This is one of my favourite pictures of mine, originally posted last year.Buying seasonal and local food is obviously the best way to eat, and we do quite well through the summer and into the fall with the farmer's market. Uncharacteristically, I didn't even check to see what country today's pomegranate came from before buying it. And it was absolutely perfect and delicious.
I've found that I haven't been thinking as much as I did before about ways I can continue to change my habits to be a sweeter steward of the earth. Not knowing where the pomegranate came from brought that to my attention today. It could be for a variety of reasons:
a) 'Green' is a big thing in the media, and I tend to avoid trends, even though this is a good one
b) I've made so many changes to my lifestyle and habits over the past several years that I don't know what else to do on a day-to-day basis.
What green changes have you made that I haven't? Do you have a challenge up your sleeve? I'll take you on! Just to sum up, here are some things I'm already doing: cloth diapers, natural and homemade cleaning products, Diva Cup, reusable bags, minimum shopping for new things (we buy mostly used), not buying stuff for stuff's sake - it has to have a place and purpose, minimal driving in our one very compact car, wood stove for most heat, whole foods and cooking from scratch, drying clothes on the line, composting and recycling, and probably lots of others I haven't listed. I need some inspiration, and maybe you can help! What else can I do?
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6 comments:
Only buy cruelty-free products :)
Make sure those pomegranate's are not a Pom Product.
Being Green is great...and I think the next step to a clean world is treating animals with the respect they deserve.
Often, animal skins used for leather are kept from biodegrading (going rotten) by using a variety of dangerous substances, including mineral salts (chromium, aluminium, iron and zirconium), formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives and various oils and dyes, some of which are cyanide-based. Nearly half of all water used in the US is used to raise animals for meat and leather!
Sorry to potentially boring you...but I DO believe being green has a lot to do with what we wear, eat and the products we use...make sure there are no animal's linked to it.
Cheers
Sarah Armstrong
POM products are healthy and cruelty free. Please do not perpetuate this outdated information. All testing on animals was completed years ago and the only testing they do now is on human subjects. POM is a great company and their products help people with cancer and cardiovascular disease.
Do you have the ability to read minds and haven't told anyone? I swear I could have posted this myself = )
We aren't trendy either but unfortunatly "green" is one trend that hasn't caught on in our neighborhood. We've been wanting to do rainwater collection, but that takes $$ and isn't safe with small children around.
I'm interested in what other people have to say. Even the small things can make a big difference.
Thanks for the comments!
Sarah, thanks for the suggestion - we are infrequent meat eaters for the very reasons you mentioned, and we buy local, organic, free-range beef and poultry when we do eat meat. But I will definitely keep your leather information in mind next time I'm looking at something made of it! :)
Heidi, I think we may have been separated at birth. :)
I think we all get to a point where most of the little things we can do we already do...
I think that perhaps leather is being given a bad name here. I do agree that a lot of water is being used to grow cattle and yes there are potentially dangerous chemicals in the leather but it is by far one of the most durable natural products out there and buying locally made leather products where you can question their methods seems like an excellent idea. Cotton uses a lot of pesticides and fertilizers (even the organic ones), not to mention water. So I think that the choice is much more complicated than just examining one resource/impact or aspect of the product...at least we can eat the meat and use the leather...whereas with cotton you only use part of the plant...however who wants to be clad all in leather! So in the end the choice comes down to what do you need it for? How was it made? Can you get it locally? Can you buy it second hand? Do you really need it?
These choices are always more complicated than they first appear and always require a lot of research!
I thought I would pass this on because...well just check it out...it is a CBC documentary called The Disappearing Male. http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/doczone/2008/disappearingmale/#
This could just be the motivator to your next "green" challenge. Maybe it is time to move on to the more difficult things we should do...
Growing as much of our food as we can is something we try to do...not just for being green, for the sake of our own, or the planet's health, but also in huge part for the taste.
I think you're already doing more than a good percentage of the population in regards to living green.
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