Hi everyone and Happy Earth Month! This month we will have a series of blog posts dedicated to different topics in sustainability. They will build on each other and hopefully offer you some new ways of thinking about the Earth and our place in it.

Building on from last week, where we talked about making concerts more sustainable, this week we will focus in on how you as an individual can build sustainability into your everyday. We know that youth are becoming more and more of a force for change in this sphere, especially in the Fridays for Future campaigns.

There are smaller and larger scales things you can do towards this, but they are all meaningful. Any efforts made to be more sustainable hold value, so don’t let anyone else’s judgements or opinions influence you on this!

Some smaller changes you can make:

Donating your scores or other materials instead of throwing them out
Using a reusable water bottle and thermos
Bringing your lunch with you to school
Cooking from home as much as you can
Eating less meat, for example you can try No Meat Mondays
Follow instructions for recycling and composting for your area
Thrifting or buying clothes locally

Larger scale changes you can make:

Advocating for climate action from your faculty, university, or government
Talking with friends and family about climate justice
Joining a student group to engage with your peers – something like UTERN
Spend some time researching sustainability and environmentalism. We’ve got some great books in the collection that you can find in our most recent blogpost and I also recommend
Take a course on sustainability to learn more about your place in relation to the Earth

Come back next week to learn more about resources you can draw on to help you build this practice.

Resources

Barber, A. (2021). Consumed: The need for collective change: Colonialism, climate change, and consumerism. Balance.

Kashwan, P., & Hasnain, A. (2024). Decolonizing Environmentalism: Alternative Visions and Practices of Environmental Action. Bloomsbury Academic.

Kimmerer, R. W. (2020). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions.

Sustainable Youth Canada (2025). Toronto.

Thomas, L. (2022). The intersectional environmentalist: How to dismantle systems of oppression to protect people + planet.Voracious, Little, Brown and Company.

By Sabine O'Donnell, TALint Student, Music Library

Sustainability as a student