What if...

There is no unmanageable world-wide resource shortage issue... We just have policy and transparency issues.

Read more and learn to make a HUGE environmental and economical difference without the help of the government, subsidies or large corporations!

If we consider the graph below, most of the world’s GHGs come from poor stewardship and the products we use. Less than 30% world-wide comes from the daily operations our cars and homes.

Let’s look at a holistic approach to cutting world-wide environmental damage and not just those of our own countries’, cars and homes.

We could extrapolate and reasonably say that nearly all societal and cultural damage comes from the products we use, and less-so our cars and homes – but we’ll save that for another article!

Become an Eco-Builder or Eco-Buyer on Eco-Locals.com!!!

Do you buy things, build things or design things? Give the materials you are using another thought.

For example – bamboo or wood can actually reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere if harvested properly. Steel on the other hand is very energy intensive to make. If you can switch from steel to wood, it might have a more impactful and wide-sweeping environmental benefit than anything else you could do.

-Did this take more than 5 people or 3 steps to get to me?
-Was this refined using lots of energy, oil or manpower?
-Were there lots of intensive chemicals used to make this?
-Can I use something else that’s less intensive, local, recycled or home-made?

Apply this thinking to everything you use.

CONSIDER THIS

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Chemical dyes, synthetic oils, plastics and other mystery items wreak havoc on third world environments. They use immense energy to store, transport and refine. There are alternatives to nearly every energy-intensive products that we need to learn about.

Intensive make-ups, chemicals, cleaners and lotions – anything heavily refined and processed can likely be replaced with local hemp oils, vinegar cleaners, activated charcoal or other home-made solutions.

We know that companies like Johnson & Johnson were aware of cancer causing agents in their products for decades and hid it. It is time we not only stop supporting companies like this, but start knowing exactly what is in our stuff. Check out these homemade make-ups and let us know your thoughts!

Local fresh food, kombucha, kefir water can use way less energy than conventional alternatives. - Fresh stuff takes almost no extra energy to get to you. Canned stuff takes a bit more. Frozen stuff a lot more. Pre-made stuff with mystery chemicals and preservatives took a lot more. One conventional can of soda can use almost 1kWh to make and get to you – that’s +10% of your daily energy use for home and travel source – Sustainability Without the Hot Air.

Replace some beverages with water – if you are in love with filtered water consider making a bio-sand filter at home to filter your tap water and boom! Crisp water for free, for ever, at home.

If you drink a lot of coffee - pick a time like lunch and switch to locally grown tea for the second half of the day. Try and make the switch – though we don’t blame you for needing a cup of coffee, we love it too.

Buy used clothes and items – avoid the environmental onslaught associated with the international textile and dye industries by re-using clothes from thrift shops. Each re-used thing you buy could be considered carbon-neutral compared to the alternative of making a whole new one.

Repair instead of Replace – taking ownership for understanding and fixing your stuff is not only environmental and economical – but will give you a sense of pride and accomplishment that is hard to duplicate in other facets of life.

Did you know that half of our food is wasted? This means that we could literally feed twice as many people with JUST SIMPLE POLICY, SHARING AND HABIT CHANGES! Double-this-up with the embodied energy that no one is talking about and we are talking about taking a HUGE dent out of our resource efficiency problem…

Throw an Eco-$aver Potluck - lower food costs and increase options just copy and paste the directions from our post below to your friends and get goin’!

Convert your home to >50% organic waste stream – we need to stop throwing stuff in the garbage, period. Check out this awesome guide on how to do stink-free composting in your apartment!

Long term, we expect more cities to conduct end-of-the-line compostable waste diversion (check out the City of Edmonton’s program here). In the meantime, we must put pressure on industry by buying more 100% compostable products.

Push issues like composting at work - ask if you can bring your composting from home in to the office and use their diversion facilities.

Organize your friends/office to order in bulk - from local suppliers together to save money and support eco-friendly businesses.

Getting rid of all car and home energy only reduces <30% of worldwide GHGs and leaves us with the environmental problems associated with garbage, poisonous ingredients, weak local economies and soil degradation.

We need to be thinking about changing our habits and wares to make a difference locally --

The best part is – when you get good at making local sustainable stuff you can trade with your friends or even sell them!!! This is the sustainable micro-economy we hope to help promote on eco-locals.com by giving the community a database of items and ideas to pull from.

Note that just because it’s local or ‘green’ or whatever – doesn’t mean it’s good for the environment. You need holistic and verifiable information to determine true environmental impacts.

Documenting this information and educating the public is what eco-locals.com is here for. Please read our product and meal requirements – and consider joining us to spread the word about your eco-transparent product!