Trying to save the planet feels impossible. It seems like all the odds are stacked against us. Overpopulation, poverty, deforestation, microplastics in every part of our bodies, and so much more. Is it worth it to try to reverse the damage being done when it feels so overwhelming?

I don’t know. Maybe what we do as individuals really doesn’t make a difference. Running out of natural resources will happen whether or not we use that plastic straw – right? Living a comfortable, convenient life with all of our creature comforts won’t push humanity into extinction – will it?

I’m not going to sit around and find out.

I don’t quite know what the trigger was for me as I entered adulthood to want to become an environmental conservationist. I think it might have been deciding to have children. Or some kind of divine intervention. A past life or future life where I have known deep in my bones that what I must do in this life is talk about how humans are destroying themselves in real time.

We are destroying ourselves. Right now.

WAIT! Don’t go yet. I’m going to throw a stat at you real quick then talk about lipgloss.

Statistic: “If the current global population were to adopt American consumer lifestyles we would need two additional planets to produce the resources, absorb the wastes, and provide general life-support functions.” Source: a textbook. I’ll tell you which one if you really want to know.

Ok but what what does that MEAN?

It means that Americans buy too much stuff. It means that if every other person on every other continent in every country on the Earth bought as much stuff as we did, humanity would need TWO MORE PLANETS to provide all important natural resources. TWO MORE PLANETS. One planet would not be enough. FOR RIGHT NOW. Not in the future, not in a hundred years, not in a thousand years – R I G H T N O W.

What do we do about it? Well, we can start by not buying too many things. We can start by digging deep to understand why we need to own certain items, and:

We can start by educating ourselves on why this is all important instead of putting our heads in the sand while clutching our Labubu family.

I don’t collect Labubus.

What I do collect however, is lipgloss and lipstick. I don’t do it on purpose. There is no good reason why I have so many lip products. So now this is the place where I will start sharing my journey of confronting the ways in which I, personally, over-consume.

I have challenged myself to not buy any new lip products until I finish ALL of the lipsticks and glosses that I own currently. Pictured here is my entire collection:

I get the feeling this will fall into a middle ground category of some people thinking this is excessive and some that might have way more than this. Feel free to let me know where you stand on this in the comments!

Now, this isn’t technically where I have started my sustainable journey. My journey began a long time ago, almost 20 years ago. I will share all of the other ways I try to live life “sustainably” another time.

For right now, I am focused on putting myself on blast with my shameful lip product collection.

Please tell me I am not the only one that owns too many lippies? Too many, meaning so many, that it will probably take me over a year to get through all of them. 😬 Please tell me something that you own too much of that you might feel a bit of shame about. TELL MEEEEEEEE!

I’ll come back with updates on how this challenge is going. Also, let me know if you are going to challenge yourself to consume less!