Teaching Youth About Healthy Consumer Practices
What we purchase and use are often based on wants more than needs, and habits more that enlightened choices. The same apply to how we discard used items. Sustainable Development Goal #12, Responsible Consumption and Production, challenges us to think more about our purchasing and discarding practices, emphasizing ways to minimize harmful impacts on the environment. Partnering with Finger Lakes ReUse stores, and supported by an Environmental Justice Community Impact Grant from the NY DEC, I am working with teachers and youth in schools and after-school programs to raise their awareness of where the items we buy come from, the sources of materials in them, the ways to prolong the usefulness of items for others, and the impact that our personal decisions and actions have on the environment.