Awareness: First Steps to Sustainable Change
August 17, 2010 by Julie Urlaub
Filed under Earth, • Feature
Whenever you want to improve in a specific area or program, just the process of increasing awareness will yield improvements. The same applies to living a sustainable lifestyle. Most of us recognize that change can be tricky: habits and convenience make it far easier to slip back into the comfortable way of doing things. However, implementing effective sustainable change does not have to be a laboring process. The key is conscious awareness.
Awareness is the tool used to help discover the personal patterns of behavior that offer low hanging fruit for a sustainable lifestyle. For instance, are you aware of your habits related to energy? Consider how and when you consume the most energy in your day? How could you be more efficient? What inspiring eco actions could you take?
Conscious awareness is key to sparking the eco awareness in a personal sustainability program. As noted in our eco friendly training, following are aids to assist in raising awareness:
• Consciously notice what is most inspiring to you about living green and take eco action in those areas.
• Notice your current patterns and invoke curiosity as to which eco actions would be a sustainable substitute.
• Applaud your efforts: small changes add up. In fact, daily habits have the most impact.
• Observe how new changes become the new habit/ norm.
• Momentum brings visibility to previously inaccessible ideas and behaviors.
• Gain speed: There is ease in taking more eco action.
• Inspire by living the example.
Each day we are presented with opportunities to expand our eco awareness and make informed choices. The trick to capitalizing on those opportunities is being aware. Conscious awareness offers us the opportunity to make changes that are inspiring and manageable relative our current life and the process of incorporating sustainability becomes much easier. Being aware of sustainability concepts when shopping, or at work and play, contributes to living a more sustainable lifestyle.
Do You Dream in Green?
August 3, 2010 by Julie Urlaub
Filed under Earth, • Feature
“We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter’s evening. Some of us let our dreams die, but others nourish and protect them, nurse them through bad days till they bring them to sunshine and light.” ~ Woodrow Wilson
What is green living? Is it living off the grid? Living in a green house? Working at a green job? What exactly does it mean to be green?
At its essence, a sustainable lifestyle, or living green, refers to a lifestyle and set of choices that minimizes a person’s environmental impact. While living green embraces sustainability concepts of efficiency, organics, waste management, and so forth, the mindset is more important than the eco actions. Why? Because life is dynamic. As expressed in our eco friendly training, applying sustainability concepts one way today may not be the sustainable solution of tomorrow. Your life circumstances change so it’s in your approach to life that matters.
The bigger the dream, the more you aspire to become. Are there areas of a sustainable lifestyle that you’ve dreamed about exploring?
- Explore healthier living.
- Improve your quality of life and work life balance.
- Reconnect with your local community.
- Build your career with eco awareness.
- Become an educated and conscious consumer.
Imagine for a moment your personal accounts of the thrill of doing something you have always wanted to do. The personal reward and accompanying excitement is lasting and inspires you to more. Living your very own green dream can be a thrilling adventure.
- Discover what can be recycled and what cannot! Can you recycle paint? Hair? Crayons? Find out here. Better yet, discover recycling centers near your home by visiting Earth911.
- Discover the rewarding sensation of volunteering in your community. Not sure where to start? Visit VolunteerMatch and enter your zip code and area of interest to find a perfect volunteer match.
- Discover cycling as part of a sustainable lifestyle and as a rewarding personal adventure. Explore health, environmental, and cost saving reasons for biking to work and pick out your favorite resources to help you do it.
- Discover ways to decorate the eco friendly way with eco friendly materials, paints, and plants.
- Discover ways to green your routine. Pick a different day of the week to take eco action on different sustainability concepts. The thrill is in changing habits on a daily basis. Need ideas? Visit here.
Through our daily living, we are presented with opportunities to expand our eco awareness and make informed choices. If you have dreams of living green, now is the time to take action. As you live your green dream, it inspires others to live theirs.
Green Your Routine: 7 Different Days of Green
July 20, 2010 by Julie Urlaub
Filed under Earth, • Feature
It’s no secret that going green is all the rage these days. In fact, being eco-friendly is more popular and well accepted now than ever before in history. The thing is, eco awareness is gaining momentum, but not everybody knows exactly how to take the concept of going green and break it down into their day to day habits.
To help you do just that, following are ways to go green each day of the week. As a green living consultant, I suggest starting off with ideas in each area that are of most interest to you and build from there. Each week can be a new platform to launch new eco actions. Have fun with it and know that every eco action you take adds up and makes a difference.
Paperless Mondays:
Within our business sustainability consulting, we explain that when it comes to paper, producing paper from virgin fiber is both energy and water intensive. It releases significant amounts of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. By choosing to use less paper and paper with recycled content you are making the choice to save wood, water and energy, and cut pollution and solid waste. The costs savings add up and the environmental impact goes down. Need ideas? Check out 19 Tips to go Paperless at Home.
Turn Tuesdays Green at Work:
Keep in mind, every job is a green job: it’s all in how you do it. One approach is to increase your participation in the sustainability programs offered within your organization. This offers a broader perspective of potential green projects and areas of improvement. Another approach is to green your physical environment. If you work at home, check out Green your Home Office 101 for ideas or 10 Ways to Green Your Cubicle. Both offer ideas to embrace sustainability concepts in your work environment.
Water Wednesdays:
Clean, fresh water is no longer just an issue for developing countries. It has become more and more a global issue. Water is linked to every facet of life on our planet and directly interacts with a myriad of other sustainability concepts. Learn water wise habits to Reduce your Water Footprint.
