I was among the first in my network to adopt a lifestyle that tended towards zero waste, to look for solutions to reduce my ecological footprint. I read Laure Waridel’s books avidly, I followed environmental news; I had my basket of organic vegetables, the red list on my refrigerator, and I believed, wrongly, that everyone had the opportunity to eat consciously and buy in bulk.
I gave birth to my two wonderful children, and this need to protect became even more pressing. Reality truer than true. After my separation, when all the bills to pay fell on me, the debt got worse and worse, while I tried to maintain the same standard of living, alone. Buying means voting, but to vote, you need to have the wallet that goes with it.
I had already tackled the subject of the accessibility of the zero waste lifestyle as part of my work, and I was now getting a taste of it. I was the one who had to choose between paying the ever-expanding bills or feeding my children according to my standards and values. At the tender age of 40, with the most stable job I’ve ever had, I went to the weekly discounts to put together our meals, ignoring the fact that I had to buy foods placed in non-recyclable packaging, which contained pesticides and contributed to an economy that is destroying the planet.
I then realized that you have to be in a privileged environment and have above-average conditions to walk the walk; that the middle class, of which I am a part, was one of the new faces of poverty; and that I had been very lucky to be able to be completely consistent with my values all these years.
The choices belong to those who can pay
The truth is that the choices are limited and once again belong to a part of the population. My new situation forced me to position myself differently regarding many aspects that seemed obvious and acquired to me. However, I know very well the issues relating to food insecurity and the great precariousness which crushes thousands of Quebec households daily. In May 2022, the proportion of people experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity was estimated at 15%, or approximately 1.3 million people in Quebec. These numbers continue to increase every day.
While access to housing has never been so appalling, when hundreds of families have found themselves on the street, unable to pay the price, when discrimination against tenants continues to multiply, when current Prime Minister affirms that major decisions are being made for the future of Quebec, doubt arises.
My exclamations precede me and rise faster than the rising cost of living when I read the news. The population is quietly, but surely, bending under the weight of a system that does not resemble them and which, above all, does not meet their needs. We can then imagine that, for a large part of citizens, buying in bulk, local and organic and environmental initiatives are no longer even on the list of priorities.
Access to a healthy living environment and adequate conditions is reserved for a proportion which decreases dramatically over the months. If wealth belongs to the privileged, poverty is for everyone. In an article on applications used to recover unsold items in grocery stores, the question raised by the journalist was the possibility that this type of project would harm food banks, which struggle to meet the needs of people who no longer have the means to feed.
Lists are exploding, and teams on the verge of exhaustion have never had so many requests. The observation we arrived at with an employee of a food bank in Montreal was that, for people in need to benefit from it, they still had to have a smartphone, Internet data, a credit card, understand the language, knowing how to use an application, etc. The answer is therefore that, no, it is not accessible for them.
The reduction in food waste is extremely positive, and the objective is not to spit on the initiatives put in place. I try to highlight the multiple invisible divisions in our society vis-a-vis communities that live on the margins. Some brilliant ideas believe they meet the needs of a category that will not have access to them, and generate (without knowing it, I dare to believe) other problems, or provide a distorted vision of what makes up a lasting and concrete solution. , despite their merits. Parallel universes coexist in our neighborhoods, our cities and our villages, and we cross them without even seeing them.
The climate crisis is not only burning forests, accelerating the melting of glaciers, uprooting and wiping out species that seem to evaporate without making too much noise. It generates serious global problems, such as the displacement of vulnerable populations, the increase in food insecurity, increased and multiplied health problems.
Extreme climatic events, which are becoming more and more frequent, first affect marginalized social groups, who most often live in poverty or even in a situation of homelessness, not to mention remote regions, which do not have the means to their needs.
The end, more beautiful than beautiful
I certainly don’t have all the answers and I don’t pretend to be a specialist in anything at all. I am a mother whose love surpasses understanding, with an inner fire that makes me the activist that I am, and I will not stop. I invite you here to these reflections and to this search for links between people, like the nourishing forest which leaves no one behind, each link of which is essential and which carries a role which influences the ecosystem.
I look at my children, other people’s children, and I think how wonderful it would be to leave them a legacy sweeter than concrete and burnt wood and fear, with a gap so wide between us that we can’t don’t even think about looking at yourself anymore. I imagine their feet, bare in the ashes, wondering why. Even though we knew and had the solutions within our reach.
When I close my eyes to hope a little, I wish us gardens where we can pick and harvest so many flowers, that we do not see the end of the buzzing and colorful expanses, of vast living and teeming forests, of lakes where we immerse ourselves without fear, air that we breathe without counting the nanograms and which smells of sweet lime, enveloping petrichor or the cold of the winters here when the nostrils stick so much that we freeze. Let’s give them this future.