Conscious Comments April 2013 | Page 8

The Environment

If you continue to contaminate your own home, you will eventually suffocate in your own waste. - Lakota Proverb

On April 22nd, around the world people will gather to celebrate and bring awareness to our need to respect honor and cherish mother earth. Earth Day has become a global event uniting various clear air activists, sustainability experts, wildlife defenders, clean water activists and many more to be aware that we must protect the one most important thing we need on this planet to survive. I found out about Earth day about eighteen years ago. Growing up in the Bay Area (California) I was definitely privileged to grow up with more  consciousnes s about the environment.

I have continued from that first Earth Day that I celebrated to try many different ways to leave the least amount of carbon imprint. I have compiled a list of ways that we can try in our simple everyday lives to reduce our carbon footprint and leave behind less waste. In order for our earth to continue to be a place that gives us all we need to live here on the planet in the most effective and friendly way. I believe we must go back to some of the simpler ways of living and to produce items that they can be done in a way that is the least harmful to our earth. One thing I do know is that every time we engage   

Earth Day is Everyday

unconsciously in an act that could be harmful we are unconsciously harming ourselves as well. If mother earth gives us so much air, food, water, energy, shelter, without asking anything of us but respect and humility, how is it that we could deny her?

1. Reduce waste- Buy more local food and products- not only does it taste better and more than likely is better for you, you also use less packaging and therefore there is less waste in landfills. Although recycling has been sold as this great aid to ending waste, in reality only 2 of the 7 plastics produced are recyclable and when recycled many chemicals are still present and cannot be broken down. Aluminum is recycled at an extreme rate but has still not surpassed the average American's 2.5 a day consumption so they are still mining for aluminum.

Recycling is actually encouraging consumption not showing us ways to reduce it. It also produces many toxic fuels in the air in the process as well as once again using gas to get the recyclables where they need to go.

2. Go vegetarian - Go organic!- It takes 16,000 - 100,000 liters of water to produce 1kg of beef, it takes 1 liter of water to produce 1kg of vegetables. Big agriculture business is using over 70% of our freshwater resources to produce foods that are most of the time not even produced in the kindest,