Environmental Journalist Simran Sethi, fresh from her appearance on Oprah and in the wake of Earth Week, reflects of the fourth “R”: the critical component that relationships of all varieties play in greening the world with justice for all.

Environmentalism is about our relationship with and to our world. And as we all know, the best relationships are the ones we work on.

After Earth Day last year, we put our finger on the Enviro New Wave sweeping the ever expanding green movement that was bringing it past the dispensing of green tips and onto the firm terrain of achieving social and environmental justice. This year, Simran writes about how she came to her commitment to, well, commitments for that is what is required of any true relationship. The story begins with a lovely quotation found on a mural that serves as the backdrop for the Lawrence, Kansas farmers’ market:

We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.

– Gwendolyn Brooks

Which goes to the heart of interdependence with one another, with nature. In short, the very essence of ecology.

It is our relationships – to the planet, to our stuff, to our communities – that contain the most potential for widespread change. Historically, the environmental movement was about land conservation and wildlife protection. Jerome Ringo, the first person of color to head a national environmental organization, described to me the folks involved in early environmentalism as “the people who would catch a fish to hang it on the wall, not to put a fish on their plates.”

Read it on HuffPo: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Relate: A Post-Earth Day Manifesto