Living a greener lifestyle

Living a green lifestyle involves creating a healthy environment for body, mind and spirit, within our homes and ideally for the surrounding ecology. Eating organic food, recycling waste, growing our own vegies, reducing energy usage..  these are all important steps to a greener world. What else can we do?

Keep it simple

Admittedly, striving for simplicity in an increasingly complex world takes some thinking! We could start by buying staple foods in bulk instead of packaged items..  Joining a toy library for the exchange of goods amongst children in place of new gadgets which are most often discarded only weeks later... Utilising our local library for the loan of magazines instead of subscribing or purchasing issues we mightn't even get time to read and so on. The creative energy spent on trying to de-clutter our homes and minds will be time well spent and could even help save money on unnecessary expense.

Sustainability

It may be the latest buzz word, but it's a fairly serious situation when we consider that most of our global production in unsustainable. A sustainable system exists when the negative outputs of that system are accommodated and turned into positive outputs. The smallest changes can help steer us all to greater sustainability – start at home, and enjoy the satisfaction of feeling that you're able to make a difference, no matter how small.

Fair trade

We should never under-estimate the power of our consuming dollar. Sadly, a percentage of businesses in this world are based on unfairness. If we put our money where our hearts are, even in only certain key purchases, imagine the impact that could have! Shopping locally is a good start, because we can have a greater awareness of where the product came from, and what was involved to get it to us.

Community

Local shopping inherently involves contributing to the local community. Garage sales, farmers markets and local fetes are opportunities to keep our money within our own neighbourhood. They also represent a chance to meet fellow locals. In these busy times, connecting with our neighbours can help keep things simple and provide a sense of belonging which contributes to good health.

Planning

Looking ahead to a desired outcome is inherent in sustainability, but it can only truly happen when we start within ourselves. What kind of life and world would we like to leave for our children and grand-children and their children? Are our actions today in alignment with our goals? Living consciously like this sometimes takes courage, however the rewards may well be timeless.