“Our entire reality has been shattered at the mercy of Mother Earth in a single day. This crisis has been humbling and eye opening beyond what I can attempt to place into words. How fragile our existence truly is and how much we take for granted.” – Claire Michelle

About 27 inches of rain in 24 hours caused mass devastation to the island of Kauai this past Monday. Maybe you’ve seen the photographs of submerged pick up trucks, mud and concrete washed away, and aerial views of homes surrounded by murky brown waters.

Severe flooding and mudslides have left locals with uprooted lives and broken hearts over the damage done to the land they love. The entirety of the island aches as the community looks to begin to put the pieces back together.

We can pour our love and support into Red Cross and gofundme sites, but to make a real change we need to trace our actions to the source.

In four months of this new year, we’ve seen hurricanes, wild fires, record low temperatures, and now mass rainfall. Even Puerto Rico remains unstable months after Hurricane Maria, not to mention another wave of power outages after a construction vehicle ran into power lines last week.

If this isn’t Mother Nature’s call for us to care, than what will it take to open our eyes to how fragile our ecosystems have become? Our lively hoods are approaching the peak of the delicate balance we have between taking and giving to this planet.

It is overdue for us to take a good look at our society, and then look into our hearts and see where this disconnect exists. It may be hard to see a direct impact of small, everyday actions. However, these are the steps that pave the path to reducing your carbon footprint in major ways behind the scenes.

Everyday meaningful actions that you can pledge to start this Earth Day:

• Reusable water bottles. Hop. On. That. Train.
• Eat local and organic as often as possible.
• Dog lover? Use biodegradable poop bags (hint: they’re not expensive!)
• Use bar soap instead of shower gel, this cuts down on plastic waste.
• Carpool, take public transit, or bike to cut back on emissions.
• Encourage others to take similar actions, in my experience people are just uninformed about how their decisions effect the environment.