVID-19 has shown governments everywhere that, faced with a common threat, people will alter how they live. Now the focus can shift to an even bigger threat, and many of the grassroots initiatives sparked by the crisis are worth preserving.
For example, a Montreal company is providing free bikes so essential employees can get to work more easily. Providing bikes to employees who live within riding distance as part of their benefits package could change travel patterns in cities.
In Toronto, a woman has started a small business connecting people who have lawns with others who are looking for a spot to plant a food garden. And, even before COVID-19, a west-end restaurant had started reducing its prices on Sunday to ensure it ended the week with nothing going to waste.
Both these initiatives could be replicated elsewhere. Food production has a massive effect on the environment, and no less than 58 per cent of all that’s produced in Canada is wasted. Reducing restaurant waste and growing food on empty lawns could have a major environmental impact. These are just a few small ideas with the potential to blossom.
COVID-19 has demonstrated how fragile life is. But if we can flatten a curve, we can pivot away from a lifestyle that is unsustainable. All we have to do is act together — and start small. Or, as Samantha Power reminds us: “The big solutions usually come through incremental change.” Derek Stephenson was the Research Director for the is five Foundation and is now president of Strategy Matters Inc. He is a leading global expert on sustainable circular economies. Tom Scanlan is the former director of is five communications, and the author of seven elementary and secondary school urban geography textbooks.