How Pablo Restrepo Meza designed environmental consciousness
Photo by Allison Saeng on Unsplash
With over 5 years in the fashion industry, Pablo Restrepo Meza not only came out with more design experience, but he transformed the traditional views of environmentalism by using aesthetics.
With social media platforms and influencers in the pockets of millions of people, daily life can be attributed to the lifestyles and aesthetics pursued through online content.
“Fashion is an interesting way of attraction and aspiration,” Meza said. “Content generated by artists is their dream, vision of the world, even dream board, which people can see as something they live every day.”
Learning to live on the planet and connecting with Earth, according to Meza, involves incentivizing others to care about the planet. This is exactly what he has been able to accomplish from Juventud de La Tierra, an environmental collective he founded in 2018.
At first, the organization attempted to figure out how to successfully run as an environmental collective. Meza invited a few of his friends, mainly models, and designers to be a part of the campsite. They loved the name and asked if it would be chosen as the company name.
Since then, Meza has discovered what “Youth of the Earth” really means and how to begin tree planting and events. This involved having meetups, forming social media pages, and changing customs such as water bottle and plastic bag usage until Meza and his team realized change was within.
Eventually, the organization paired with a yoga teacher for a retreat that invited environmentalists to talk about the importance of environmentalism in order for other people to understand the significance of their work.
Photo by Arthur Poulin on Unsplash
For example, an environmentalist, also an avid scuba diver that attended the event, promotes the reduction of plastic use on his Instagram page. As a policy advocate, he had never meditated in his life. Through the experience, he realized scuba diving was a meditation for him, and from an experiential point of view, others may not completely understand his advocacy.
According to Meza, it’s important for environmentalists to hone in on their skills, and in a way, it has similarities to martial art. We are trying to drive change because we understand that we are reaching the planetary boundaries and we are eliminating tons of species from existence. At the end of the day, we need people to feel them. It’s a deep seeded reason why we need the change. It comes through messages and stories.
“Change is an emotional experience,” Meza said. “We want to empower environmentalists to embody this so that they can get others to change as well.”
The vegan and vegetarian movements have been able to shift consumption viewpoints, according to Meza, but more value needs to be placed on things today that we know will be valuable in the future.
Tree planting campaigns have been an achievable aesthetic or “spiritual experience,” as they have allowed many to reconnect with the planet and bring back components of nature that contribute to daily life. The connection between humans and nature has been further developed in times of mourning.
For many, tree planting can also serve as a spiritual experience for those who can dedicate the plantings to loved ones who passed away. In their honor then, cemeteries can then become beautiful forests to reconnect with those.
To Meza, tree planting is a manifestation of love. The revolution of tree planting for value extends beyond the present and connects with the future generations to come.
Listen to the full interview with Pablo Restrepo Meza here.