Having a strong sense of value when it comes to the environment will have positive effects, but many people today live very unsustainable lifestyles. They use up as many materials and resources as they want, because they either do not know the repercussions their actions will have in the future. Or they simply do not care enough and believe their personal impact on the environment will not do anything. It is true that one person does not damage the environment very significantly, but the problem is the very large amounts of people who do not think sustainably. This meaning, they do not recycle materials, constantly buying new goods that are not necessary, wasting natural resources like food and water, and many more.
A concept my professor brought up in her lecture was having a sense of belonging to items, instead of having a sense of ownership. This is important because if we all have only a sense of ownership, we aren’t thinking about who is going to get this object after me, but the only thing that matters is you have this now. Taking better care of personal items can make it so they can be passed down are more are not created, which would use up more resources. This concept can also be applied to Earth. Your generation has had a sense of ownership of Earth and it did not matter the