We take a step closer to our everyday lives today with something we all need, every day (and several times, at that): food and water. We can’t make this more plain: what you choose to eat and drink every day makes a huge, huge difference, so making the sustainable [www.sundancechannel.com] choice has huge potential to make a greener [www.sundancechannel.com] future. Let’s take a closer look.
First of all, One Planet Living defines the difficulties of food production very succinctly, so we’ll just go with it, “Industrial agriculture produces food of uncertain quality and harms local ecosystems [www.sundancechannel.com], while consumption of non-local food [www.sundancechannel.com]
imposes high transport impacts.” Moving forward, eating green [www.sundancechannel.com] can take on many forms, but there’s a fairly specific progression that can apply to just about everybody: local organic [www.sundancechannel.com], local, organic, conventional. The 100 Mile Diet [www.sundancechannel.com] has exploded in popularity of late, making it easier than ever to find local food [www.sundancechannel.com]. Farmer’s markets are enjoying a renaissance, as people care more and more about where their food comes from, and how it’s produced. Eating more veggies [www.sundancechannel.com] (and less meat) is another big step with even bigger results; remember, it takes almost 2000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef — that’s a perfect segue into the next topic: water.
Sustainable water [www.sundancechannel.com] seems to be one of the great ironies of our time: over 2/3 of our planet is covered in the stuff, and yet, we can’t seem to keep enough of it clean and available for drinking and consumption. One Planet decrees that we must, “Achieve a positive impact on local water resources and supply. Implement water use efficiency measures, re-use and recycling; minimize water extraction and pollution [www.sundancechannel.com]; foster sustainable water and sewage management in the landscape; restore natural [www.sundancechannel.com]
water cycles.” Sounds easier said than done, but it’s really quite straightforward: stop drinking bottled water, put a low-flow showerhead in your shower and aerators on all your sinks, a low-flow, dual-flush toilet in your bathroom and don’t leave the water running when you don’t need it. Taken separately, each of these seems simple and small, but they can add up to literally thousands of gallons of water each year. Not tossing it down the drain, and not polluting it with fertilizers in your yard helps, but the big payoff here comes back to food (remember that full circle thing we mentioned before? Here it is again…) and what you choose to eat. Think of it this way: upgrading all the systems in your home is great, but it’ll never add up to the difference not eating meat will make.
Gazing in to the crystal ball, next we see that natural wildlife and habitats and culture and heritage are next; stay tuned!
