Green Living is the name of a fad that the main stream media has suddenly decided to glamorize. Many of us have been "living green" since the 1960's and 70's. It was first brought to our attention during that era when we realized how harmful many of our (then) current policies were for the environment. Now, we are in an age were it has become absolutely imperitve to live closer to the Earth. We have already wittnessed, many times over, the harmful effects of pharmeaceuticals. We have chemicals added to our food and water, we have pollutants filling our air, we have less than adequate control over food that is being imported into our country, and we're losing our jobs to out-sourcing!
This page is not about the Green Living Fad, it is about a lifestyle. Our current accepted standard of living is far from healthy for us or for Mother Earth. Our intention here is provide an opportunity for all of us to share the ideas and practices that are our lifestyle choices. We can then incorporate some new ideas into our own lifestyle. We can work together to make ourselves, our families, and Mother Earth heathy and happy. Give us your ideas too. You can leave your comments, or tell us what you're doing to "Live Green" and we will be happy to add your ideas to our own!
I was raised in Southern NJ and had no idea that the rest of the country was not as pro active as we were in the 3 R's (reduce, reuse, recycle). This Challenge is an invitation to find ways to reduce, reuse and recycle. It will run for as long as it takes to get everyone into a mind-set of environmental activism.
This is the Challenge:
We make a lot of routine purchases all of which cost us extra money. These are marketed for the convience. Many of them we've grow up with, but have you ever stopped to consider the fact that before these items were mass produced and mass marketed, our grandparents did just fine without them?
Re-evaluate all of your rountine purchases of disposable products (this is harder than it sounds!). Which of these items really need to be disposable and which can you substitute for a reusable?
How many of your routine purchases include more packaging than product? Can you buy that item in bulk and reduce the amount of waste? Can you reuse the packaging, such as butter containers?
Do you compost organic waste? This is much more effecient and cheaper than chemical based fertilizers, and it's free!
Have you considered a rain barrel? Recycled rain water is much better for your plants than the chemical laden water provided by your municipality, and this is also free!
Do you donate items that you no longer need rather than send them to the landfill? Check out www.freecycle.org !
I thought I'd start a list of the things we've changed in our lives in order to cut down on the amount of trash going into the landfills and save money at the same time. Maybe you can add to this list. I'm certain that there are still many things I haven't thought of that can be added!
Cloth napkins instead of paper napkins.
Rags instead of paper towels.
Hankies instead of tissues (except when there is a respiratory infection)
Bread wrappers and other "clean" plastic bags instead of "zip lock"
Butter and plastic ice cream containers instead of store bought plastic containers.
No disposable plates, cups, forks, etc.
Reusable cloth shopping bags, even Walmart has these now but you'll have to look around to find them.
Aluminum foil , which can be reused and recycled, instead of plastic wrap.
We buy our drinking water from a local spring for 20c a gallon and refill travel mugs, instead of buying bottled water.
Reusable coffee filter screen instead of paper coffee filters.
We also compost all of our organic waste and use it on the garden.
We set out our meat scraps for the "wild things" in the area.
We have a rain barrel and water the garden and indoor plants from that.
We freeze leftovers and reheat them at a later time instead of buying "microwave meals"
We bring our own place settings to pot luck dinners, complete with cloth napkin!
Also. They now make form fitted cloth baby diapers. These are also water proff and very cute. A great option instead of disposable diapers that will be in the landfill for 500 years!
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by Dr J Mercola www.mercola.com |
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Living by “green” principles can be extremely satisfying, but how do you do it? Surely, it’s not by purchasing more “green” products, because buying and using more “things” is all part of the problem. 1. Strive for Simplicity: More stuff means more complexity; more upkeep, more keeping track, more things to do. In global terms, it means more wasted resources. 2. Fairness: Much of our consumption-driven market is based on unfairness. If everyone along the chain, from a Bolivian granny making hand-woven grocery bags to the Wal-Mart worker, actually were paid what you’d expect, that hand-woven grocery bag would be out of most people’s price range. 3. Community: If you’ve ever had the pleasure of attending a local farmer’s market, you’ve experienced something few of us do these days: an encounter with a part of your community, an actual living and breathing person, who made that which you’re about to buy. 4. Sustainability: A system is sustainable when the negative outputs of that system are accommodated and turned into positive outputs. However, most of our global production is not sustainable. 5. Planning: Planning means looking ahead toward a desired outcome. It also means thinking a little bit about the community that isn’t here yet and dealing fairly with them. The decisions we make now will create the conditions our grandchildren and their grandchildren will have to deal with. 6. Transparency: Planning, community, fairness, and ultimately sustainability require transparency, but most decisions these days are made behind closed doors |
In this era of relearning which foods are healthy and which foods are processed and learning new terms such as organic and "industrial organic" things can get a bit confusing. I have included a link to a very good article that can help us figure out some of these terms and how to to choose the most healthful options.
Enjoy the link!
Have you ever thought about cutting out or at least cutting down the amount of meat in your diet? Most everybody enjoys a good steak, a juicy hamburger or some delicious fried chicken, but do we have to make it a part of daily life? Switching to a more vegetarian diet can be a powerful way to help protect
our environment.
* The United Nations recently released Livestock's Long Shadow–Environmental Issues and Options, which concludes that the livestock sector (primarily cows, chickens, and pigs) emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to our most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.
* It is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases - responsible for 18 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalents. By comparison, all transportation emits 13.5 percent of the CO2.
It produces 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide (which has 296 times the global warming potential of CO2) and 37 percent of all human-induced methane (which is 23 times as
warming as CO2).
* It also generates 64 percent of the ammonia, which contributes to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems.
* Buying organic, locally grown food also reduces global warming emissions and helps protect the environment
This a really good article. Enjoy!
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