Adventurous Thursdays:
Explore different modes of transportation . The benefits of alternative transportation include conserving energy, preserving resources, reduced commuter traffic, cost savings (gas and parking), and reduced carbon emissions. Fun ideas include: carpool, bus, train, cycling or telecommuting/ coworking options for work environments.
Friday Fun: Slay Energy Vampires with energy efficiency practices:
The U.S. Department of Energy tells us that not only do appliances continue to draw electricity while the products are turned off, but in the average home nearly 75% of all electricity used to power electronics is consumed by products that are switched off. Explore energy efficiency eco actions to use less energy.
Saturday Waste Management/ Recycling:
When you avoid making garbage in the first place, you eliminate the disposing of waste or recycling it later. It’s the first component of the sustainability concept of the three R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle. Clues to how to reduce waste can be found by visiting what’s in your garbage.
Sparkle Sunday with Green Cleaning:
Conventional cleaning supplies contain ingredients that are toxic or hazardous. By replacing them with eco-friendly products, you’re providing improved indoor air quality, as well as reducing the 5 billion pounds of chemicals consumed by cleaning industry each year. Get started using non toxic products and breath easier.
What is Your Eco Intuition Telling You?
July 6, 2010 by Julie Urlaub
Filed under Earth, • Feature
As a personal eco living consultant http://blog.taigacompany.com/blog/taiga-company/0/0/listen-to-your-eco-intuition, I have learned that each individual’s experience is uniquely different, and that personal preferences are, in fact, always changing with evolving life circumstances. To maintain a green life style one must recognize that green living is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach. To use the cliché, ‘life is a journey of personal discovery’, and sustainability is about continuously discovering and experimenting with new ideas.
In a recent post, Finding the ‘You’ in Your Personal Sustainability Plan, we discuss how what works for one may not be the right fit for another. Personal sustainability truly is about defining what works for you.
An effective plan for living green involves more than defining personal values and taking on green concepts, like reduction or recycling. A committed green lifestyle is a continuous improvement process that challenges each individual to make alternative choices in a way that supports the changing circumstances of daily living. Life changes and so do your preferences, needs, and desires. It’s okay to ask:
• Does this activity increase my personal satisfaction through alignment with ‘my’ personal values?
• Will this activity decrease ‘my’ time engaged in other more fulfilling sustainable activities?
• Does ‘my’ lifestyle support this activity or is it by my ‘personal’ circumstance hake it unsustainable?
Follow your intuition. Listen to what inspires you to take eco friendly action. Remember there is an endless number of possibilities from which to choose to respond to any situation. Discovering an option that doesn’t work, like riding a bike to work when you live 40miles away, only opens the door for other options. By allowing for the daily hints of eco inspiration and keeping open to the idea that there are multiple green choices available and could work for you, living a green lifestyle becomes an easy and exciting journey.
Go Greener!
July 6, 2010 by Cheryl Millett
Filed under Earth, Editor's Pick, • Headline
What is the most abundant colour on the planet?
Green and more green, from the sea to land.
Check out my new leaf garden! Thanks to my wonderful husband Paul, we have a great leaf garden growing 6 different lettuces. The other day I caught my daughters and their friend plucking the leaves and eating them. Now that is fresh!
Different greens deliver different nutrients so it is best to incorporate a variety of greens from both land and sea.
Spirulina is one of my favourites. It can be purchased in a powder form and put into a smoothie or taken as capsules. Why green foods from the ocean?
The future of nutrition is found in the ocean. – Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Spirulina contains many wonderful nutrients, including chlorophyll, protein, vitamins, macro and trace minerals, essential fatty acids, nucleic acids (RNA and DNA), polysaccharides, and a vast spectrum of antioxidants. Did you know that spirulina contains as much iron as meat? Spirulina also contains several bio-available forms of the mineral sulfur. Sulfur if excellent for your liver and pancreas. (Stay tuned for my fall liver-gallbladder flush teachings!)
Others include different kinds of algae like blue-green algae, marine phytoplankton, chlorella and kelp. They have their own unique profile of benefits.
Many of the ocean greens contain many trace minerals. Weston Price’s work in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration shows that those people who adopt a “civilized” diet, the faster mineral deficiencies symptoms appear. Mineral deficiencies have been associated with every degenerative and chronic condition known to humankind. www.westonaprice.org has a wealth of information on this, essential fats (seal oil is my favourite and his), and more.
The ocean greens are considered to be super foods whereas the land greens are not BUT they can be valuable in their own way.
On land, the green foods are plenty from the beautiful avocado, to celery, then broccoli and last but not least the leafy greens which include bok choy, kale, romaine, red leaf lettuce, spinach, dandelion, herbs and much more. Others include spring onions, green string beans, sunflower shoots, alfalfa sprouts, etc.
Two key reasons to consume vegetables are they contain water and fiber.
Many of the foods we consume today are only as rich in vital nutrients as what is found in the medium they are grown in. Remineralizing the soil is a must.
Here is your desire outcome…a salad a day. Consider using only an organic cold pressed olive oil in the dressing. Olive oil and lemon/lime…a simple salad dressing! (Stay tuned for my recipe book on oils which will include some delicious salad dressing recipes.)
Eat green — Be happy — Feel joy
Every time you sit down to your plate, ask yourself or your host…where’s the veggies! And if they remember the old phrase “where’s the beef” they might even chuckle which would be a healthy thing to do. ;o)
Make it a healthy day!
Cheryl
