As someone who started recycling at home at age 6, co-authored a children’s storybook on wild boars in Singapore at 17, and graduated from Environmental Studies in 2022, my life revolves around environmental sustainability. In 2018, I founded MBF, my sustainable sourcing start-up. I am also currently working as a sustainability consultant.
While I now call myself a proud sustainability professional and environmental advocate, my journey towards championing a more sustainable future wasn’t all sunshine and flowers.
The year 2020 greatly challenged me. Honestly, to say that it was a challenge is an understatement. Covid-19 was already enough of a tough pill to swallow as many of my plans were cancelled. I’m sure it must have been the same for many of us.
With nothing else to do and being stuck at home, I took on an unpaid virtual internship for a sustainability e-commerce start-up doing media partnerships and content writing.
As I was writing an article for the company concerning plastic pollution and how compostable plastic water bottles that it distributed and sold were one solution to the problems caused by plastics made from fossil fuels, an issue arose.
I disagreed with my manager on pitching biodegradable and compostable plastics as viable solutions for Singapore. I did not believe Singapore could deal with biodegradable and compostable plastics since it did not have large-scale biodigester facilities. The supposedly more sustainable plastics would have to be incinerated. I also felt that writing the article would perpetuate the single-use culture.
However, to give my manager the benefit of the doubt, I bit my tongue and continued writing the article. I brainwashed myself into believing that maybe other countries could deal with compostables or that their residents could have compost bins—anything to convince myself that what I was about to write had its merits.
To my shock, I discovered that the company’s compostable plastic water bottles weren’t completely compostable. The bottle caps were still made of regular resin-based plastic derived from fossil fuels.
Livid and dumbfounded, I immediately connected with my manager on Zoom hoping to get more clarity about what was going on.
I confronted him about the greenwashing, but he seemed more concerned about pushing the content to a major news agency in Singapore. As a compromise, he said something to the effect of “just omit the words 100 percent; say that the bottles are compostable and that will do”.
I was disgusted. I did not feel heard, nor did he show any concern for his employee. Beyond that, a company I thought cared about making a positive impact on the environment was actually doing the exact opposite.
That was when I spiralled out of control. I started questioning everything I was doing. Nothing seemed real. I stopped caring about improving the world and felt completely numb. I also gave up being a vegetarian for a period of time.
While watching a TV show with my mum in the living room, there was even an instance when I broke down in tears without any trigger. It was difficult for me to communicate how I was feeling to her. Even my health was affected. I suffered from lymph node inflammation, had recurring fevers, and my skin broke out.
Throughout this episode, I blamed myself for being so naive. When someone claims to champion sustainability while working against the environment, how many more in this field are disingenuous? For me, hope was lost. It seemed pointless. The environment would suffer regardless of what we do.
It was my friends who noticed something was wrong. “You’re not vegetarian anymore?!” I often heard this. They sat me down and gave me a much-needed reality check.
To them, I was possibly the most passionate person about the environment in our circle. My main motivation for gradually becoming vegetarian was to reduce my environmental impact and carbon footprint.
My drastic shift was a huge signal that my moral compass, values, and worldview were breaking down and shattering. After that wake-up call, I realised I had been sinking into quicksand all along. But what was going to lift me up?
I remember vividly talking about ecoanxiety, also called climate anxiety and eco-grief, in one class. As a result of open conversations with my college friends, I learned to be vulnerable about my feelings. It was a blessing for me to find counsellors at Yale-NUS who were trained in ecoanxiety and knew how to approach it effectively in 2021.
The community was also amazing. I remember a senior majoring in psychology working on her capstone thesis regarding climate anxiety and forming groups where I felt safe talking about these issues while supporting and uplifting others.
I received an email from a Yale alumni group this year with an article that discussed climate anxiety. It was startling to realise how pervasive this problem has become in recent years.
Grist, an online non-profit publication that focuses on environmental news and commentary, reports that in 2021, the number of Google searches for “climate anxiety” jumped by 565 percent.
There are many times when people with eco-anxiety are just caring individuals who want to do the right thing. Their concern for the future of the planet and what they can do to help it is genuine.
Some individuals might even have been passionate about environmentalism at some point in their lives. I believe that there are a lot of people out there who would love to do something, but they are crippled by these feelings of aimlessness and helplessness that they are experiencing.
The key thing to do is to seek professional advice, counselling, or therapy. It would have been impossible for me to process my emotions without the help of my counsellor.
Seek a community that will support you on this journey. It’s important to surround yourself with people who can support and uplift you, especially your friends and co-workers, as they can truly serve as your anchors and pillars during the rough sustainability journey.
