I still have fresh in my memory very dramatic scenes that I had to live in Mexico City during the earthquake of 1985. The international community turned to send aid and the entire population of the capital began to collaborate in what we could, and despite the chaos, confusion and uncertainty, we all did it in order, there was no particular discipline, it was just something that guided us and that we could not explain: solidarity.
The fraternal peoples of Haiti and Chile have now gone through similar circumstances. Ridiculous would be to compare which catastrophe has been the worst as some media pretend to do, what really matters is to show solidarity to help. However, here it should be said that helping is an action that does not have to be reactive, the reality is that proactively is when it works best. An example of this is the work carried out by Mission 500 helping dozens of children in the region, which incidentally held a special event in recent months for the benefit of the Haitian community, long before the hecatomb occurred.
Despite not being an expert in environmental issues and much less in "sustainability" which is by far the fashionable topic (which is nothing more than a simple "let's take care of our planet"), I can say that many of the changes we are perceiving in recent years have to do with the alterations that with our way of "living" we have caused to nature in general.
How many of us (or at least those of us who are of the generation of the sixties) have not ever talked about things like: "I remember when the river, it was blue and crystal clear and we swam in it, today it is a discharge of sewage", "our father took us on a picnic to the forest and we saw squirrels, deer and other animals, today all that disappeared and they built housing areas."
Connecting the previous ideas of solidarity, prevention and preservation, it seems to me that we as an industry should begin to take responsibility for concrete actions we can take in this regard. Let's start each one discreetly to help our own communities, let's not think about helping others but we are able to help ourselves and our environment.
Avoid using brochures, propaganda and other advertising support material in printed form, today technology helps us to be able to do it practically in 90% of cases. When you make facilities, invite your staff to collect waste and recycle what is possible. Talk to your customers about it, some of them will surely demand it sooner or later, so you better start today.
Many of you are experts in civil protection, so why not help give talks to neighbors and members of your community, we never know when misfortune will be present, and with prevention it will surely be less painful to face the crisis.
And you, my dear reader, what do you think?
