Aiyana Reuter is 10 years old. An active, conscious, creative, inspiring, lovely and smart animal lover, Aiyana has ‘connected the dots’ on the most urgent issue of our time. She is concerned about how people treat the earth and the future generations. She wrote this note to the Founder of NOW to share her thoughtful solutions.

Five Ways to Save the Planet

• No more CO2
• Kids learn in school how to save the earth
• More trash bins
• Trash robots
• You will get a cell punishment if you throw trash in the ocean or on the ground

Aiyana lives in Wassenaar, Holland with her mother Teska Reuter and goes to St. Bonifacius School where kids learn how to save the earth. Her class also discuss the news of the day with their teacher. She tells NOW that she learned about how people’s bad behavior has created the huge plastic soup in the ocean, and how our CO2 pollution is causing the climate to change and harm people and animals, that they dry out places so there’s less water and cause fires that burn trees, and cause storms and tornados that flood places. Their class watched Greta Thunberg’s solo strike for the climate grow with the support of millions worldwide and the launch of Boyan Slat’s invention to take plastic from the plastic ocean soup.

For a class project, Aiyana and her best friend Ayesha created a poster to explain the plastic ocean soup and highlighted the importance of sorting our trash to recycle and reuse. Aiyana brought to school all the plastic garbage she could find from home to create a plastic robot. “I think we need to have robots and cameras everywhere and if people are seen polluting and throwing plastic where they don’t belong, the robots can chase them. People should get cell (prison) punishment if they throw trash on the ground and in the ocean. This is bad behavior. I don’t eat fish anymore because I don’t want to eat plastic.”

Aiyana loves to visit her grandparents – Anya and Huib De Haas – who live in Switzerland during school breaks and they arranged for Aiyana to meet and speak to the founder of NOW.

Generation Z – children and young adults born between 1995 and 2012 – are now today’s young shoppers, influencers, voters, workers and parents. This highly diverse and technologically literate group have grown up amid the constant hum of social issues and environmental causes. A characteristic shared by many Gen Zers is the desire to make a positive impact on the world and they are willing to get involved in issues that they care about, including environmental and social justice causes.

Many Gen Zers and Millennials are increasingly frustrated by the older generations’ lack of acknowledgement of their part in the problem and the lack of urgent and visible action by many to be part of the solution. The finger wagging goes both ways and a more constructive way forward would be to accept and learn from the past which we cannot change and work together for a better tomorrow.

The launch of itmustbeNOW.com on Earth Day 2017 was inspired by a Millennial whose 4 words – IT MUST BE NOW – has become our call-to-urgent-action, our trumpet call, our rallying cry! For many who are worried that the social and environmental problems facing the world are insurmountable, the young generations do offer reasons to hope.

All generations living today are experiencing the escalating climate emergencies and this is projected to get worse as the temperature rise in the years ahead. We all need to act NOW and be part of the solution and Aiyana’s 5 Ways to Save the Earth is a good place to start.

It must be NOW!

View Aiyana’s other creative solutions and fun activities below: