nature
Jarvis Smith
Jarvis Smith comes from a unique and fascinating background- with 14 years of shamanic training in the UK, and a strong background in creative publishing with the popular ethical magazine GREEN. He is also the founder of My Green Pod, an organisation dedicated to inspiring and educating people on the need for sustainability and addressing the climate crisis.
As part of our eco-piphany series, we sat down with Jarvis to discuss about the moments that shaped his career, from his background in healing to his experience on the TV show Dumped. He explains how the two came together to create the resulting eco-piphany. The show forced the cast to confront the mountain of waste that we produce by living in a landfill. He felt himself getting increasingly sick from the waste and took some time aside to ground himself and cleanse his energy. At that moment, while releasing all of the toxic energy, he describes a deeply spiritual moment where the earth itself said "how you are feeling now, is how I feel. I'm sick, and I need you. I need you to help me tell people." He had experience with this kind of communication with nature, with his shamanic background, but he describes this as feeling like he had been struck with lightning.
Jarvis says, “what I couldn’t understand is why this serious issue, that I had been informed of by the very thing we were killing, this conscious planet. I couldn’t get my head around why this wasn’t mainstream news. I set myself on a mission to make it mainstream.”
His experience was a core part of defining his purpose and his mission, from founding My Green Pod and campaigning to bring awareness of the climate crisis into mainstream news, to his personal life; going vegan, his switch to electric vehicles, and the importance of making sure that your energy provider and your pension are ethically powered.
Jarvis shares some of his preferred sustainable swaps: how he's driven an electric vehicle for years, and switched to a 100% renewable energy tariff (he recommends Octopus 'because they're amazing', and we'd agree) as well as trying out Fairphone for a phone supplier. He mentions Weleda’s Skinfood product, another of Beagle’s favourites as it’s biodynamically made and comes from a great ethical company.
“When you look at how human beings live in the world now, it’s pretty much separate from the natural world. Thankfully Sir David Attenborough did Blue Planet and people started to make the connection between the damage and the way we were living, the toxicity that was causing, and damaging ecosystems. What I would say to people is ‘don’t forget that you are completely funded by nature.’ It provides every bit of sustenance for us to live, the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the food that we eat. It provides every raw material for our businesses to survive.”
As he rightfully says, “Every decision that you make is either good or bad for nature.”
Thanks to Jarvis for sharing his awesome story and wisdom. For more ecopiphanies and inspiring content you can subscribe to our newsletter or visit The Beagle Button Blog to find the rest of our eco-piphany interviews: where we investigate the moments that inspired brilliant sustainable ideas and organisations and share those with you hoping they will inspire you too.