Earth Day is a yearly reminder to respect, treasure and love the world we live in. What we often overlook is that loving and respecting our external home, Earth, is also loving and respecting our internal home, our body. The health of our environment and our planet is a direct reflection of the health of our internal home and vice versa. The state of health externally is our mirror for the state of our health internally. When we look out into the world and see toxicity, degradation and imbalance we know this is a direct reflection of our internal world. As our internal health becomes restored, clean and balanced, so does the health of our external world. The two cannot operate independently. Therefore, what we do to restore health and balance internally directly effects the health of our environment and planet.
Remembering valuable concepts, such as love, respect and balance, once a year isn't going to make much of an impact on our external or internal health. However, taking small steps each and every day to remember these concepts will make a tremendous impact. There are small and simple things you can begin doing today to restore balance and health to your internal environment, while at the same time making a significant impact on the greater world.
5 Steps to Make Earth Day Every Day
1. Choose Organic - When you buy conventional produce, you are getting half to twenty percent of the nutrient content of organic foods, chronically poisoning your body, and continuing the cycle of degrading the planet, our food supply and environment. Organic foods not only have a substantially higher nutrient content, they are pure (free of poisons), taste better, balance and heal your body while supporting and increasing a sustainable economy, a healthy pure environment, a higher quality food supply, richer soil content, and increased health, at both the individual and planetary levels. All organic agricultural methods are not only evaluated to ensure they do not utilize health harming chemicals, but methods and products used are also evaluated for their long term effects on the environment. They also utilize organic composting methods, and crop rotation agricultural methods, both of which help to enrich and enliven the soil for foods now and in future generations. Organic farming practices are also more efficient and use less waste. When calculated per unit area, organic farms use less energy and produce less waste from packaging materials for chemicals and other products used. Organic growing methods also conserve land space and increase natural biodiversity. Toxic chemicals used on conventional produce end up everywhere in our environment from our land, to our water supply which not only poison our bodies but the bodies of all other species on the planet.
2. Use Reusable Bags - Single use plastic and paper bags represent a large threat to our environment and health. There are approximately 380 billion shopping bags used each year, of those, 100 billion are plastic shopping bags. That equates to more than 1,200 bags per person per year! This number does not represent the individual plastic produce bags or plastic and paper packaging used in store purchased foods. It requires 12 million barrels of oil to make this volume of shopping bags, and only 1-2% of these are ever recycled. That means over 372 billion of these bags end up in landfills, oceans and other places in our environment. Envirosax, a reusable bag manufacturer, states that The United Nations Environment Programme estimates there are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean, resulting in the death of thousands of marine animals and more than 1 million birds each year. The plastic from these bags never goes away, and toxic particles from the plastic can enter the food chain when they are then ingested by animals.
If you think choosing paper bags over plastic is the more responsible choice think again. Envirosax continues by stating Americans consume more than 10 billion paper bags per year. Approximately 14 million trees must be cut down every year, and hundreds of thousands of gallons of water as well as toxic chemicals like sulphurous acid, which leads to acid rain and water pollution, are needed and used to support this amount of paper bag production. This is a ridiculously needless statistic when it costs about $1.50 to purchase a sturdy reusable cloth, hemp or other natural fiber bag that will last months or even years.
Individually wrapping each of your produce categories in plastic bags is another area of concern. Imagine how many plastic bags just you alone will use in a year, if you buy a large quantity of fresh produce each time you shop? How many of those plastic bags will you recycle? Apart from the environmental concerns, there is a great health concern posed by these plastic bags as well. Bisphenol-A, commonly referred to as BPA, is a component in plastics and epoxy resins. Studies have suggested BPA is linked to many health problems, including hormone cancers, obesity, ADD, ADHD, brain damage, immune suppression, early puberty and lowered sperm counts. One of the main issues with BPA is that, once ingested, it mimics estrogen in the human body. Excess estrogen in the body results in big health problems. Estrogen stimulates cells to grow and divide, which is needed for the development of sex organs, but can spiral out of control. An excess of estrogen in the body has been linked to hormone cancers. Cancer cells continue to grow and divide without any regulation or control. Too much estrogen only feeds this process. These chemicals are more rapidly leeched out of plastic and into foods when the food is wet. Taking wet store-bought organic produce and placing it in soft plastic bags at the grocery store poses a potentially very serious health risk.
