5 Ways to Improve Your Wellbeing & Save Our Planet! Earth Day 2016

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It’s quite incredible how much power you have and how the way we shop makes a huge difference!

You can improve your own health (and your families of course), you can improve the livelihood of others like farmers and producers and you can help look after our beautiful planet as well.

In celebration of Earth Day (22 April 2016), here are 5 ways you can make our planet a better place, plus you’ll show yourself a whole lot of love too…

 

1. Choose Organic

Buying organic food not only reduces the amount of chemicals and pesticides you consume (yuk!) but it also reduces the amount of chemicals and pesticides used in farming and therefore what ends up in our soils and waterways.

What can you do?

Wherever and whenever you can, buy organic food and you’ll be helping to improve soil fertility, biodiversity and water quality. Nice one! (PS - remember all the food on Organic Door is organic)

 

2. Choose Sustainably Caught Fish

Commercial fishing hurts our marine environment in many ways and destructive fishing is not only about overfishing but the way we fish.

Bottom trawls, the use of explosives, species over exploitation and non-selective fishing are all threatening our marine ecosystem and biodiversity with reports stating that 27 million tonnes of unwanted fish and marine life such as turtles, sharks, dolphins and birds (often already endangered) being killed and wasted alone.

What can you do?

Buy sustainably caught tinned fish from smaller and more reputable brands like Fish4Ever and you’ll be helping to look after our oceans and all the creatures who call it home. Whilst the big guys may be touting their sustainable credentials, there are many holes in the pretty picture they are trying to portray (but that’s another story).  You can learn a little more here:

http://www.conservationinstitute.org/destructive-fishing-practices/

 

3. Choose Non Toxic

Whether it’s your shampoos, soaps, deodorants, moisturisers, baby care products, dishwashing liquids, laundry liquids, air fresheners, you can buy non toxic products that still lather, clean, stop you from being stinky, freshen the room when others have done a stinky, wipe, shine and deodorise.

What’s more you’ll highly likely be supporting smaller companies rather than big corporations who have spent millions of dollars convincing you to be very afraid of bugs and why wiping every surface down with 99.9999% antibacterial spray is good (actually it’s not good!).

What can you do?

Go through your kitchen, bathroom and laundry cupboards and toss the chemical filled products that wreak havoc on us and our environment out, and swap for non toxic eco friendly options.

 

4. Choose Local and Seasonal

The fruit and veggies you find in supermarkets may look nice and shiny but just like the poison apple in Snow White, not all is as it appears.

Farmers are often exploited with increasing pressure to continually reduce their prices. The fruit and veggie has often has been imported (again at the determinant of our local farmers), it has travelled thousands of miles (not good for our environment) and artificially ripened in a box or using some chemical such as ethylene gas  (not good for you).

What can you do?

When it comes to buying your fruit and veg, ditch the fluoro lights and supermarkets and say hello to the friendly folk in your local organic / wholefoods store or green grocer. Or check out the link below and find your local Farmer’s Market.

http://farmersmarkets.org.au/markets

You’ll be buying local, in season, often organic food that has freshly ripened on a branch or in the soil like it should have been. You’ll also be looking after our environment and supporting the local growers. Now that sounds delicious to me!

 

5. Ditch the Plastic Bags

Over 1 trillion plastic bags are used each year which equates to nearly 3 billion every day, 114 million every hour or nearly 2 million every second! Apart from being a massive waste of energy and resources, these plastic bags are huge environmental pollutants often being found in the stomach of marine and farm animals.

What can you do?

Get yourself some friendly re-usable bags and keep one handy in the car, in your handbag and at home so there are no excuses. Also share the love and buy one for your friends and family for their next Birthday or Christmas and be an Earth Day superhero. Here’s one brand I love:

https://www.onyalife.com/

So with some simple tweaks we can all be Earth Day Superheros and show Planet Earth some love as after all, we wouldn’t be here without her.