You hate to admit this, but your embarrassments are only a discomfort to yourself. In fact, they quietly serve a greater good. Before you embark on your journey to Spain, you reflect and realise that what you’ve long considered personal failings are, in another light, contributions to a more sustainable world.
As a vegetarian, your care for the environment is often assumed. It’s a badge of honour attached when the phrase ‘I don’t eat meat or fish’ spills out of you. Yet the original grounds for your lifestyle seem shallow, and thus, to some extent, faux – at least to yourself. Indeed, your initial lifestyle choice was only due to an unhealthy obsession at 16 with Morrissey, a man who sang overly depressing albums for those who often are too apologetic for their own good, and who, as it happens, is a vegetarian. For this reason, shame creeps in every time someone asks: ‘So why are you a vegetarian?’, because the honest answer reeks of superficiality, and the more suitable one is plagued with your own ignorance on the matter.
Yet years later, as you curate a little more personality, you understand the factual, sustainable benefits; perhaps this is why you have stuck with it all this time. The food system, from farm to plate, accounts for 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions – an urgent matter under SDG 13: Climate Action. A vegetarian diet (in line with SDG 15: Life on Land) requires significantly less land and water, reducing pressure on ecosystems and deforestation. As such, your swapping of 20 McDonald’s nuggets for a bean burger after a night out becomes a small, measurable step forward. And though your teenage motivations were soaked in eyeliner and quotes from The Smiths, somewhere along the way, you accidentally became part of something bigger than yourself.
Cars terrify you. Perhaps this was from your father’s road rage. Perhaps this is because at 20, you have yet to pass your driving test. Perhaps this is because on the occasional childhood trips from London to Devon, the windy roads made you heave without exception. Nevertheless, the phobia pertains. You walk everywhere you can. You take the train when you cannot. To yourself, it is out of fear, but you mask it with sustainability rhetoric. After all, transport contributes nearly 25% of global CO₂ emissions, much of it from personal vehicles (targeted under SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities and SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure). You remind yourself that the journey isn’t always about efficiency, but impact. By relying on public transport, though cramped and occasionally pungent, it still carries dozens more than a single car ever could. You lower your footprint and support this more sustainable infrastructure. Your avoidance becomes, conveniently, a quiet act of resistance. Whilst others grip steering wheels with pride, you grip your railcard and pretend, convincingly, that this was always the plan.
As they say, no hay mal que por bien no venga (every cloud has a silver lining).