Instead, buy reusable fabric mesh produce bags or just throw all your produce into one of your cloth reusable grocery bags. Not only will you be helping the environment, you will be keeping your organic food pure and toxin free.
3. Buy Local - According to the National Resource Defense Council, buying local helps reduce pollution, improves air quality and improves your health. Buying local also strengthens your local community and economy. Local food connects us to our land, our food and our neighbors, strengthening the bond of community and bringing us back into harmony with the outer world. I firmly believe local food is one of the biggest and most important steps forward in shifting our planet and bodies back into balance. Most food, in conventional grocery stores, has been shipped hundreds, if not thousands of miles. Food comes from other states in the U.S., but also other more distant places, such as Chile and Mexico. A typical American meal consisting of meat, grains, fruits and vegetables consumes 4-17 times more petroleum than the same meal from a local source. These long travel times have disastrous effects on our foods and environment. Eating foods that have been shipped long distances create other environmental and local economic issues as well. We depend on petroleum to ship our foods hundreds or thousands of miles, creating a continued dependence on foreign oil while, at the same time, increasing our levels of greenhouse emissions. When you choose local foods, you reduce your ecological foot print and help the environment to be less polluted. Local foods don't have to be shipped long distances, which reduces our dependence on foreign oil and lowers the amount of greenhouse emissions being poured into our air. Buying local also helps support local small business, and keeps money circulating in your own community. Local small businesses are the largest employers in the country, and are directly responsible for creating more new jobs then large corporations. Small local businesses also bring a rich diversity of shops
and stores to the area. While big local chains may be convenient, they are monotonous, and bring little flavor and new life to the community. Big corporate stores also contribute less per dollar to the local economy.
4. Go Raw - We often disregard how much waste and environmental pollutants we contribute to, just by the way we shop. Plastic bags, cardboard boxes and food packaging not only take a tremendous amount of natural resources to create and ship, but most of it ends up in landfills, our oceans and even our bodies. Eating raw foods, foods in their natural states, not only effects the health of our internal environment, but also our external environment. Buying foods in their natural state means no packaging, wrappers or boxes needed. When buying produce, there is no need to individually bag each produce item in plastic bags or bring foods home in multiple plastic or paper bags. Eating raw encompasses shopping consciously and responsibly, so as to reduce your ecological footprint and responsibly care for and utilize the Earth's resources.
5. Compost - Composting is nature's process of recycling decomposed organic materials into a rich soil known as compost. Anything that was once living will decompose. This decomposing material is rich in beneficial nutrients and microbes for plants and for our bodies. Composting has a dramatic effect on the environment. Composting is a method of resource recovery. By taking organic left overs and converting them into a useful end product, a product that is absolutely essential and beneficial to creating a sustainable environment. Plants require healthy soil to thrive. Charles E. Little in THE DYING OF THE TREES points out how trees all around the world are dying due to pollution which human beings are causing. Composting is a way of returning beneficial nutrients and microbes back into the soil where plants use them to them build healthy plant structures. This in turn improves our air quality and food supply. Healthy plants from healthy soil look better, produce better and have a much greater ability to fight off pests and diseases. Composting also helps to cut down on waste. Yard and food waste make up 30% of the waste stream. Composting your kitchen and yard trimmings helps divert that waste from the landfill, waterways and water treatment facilities. Adding organic materials to the soil also improves moisture retention, which cuts down on the amount of water needed and used on plants and in your yard.
By implementing these 5 steps into your daily life, you are taking tremendous steps toward restoring the balance and health of both your internal environment and external environment. Over time, these small steps turn into significant impacts that change everyone's health and well being for the better!
Align Holistic Health & Well Being, LLC
A Place Where Health is Transformed
www.alignholistichealth.com
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