Stepping outside our bubble
How expanding your circle can encourage conversations about climate solutions and waste, and how following our hearts in a new direction helped our family to do just that.
Hello, friend! How are you? There’s been a long gap between letters, we know. With spring here, we’re inspired to think about the balance of things. Our time and what we’re using it for. To reflect on the year we’ve had and the things we’ve learned along the way.
Back in May last year we were heading towards another Tassie winter and feeling somewhat frustrated with our ability to make much of an impact beyond our own home. We were feeling a bit blocked when it came to finding new and fun ways of sharing the very simple roots of our waste-free life. We created this space on Substack, which has been lovely and provided an outlet of sorts, and a way to reach people who want to connect with solutions directly. But we still felt a sense that things in the community were and are heading backwards or stagnating with issues regarding waste and climate action. We observed people experiencing fatigue in moving forward with individual actions. A helplessness, which is somewhat understandable.
Social media was our most effective course for reaching and communicating with people and that was proving challenging. The algorithm makes things tricky by not helping people connect with the content they need, easily. It also means that people are siphoned into narrow interest groups, or bubbles - which are fantastic for finding solidarity and support. But we feel humans are more interesting and complex than that. And for us, sustainable/waste-free/permaculture/climate-friendly living needs to extend beyond being an interest or a hashtag. It needs to underpin how we do all the things we do and love. Rather than doing waste-free and climate conscious things, we are being waste-free and climate conscious in all the things we do. And we do lots of different things! So we needed to approach things differently.
Three things were clear:
We needed to shake things up a bit and have some fun!
We needed more face-to-face conversations.
We needed to reach people outside our bubble.
We began exploring other ways we could make an impact and encourage waste-free actions in other areas. Other ways to approach the patriarchal, colonialist and capitalist systems that are doing the greatest deal of harm to our planet. We had a good think about our interests and abilities. And we remembered ourselves before kids and jobs and landed at music - our first shared love, besides each other. And then we thought about inequality in creative industries, our love for promoting the care of belongings and pre-loved things… and it just clicked. Now we’re a year into running a record store, celebrating music by women.
We’ve had loads of face-to-face conversations with people from all over, about music, art patriarchy, climate change, waste, waste-free living, composting, plastic, the care of vinyl records, analogue technology, musician’s royalties, the ecological footprint of streaming services, the ecological footprint of new vinyl records and preloved vinyl, advancements in the ecological manufacturing of records (recycled, waste-free processing and bioplastics in carbon-neutral facilities), pre-loved audio equipment and making things last for generations. And were pushing for change, gently, in our own way, by celebrating what we love. It feels good.
But now we’re keen for a little more balance in the other direction. There’s much more to share as we head into an El Niño summer and climate returns to the forefront of people’s minds again. We’d love to help reinvigorate some more discussion about waste reduction in our part of the world. And get out in the garden some more. Oberon’s excited about getting out in the field some more for his full-time job working with threatened plants. The kids are keen to share and do more too, now they’re young adults and can see where their voices could be helpful both in and outside their own bubbles.
Have you had a go at expanding your bubble recently? Maybe you’ve reached out to find a new one that’ll support you? Or maybe you’ve reached out to share your knowledge and skills beyond your usual circle? We’d love to hear about it!
Much love,
Lauren & Oberon.
Very timely, I have been searching for a community, I'd be happy for a bubble even. I'm really missing real life connections and community, people who care about all the things you've mentioned in this post, I'll be watching with interest to see how you go about it