‘Who run the world? Girls.’ But seriously, even if you’re not listening to Beyonce on repeat, it’s hard not to see how women are really stepping up to take care of our planet at the moment. We have been particularly inspired by these three women doing so much to tackle our environmental crises recently.
We can’t imagine anyone doesn’t know the name Greta Thunberg, but still. The Swedish teen environmental activist and Asperger’s advocate has been doing more than her fare share for our planet since she was 11 years old. She started at home, urging and helping her family to lower their carbon footprint. At 15 she started the now-worldwide school strike movement Fridays for Future. ‘The Greta Effect’ has led to the doubling of environmental children’s books in just one year, the establishment of the Climate Emergency Fund, and significant changes in the EU’s environmental budget. She tells it like it is, urging us all to look at the scientific realities of the perils our planet is facing. Speaking at the European Parliament and Davos for the World Economic Forum, in front of the US House of Representatives Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and to world leaders at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit (to name but a few), this girl is leading the charge. To learn more, well, Google her. But you can also read a collection of her speeches in her book No One is Too Small to Make a Difference. What an inspiration.
Lucy Hughes, a 23-year-old student at the University of Sussex, has just won the 2019 James Dyson Award. Why? Because she’s developed something called MarinaTex, a biodegradable bioplastic made from red algae and waste products from the fishing industry. Billions of tons of plastic have been produced in recent decades. Packaging and single-use plastics are omnipresent and damaging to our environment. 91% of plastic isn’t recycled, and it takes over 400 years for plastic to degrade. A study published by the World Economic Forum found that at the current rate, by 2050 our oceans will have more plastic waste –pound for pound — than fish. Lucy Hughes has solved the problem of both single-use plastics and inefficient waste streams by harnessing fish offcuts to create a unique plastic alternative, MarinaTex. BRAVO, LUCY! We can’t wait to see what you does next!
Too many of us overthink what the word ‘activist’ means. Not all of us are going to take to the streets on the world stage to advocate for the changes we want to see in the world. But that doesn’t mean we can’t help effectuate those changes in other ways. Zoe Berkery, a Vice President at clean energy investment firm CleanCapital, is responsible for the management and optimization of CleanCapital’s clean energy assets and assists with operations and investor relations. While it might not sound initially like activism, what she’s actually done is what so many of us wish we could — find ways to effectuate the changes we want to see in the world (environmental and otherwise) in the best way we each individually know how. For Zoe, this is through business. Now that’s incredibly inspiring. Click here to learn more from Zoe, and make sure to become a member of The Williamson Institute to listen to her On the Sofa with us very soon!
