ALUNA TEMPLE MAGAZINE EDITION No4 'BRIDGES' | Page 72

‘THINK GLOBAL - BUY LOCAL’ Lowering our consumption is a necessarily step for sustainability plus we need to become much more conscious of how we invest and vote with our money. The best mantra to remember is: ‘Refuse Reduce Reuse Repair Recycle & Localize’. It does make a real difference if we buy e.g. organic, seasonal and local food, in the end many small choices raise a big voice. www.ethicalconsumer.org On a globalized marked actions and consequences are often very separated. I think there would be a different behaviour if the whole phase of a product was met on personal level. E.g. just imagine if buying a t-shirt produced “cheaply” in Asia included visiting a baby mum working in the factory 15 hours a day, bathing in the local river poisoned by chemicals and thinking more about who pays the real price for bargains. I saw many horrible textile manufacturing areas in Bangladesh and it changed my clothing habits. Or just imagine that each time using gasoline for transport we had to first go visit a family that has been forced away from ancestral land by invading petroleum industry to instead live in big city slum and are classified as uneducated even though they know the rainforest botany without looking in a book. www.storyofstuff.org Another aspect where modern people have got lost is our relation with food. Modern agriculture has with the unnatural use of chemicals, big scale monoculture crops, GMO, animals factories etc. become the biggest threat to the wellbeing of our ecosystem (and moral). As this is getting obvious more people start looking into growing, finding and buying food in more harmonic ways like: Organic farming, Permaculture, Biodynamic agriculture, Natural farming, Holistic management, Keyline design, Wild Food Foraging, Seed banks, Beekeeping, Urban farming, Aguaponics, Farmers Marked, Local Food Co-ops, Dumpster diving/freeganism, breatharians etc. Some links: www.permacultureglobal.com * www.biodynamics.com * www.eupc.eu www.onestrawrevolution.net * www.landawakening.com www.ridgedalepermaculture.com * www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org