Sustainable Living

Sustainable Living is a term that is generally defined as an attempt to reduce the use of natural resources and encompasses many activities such as the use of Alternative Energy, Gardening, Recycling, and Energy Use reduction.

Consider the following five actions to help you move to a more Sustainable or Greener lifestyle:

1. Buy Locally - This strengthens the local economy and helps ensure the sustainablity of local growers and producers.
2. Reduce consumption - Anything that you can do to decrease the amount of the earth’s resources that you use — from choosing goods with less packaging to turning down your home’s thermostat a few degrees in the winter (or up in the summer). Keep in mind that when you throw anything away, you are increasing the need for local landfill space.
3. Choose carefully - Assess where certain products and services come from by thinking about their entire life cycles from manufacture to disposal.
4. Opt for renewable resources if at all possible - Using renewable resources (such as solar or wind energy) instead of nonrenewable resources (such as energy based on fossil fuels) is a very powerful green action.
5. Repair when needed - You can find plenty of ways that you can help fix the damage that’s already been done to the environment, from supporting tree-planting projects to helping out with ecological community programs.

This section of Locavore Network covers many of these topics and is focused on reducing our "Ecological footprint".