Blog #3 - Anna Claire Lindow - Global Citizenship

     Being a global citizen means caring about issues bigger than your local community and embodying values that are seemingly unrelated to your own. It’s uncomfortable, it’s difficult, and it requires critical thinking about different perspectives. As someone who has lived abroad, traveled the world, and actually has a certificate of citizenship from a high school program, I consider myself a global minded citizen. Being a global citizen means to act responsibly.

    One of our biggest issues in the world is irresponsible consumption patterns that cause environmental degradation, widening social equity gaps, and continuing economic disparities. I choose to engage myself in responsible spending trends such as buying quality over quantity and removing myself from fast fashion trends, and instead opting into renting clothing services and only buying clothes when they are outgrown and overworn. The States consumption trends are astronomical and what we pay in price, comes at the cost of people’s health and safety. There’s workers with 16 hour work days, increasing cancer and asthma rates, low pay, and gruesome working conditions, yet most people don't think twice about buying from Shein or Temu. Not only does this harm the workers, but our Earth is a finite space we treat as infinite when it comes to discarding clothes, food, and other materials. Clothing waste is irresponsible and if possible, I try to reuse, recycle, repurpose, or donate to homeless shelters. I urge everyone else to consider our limited capacity for more waste, especially for clothing, as increasing pressure for conforming to trends and exorbitant prices for quality clothing cause us citizens to act irresponsible, completely discarding the global impact of our actions. 


Comments

  1. KevinMay 29, 2026 at 12:06 PM

    Anna Claire, I especially appreciate you pointing our that the Earth is a finite place, and once we run out of materials, thats it. I always grew up hearing the slogan Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and it is more important now than ever. While I am not well versed in the fast fashion world, I do know how bad it is for our planet. Purchasing cloths with the intention of only wearing them once isn't only environmentally bad, but it is also disrespectful to the many people who slaved away for those cloths and who would be thrilled to wear them. Our current consumer driven culture is starting to look like it will change for the better, however we need more people like you driving that change.

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