Van Jones on Environmental Justice and why this matters to each of us

TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch – Van Jones – Environmental Justice

A great environmental justice talk about the price poor people pay for us to have so much disposable plastic. But we have CHOICE: we can choose not to use disposable plastics, we can choose healthy products. As an example, if we follow that little water bottle along its way, when it winds up not being properly recycled and what that means, we know we can shift our habits for safer, healthier products, like refillable bottles.

The entire talk is very informative but also gives us real solutions we can apply right here, right now, from our small vantage point. Because we are all on one planet. Eventually we will breathe the air and suffer from pollution coming from the rest of the planet. To solve the problems we must join forces.

In order to trash the planet you have to trash people, but if we create a world where we don’t trash people, we can’t trash the planet. Ecology and social justice can become a single concept to base our choices on.