By Angela Lindvall / Source: Ecouterre

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The following is excerpted from a speech that supermodel-activist delivered at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s “Clean by Design” luncheon at the Colony Club in New York City on Wednesday.

I’m mostly known for my work as a model, but I’m also known for my deep care and commitment to environmental awareness. In 2001, I created what was called the Collage Foundation. At that time, I was blown away to discover such alarming information about the state of our planet. Yet it wasn’t on the front page of all the newspapers. When I started Collage, I saw that fashion and media have a huge influence on the masses. Our mission at Collage was to use pop culture and media as a means to stimulate awareness and provide information and solutions for change.

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Lindvall with jeweler John Hardy in Bali.

MAKING PROGRESS

Since then, it’s been a wonderful thing to see the word “green” become so widely used, to see our products on our supermarket shelves offer “organic,” and to see real environmental issues making an impact in mainstream media.

At the same time, it’s been frustrating to see progress move at a snail’s pace, considering all we now know about our impact on the planet and how our choices affect the health of our people.

The hopeful news is that we live in an age of massive technological advances; we have the ability to access all information at the click of a button. We have the scientific genius to create new ways to live in harmony with our environment without having to go back to living like cavemen.

However, since the dawn of the industrial revolution, we’ve created industry in a way that no longer serves our greatest needs yet continues to cheaply mass-produce everything we think we need. But these models existed before we had the infrastructures we have now. We also had far fewer people on the planet.

TRUE HAPPINESS

Many of these systems have become archaic, and we the people continue to buy into the messaging that we need this or that to make us happy—some object of desire or disposable merchandise that may uplift us for a moment.

But what is it that really makes us happy?

How can we enjoy the arts, fashion, style, and find true happiness within? Without our consumption leaving track marks on the face of our Mother Earth and, in return, having to pay the price with ourselves and the planet? That is not a price we should be willing to pay.

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