 Hi, my name is Aristide from Metabolino Cities and in this video I'd like to share with you six tips to save the world from the environmental crisis. If you're new around here, Metabolino Cities is a platform that shares and gathers information around urban metabolism or urban resource and waste flows. So tip number one, work less, earn less, consume less. Of course, you have to think as this tip, as being more of a tip towards the western world or the northern world, because this is where most of the environmental impacts today are originating from. You'll tell me, well, yes, there are a lot of pollution in production activities, but in my sense, a lot of those production activities come from consumption activities in the developed world. So that means that if you can, and even in the developed world, of course, there's a great disparity in income. But if you can, and you have sufficient money, then try to reduce your hours of work and therefore reduce your income in order to consume less. There is almost no way around it. More consumption equals more environmental impacts. So in order to decrease our environmental impacts, we have to decrease our consumption. And how do we decrease our consumption? It's by decreasing our, you know, our purchasing power and therefore reducing how many hours we work. On the flip side, of course, that's a great thing because you have more free time, you can enjoy yourself and you can do other things that are not monetary based. Okay, so tip number two, favor local and renewable resources. Well, if you favor local resources, that means that your resources or the product that you will have at the very end will come from close by, that means less travel distance by the products and shortening the supply chain and renewable, of course, because we don't have too many resources anymore. So it means that you need to consume renewable products. This can be from food, so more local food, organic as well, but also renewable in the sense that renewable energy, harvesting rainwater, etc., etc. Now, this does not mean that because it's renewable, we have to consume too much, but favor always more local and more renewable resources. You also have to think that more local does not equal more environmental friendly. So eating a cow that's fed and then killed and consumed locally, that does not mean that it's better than importing vegetables from the other side of the world. You still have to think about what is the environmental impact of your products and how much the travel distance is relevant to it. So local is not always a proxy towards environmental sustainability, but it's a good rule of thumb. Let's go to tip number three, maximize the lifespan of your products. We talked about consuming less and then consuming more local and renewable products and resources, but in case you consume, the ideal is that you maximize the lifespan of your products because the more you maximize their lifespan, not only you reduce the amount of waste produced, you also reduce the amounts of new consumptions that you will need. So try to maximize the value of all of your products that you have in your house from electronics, clothing, all of the things that you have in your house, try to maximize it as much as possible. And even if it's not in fashion anymore, perhaps you can somehow change them a bit or stylize them a bit, but try to manufacture and try to maintain them as much as possible. You can always do that by repairing, try to reuse some new components, and if you really have to buy new things, try to buy secondhand products because they already had a life and that means that we have already extracted material once. We don't need to do it twice. So look for thrift shops, look for flea markets, look for secondhand websites now, there are more and more, and this is one of the huge ways to reduce your environmental impact. Tip number four is not necessarily an action, but more of a tip to think about things. So tip number four is about always thinking about indirect environmental impacts. What do I mean by this? Well imagine you buy a camera, right? The camera that's filming me right now. Well this camera weighs between 500 grams and one kilo let's say. You might think well it has some plastics, it has some metals, it probably has some circuit boards and stuff like that. Well you know you might say this is not very polluting as materials, but if you consider all of the materials across the supply chain that were needed in order for me to actually film this video, well you will start adding the boats that transported this from somewhere to somewhere else. You'll start adding the excavation machine that excavated a number of ores that were then refined into metals or precious metals that are within this camera etc etc. So you have to think along the supply chain how much materials are consumed during this entire life cycle of your product. And one other thing is that for instance let's say you want to reduce water consumption in your household. Well there is an easy way it is to take a shower instead of a bath, right? But if you look at food consumption, well meat in order to produce meat you need a lot of things to feed the cow or whatever meat you're eating and therefore this is what consumes a lot of water. So if you take them at a personal level you consume much more water for eating meat than for taking showers instead of baths. So always keep in mind the indirect effects of your consumption because you might want to shift some of your actions because of this indirect impact. Tip number five. Tip number five is think about who you vote for and where is your money. These are your two superpowers. This is where you can get most of your impact. First of all about the banks perhaps or about your money. Well most of us put our money in a bank but most of the banks do investments in fossil fuels in activities that are lucrative but very damaging to the planet. So one very easy way to do the best thing for your money is to find out what is your bank investing your money in and even if you don't want to invest it your your bank does it for you. So try to figure out there are many alternatives that are more sustainable or finance or invest sustainable projects such as triotos so there is now a newbie in Belgium etc etc. Really find out where you want to put your money. The second thing about voting well I mean to be honest most of the things that I'm trying to speak over here could be solved if we had a better political will. So it means that if we had carbon taxes if we had the real environmental price of products if the the real environmental impact of products was reflected to the price then it would be very easy for the consumer to choose from right you choose the the product that's cheaper equals less environmental harms so that would be very easy but this regulation does not exist and this is why we need good politicians. So next time there you need to vote just try to vote for the candidates that are the most radical that are the most well in terms of environment environment but also other social challenges and really think that we don't have much time anymore so we cannot have a consensus anymore we cannot have a central candidate. In my opinion you really need and candidates really need to be much more radical or go at least a step further in order to tackle this huge environmental crisis. The last tip tip number six and again this is not a tip but it's more of a thing to keep in mind is that well we in the developed words again developed words are the ones that are consuming and and therefore leading a lot of production but there is the entire developing word that is trying to well to to to live a normal life to to get it out of poverty to to get literated to to get well I mean a decent life and whatever you consume is what is extracted from that bucket because we only have one planet and a finite amount of resources whatever is taken from somewhere is not given to somewhere else so really think about whatever we do not consume in the developed word can be consumed in the developing word and you might think well okay great but if we are not if we do not develop the right infrastructure the right urbanization in the developing word we're doomed to fail because if we build again roads and think the same mistakes we have done in the developed word in the developing word then we just didn't consume the same amount we're doing now per capita in all of the planet and that's strictly impossible so really try to minimize your impact as much as possible to leave a place for the rest of humanity to develop that's it for now I hope you enjoyed this short video these are just six tips that you can have in mind when you want to to act for the planet and please have a look at our other videos where we try to explain how our word works in terms of resource use and waste. Cheers!