Your home is a reflection of who you are. If you value the earth, it should definitely show in your home. Thankfully, there are several ways to create an eco-friendly home that treads gently on this planet. Here are a few tips and tricks to keeping your home as sustainable as possible.
As you may or may not know, fresh water is not an infinite, renewable resource. There's only so much of it and we aren't making any more. That's why it's so important not to waste water. This life-giving resource needs to be conserved and valued. The good news is there are plenty of ways to reduce water consumption—one of the biggest ways being your diet. Here are five ways to reduce your water footprint ASAP.
From a young age, most women (myself included) are instructed on how to use tampons and pads and find a hormonal birth control that works for us. Some of us continue to do fine on conventional products, but it’s important to know that there are other options that don’t contain pesticides, reduce waste, and help manage PMS symptoms and irregular periods without adding synthetic hormones.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have fresh fruits, veggies, and herbs available right in your yard? If you embrace edible landscaping, you can enjoy this experience practically year-round and save money to boot. Veteran Edible Farmer Rosalind Creasy shares that while these types of gardens do require an initial investment of time and money, they offer significant savings on produce costs—for example, in 2008, the value of the vegetables she grew in a 100-square-foot garden totaled more than $675.
I'm sure many of you are familiar with those annoying stickers on fresh produce. Well guess what? They might not be around for much longer. Because more and more people are speaking out about how wasteful they are (those stickers can't be recycled, after all), they might just be replaced with tattoos. You heard me: Fruit tattoos. While these are not designed to be aesthetically pleasing, like tattoos humans get, they would be designed for functionality.
All photos by Shiraz Leyva
Protein powder has been controversial in the past few years, not necessarily because of what it does—provide a solid dose of protein for post-workout nutrition or those who struggle to get in adequate amounts for various reasons—but because of how it’s made and, more specifically, what it’s made from.
Many people take water for granted: Either they waste it or they simply don't appreciate it. But here's the thing most people forget: There's only so much water on this earth, and we can't make any more of it. Sure, there's a lot of water on earth, but did you know that 96.5 percent of it is too salty for human consumption? Not to mention two thirds of the remainder (freshwater) is locked in polar ice, permanent snow, and glaciers.
We are living in a time when industrialization is the norm, traffic is just a part of the day, and buying what we need instead of making it is totally acceptable. Light pollution can often blur day and night, and affect the natural processes of the world. . Light pollution is the artificial light that shines upwards and downwards, creating a skyglow which fades out the stars from above and also disorientating wildlife and insects down below.
In 2011, I moved from the lush greenery of Olympia, an hour south of Seattle, to Philadelphia, one of the densest cities in America. Never in my life had I seen so much brick, so much pavement, and so little green space. I loved the city—I moved there to pursue opportunities that weren’t available in a smaller town. But I missed the green. And something about that made me suddenly interested in healthy eating. If I couldn’t have much green foliage around me, at least I could have some on my plate.
