AUGUST HOROSCOPES
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Charlotte Barnett
Photo: Maureen Drennan
ARIES
This month is about eliminating waste from your lifestyle. Avoid plastic packaging and try using a reusable water bottle: a small decision that should work wonders for your personal brand. Dedicate all your time and energy to tweeting and posting about your waste-free life, and you are more or less guaranteed to double your follower count. Tweet until your fingers bleed, you plastic-free God.
TAURUS
Conserving water is so important for the health of our planet. This month, try replacing water with tears, tears you’ve shed thinking about how we might be the last generation to have access to free, safe drinking water. And WOW hundreds of millions of people already don’t have access to clean water. Flint has been without access to safe water for four years! August is all about feeling guilty, you horrible, privileged person abusing NYC’s world-renowned tap water. Shower in your tears.
GEMINI
This month you may be experiencing the temptation to dwell in nostalgia—close yourself off from these feelings. You may find your thoughts lingering on years gone by when 80 degrees in February was unheard of and when questions like “Is this the fulfillment of prophecy? How does one know when the actual apocalypse has arrived? Swarms of locust?” never occurred to you to ask. No, the best thing you can do for the environment is to shut out these reminders of a better time and accept our dark reality. And recycle.
CANCER
Not a lot happening in your life this month, so just stop showering altogether and tell people it’s for the environment.
LEO
You’re in a monotonous rut, and this month is about making big changes in your both environment and the environment. You know the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It’s a huge mass of garbage about the size of Texas floating around the Pacific. Make it your new home. Live on the garbage. Look at the garbage. Breathe the garbage. Build a tiny garbage house on this giant garbage patch and invite some garbage neighbors to seed a gleaming new garbage society. You may even become the garbage president! The Earth will eventually become a planet-sized garbage patch—and all humans are garbage anyway—so this August is the perfect time for you to get a head start in living with the consequences of our broad societal excess. It’s also a great way to get out of that rut and shake things up a bit!
VIRGO
You have a lot of places to go this month, but how you travel is key. Cars and taxis are a no-go and even the subway has its own carbon footprint. This month, the only footprint you’ll be leaving is a literal footprint. That’s right— you’re only allowed to travel by foot. And when you want to go somewhere with a friend, you have to do piggyback. This is your horoscope, so you have to do this, you have no choice.
LIBRA
Fresh Direct, Blue Apron, Glossier, Prime Day, Nordstrom’s anniversary sale, all your monthly delivery services, all your online shopping, what do they have in common? They all come in cardboard boxes. Did you even think once about the fact that you can reuse those boxes? Of course you didn’t, you environment-destroying monster. This month your Libra mission is to use your online shopping boxes to construct a tiny, self-sustaining home to live in. Rent your apartment out to Airbnb. Super sustainable! You’re a good person now.
SCORPIO
Composting in the city can be tough, but it’s so beneficial for our planet. In August, consider composting yourself. After a long day at work, treat yourself to a nice glass of wine and bury your body in the nearest community garden. Sleep in the dirt and let it soak up all your nutrients. Repeat nightly. This is how composting works.
SAGITTARIUS
For you, Sagittarius, August is all about reusable bags. Consistently using reusable bags may seem like an impossible feat, but if you don’t—if you ever use a plastic bag —you will be struck down by lightning. And you will be charged 10 cents.
CAPRICORN
Live in darkness. Never use electricity. Shut off this website, smash your phone, light a candle and find someone who famously does not own a TV to enhance with your newfound 18th-century approach to life.
AQUARIUS
Shailene Woodley makes her own toothpaste. Attempt to make all your own beauty products with organic, all natural ingredients. Spend a lot of money on all the materials, spend hours at work looking up instructions and reading about all the health benefits and how beautiful your skin and teeth will be with your new back-to-basics regimen. You will fail miserably, but this is a good month for you to try something once and then never attempt it again.
PISCES
Just live in a cave until the world ends. There’s no hope for us. But still: recycle.