About Sustainabilitize
Sustainabilitize: let’s make our life more sustainable!
This is how my blog was born.
7 AM, train station. I had just crossed one of the busiest crossroads in the city and I realised I breathed but smog. It was cold, I was cold. I was leaving for and would spend the rest of my productive day in one of the most crowded and polluted cities in Italy with no idea about what my future would hold for me. Clouds, fog, horns, chit-chat, and a warm, sugary smell from the bar next to the platform I was standing by. I was hungry. Waking up at 6 AM wouldn’t give me enough strength to eat without vomiting. Oh, the train had arrived. Students got off and nonchalantly bumped into me. I got on and found myself squashed against the other commuters, trying to breathe the air of a rush-hour wagon with no chance of reading the Brick I kept in my rucksack. I would travel that way for almost two hours. Day after day, I would stick to this routine and convince myself it was the right way to live my life. Yet, I was genuinely annoyed that morning. And just as simple as that, I thought: “This is not sustainable anymore. Why can’t I make my life more sustainable?”. But then, since I’m a long-standing, consumed realistic-optimist, the question immediately turned into “How can I make my life more sustainable?”. Later on, I persuaded myself I would try and delve into that question from as many perspectives as I was able to understand and analyse. And since I used to be a linguistics student, I made up a word out of the blue by messing up with nouns and suffixes. Eventually, I decided that “Sustainabilitize” would become the long-awaited blog I had been planning to put out in the digital world sooner or later. A means to a goal, to research and analyse sustainability’s wide spectrum of meanings and provide one of many walls of silence with a voice.
Okay, enough talking.
What is Sustainabilitize?
“Sustainabilitize is a blog that aims to help individuals create, understand and communicate a more sustainable and inclusive world. It deals with sustainability through intersectional lenses, an approach that literally intersects its different dimensions, from the classical to the more contemporary and original ones. It thus focuses on environmental and social sustainability, non-violent communication, and personal growth. Anything that can create long-lasting benefits in our lives.”
Why sustainability? Well, I grew up on a three-pointed island – a symbol within the symbol – marked by the contrast between awe-inspiring landscapes including any sort of microclimate in the world (from desert-like sceneries to perennial glaciers) and the stink of landfills of all kinds, between soft-spoken yet impactful narrators and meaningless shouters. There’s no middle ground, it’s either one way or the other.
I grew up swinging under pine, olive, fig and orange trees, with orange blossoms caressing my nostrils during the sleepy after-lunch on spring-like April days. I grew up cycling across the small village by the seaside where I used to spent my summertime, dragging my bike on the shore at sunset to glue my eyes on the moment when the pearl grey sea melts into the sky. And I grew up fascinated by inspired actions aimed at preserving and cultivating beauty. This is how my interest in sustainability was born, obviously shaped by subsequent personal, academic and professional experiences.
However, what I plan to do with this blog is to use the word and meaning of sustainability as an intersectional umbrella term making up a ‘research question’ guiding all my articles. I will thus use the framework provided by the concept of intersectional sustainability to express my opinion based on my own experience on what can make our environment, society, culture, i.e. our life, more sustainable, and how we can improve its unsustainable, sometimes unbearable aspects.
An approach that also intersects people from diverse backgrounds so as to make them understand that, first, it’s everybody’s responsibilities to make our planet a better place. Second, sustainability is for everyone. It doesn’t necessarily mean buying expensive stuff or whatever. It means comprehensively improving our life, step by step, with imperfection being a tool, too.
I do believe in a far-reaching, intersectional meaning of sustainability, something that encompasses many aspects of our reality and allows anyone to get closer to such a process. And I do believe in contamination and integration, in the ability of different perspectives and approaches to come together, cooperate and coordinate with each other to achieve a successful goal that could benefit the whole world (how romantic of me).
How does Sustainabilitize work?
In order to link all those different issues together and practice the contamination and integration I love, the main question I’ll stick to is “How can I make my life sustainable to me, my community and the environment?”. The answer I’ve given myself – ultimately the main articulation of this blog – is first based on three I-s: Information, Inspiration, Implementation. This practically means understanding the dynamics behind a given issue; getting inspired by ideas and art and, in turn, inspire others; implementing sustainable, healthy habits in our daily routine.
Second, it is based on communication, more specifically on sustainable communication, which includes a mix of environmental, non-violent and intercultural communication. Why this choice? Because I’m interested in communication on both a personal and professional level 😀 And because I do want to intersect different dimensions of sustainable existence, which means that the right words, in the right place at the right time will also make an impact and sustainabilitize our reality.
So, eventually, in my extremely humble opinion, living and acting sustainably must be intersectional. It should aim at producing long-lasting benefits in any area of our life, from the environment we live in, to the way we treat other individuals, and even us – see our body and mental health.
Sustainabilitize is therefore the place for you if you’re looking for some inspiration for a kinder and healthier way to improve yourself and your community; if you want to learn something new about sustainability and environmental issues; if you’re looking for inspiration from books, music or films; if you believe that non-violent speech and proper communication and relationships with people from diverse linguistic, cultural and societal background is a way of producing long-lasting benefits in your community; and if you… well, go read my posts ????
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Wanna say hello? Discuss a topic? Ask for consulting? Suggest a collaboration? Feel free to write at info@sustainabilitize.com.
Enjoy your reading 🙂