10 Sustainable Lifestyle Tips: #1-5

In a previous post, I listed five of the best things I think you can do in order to live a sustainable lifestyle — #6-10. Now, here is the top five list.
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In a previous post, I listed five of the best things I think you can do in order to live a sustainable lifestyle — #6-10. Now, here is the top five list.
Read the rest of this entry »

Lifestyle is the biggest underlying contributor to our environmental impact. The things we buy, the products we use, the way we travel, are all influenced greatly by our lifestyle. Our lifestyle is the root of all our green (or not green) actions in some way or another. How we think, what we think about, how we spend our free time, our daily and weekly habits, what we decide to bring into our lives — this is our lifestyle.
I’ve come up with a top ten list of lifestyle factors that I believe have the biggest impact on whether or not we are living sustainable lives. Is your lifestyle sustainable?
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Jeff McIntire-Strasburg occasionally writes posts on new, innovative green products (see Five Greenish Products You’ve Seen on TV and Five More Greenish Products You’ve Seen on TV). Rather than try to steal his thunder, this post looks at some basic, simple, green products that can make your everyday life many times greener.
Staying away from the topics of food and transportation, which are probably the biggest daily products you could green, here is a list of products you use everyday.
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In a previous post, I discussed the clear relationship between Christianity and the environment that is expressed throughout the Bible. Here are some more thoughts, including slightly more controversial ones.

A comment on one of my posts last week gave me the idea of writing on the relationship between Christianity and the environment. Generally, when we think of this connection, many of us think about the “Religious Right” and their strong conservative beliefs and anti-environmental policies.
What is at the root of Christianity, though? Can anti-environmental language and beliefs be found in the Bible?
The Bible seems to proclaim that nature was made as it should be and is something that should be respected and protected. In Psalms 104:25,30, it is written: “In wisdom you made them all, the earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number - living things both large and small…. When you send your Spirit, they are created and you renew the earth.” The general spirit is one of positivity and love here.
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I have lived in Europe on two occasions now — for five months in the Netherlands (two years ago) and for ten months in Poland (currently). I have been green-minded since I was a young child, and knew that Europe did better on many green issues. Nonetheless, to come here and live here has given me more insight on the perspectives of the people and more of a practical understanding of why Europe fairs so much better than the US on many environmental issues.
Recently, I came up with a list of seven things that really stand out to me as good environmental practices in Europe that could be transferred to the US. These could all be adopted in the US, but some are more personal in nature and some are more systematic. Furthermore, some of the personal ones regard large, life decisions, and some are much simpler in nature and easier to implement into your life now.
Of course, Europe is not one country and things vary from country to country. Nonetheless, there are also several similarities across borders. I have friends in other countries and have traveled a bit as well, so I hope to be sharing the best of the best.
Here’s the list!
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GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily talks subject with Sara Ost, blogger, founder, and Editor-In-Chief of EcoSalon.com, which covers fashion, wellness, and lifestyle topics for women and garnered 60,000 subscriptions in its first 6 months.
[Courtesy of our friends at GreenLivingIdeas.com]
We are influenced throughout our life by the company we keep, the groups and issues we engage in, and the people we respect and learn from. But is there anything that compares to what we learn from our parents as children?
We can see the way children imitate their parents, even as adults. Children learn habits (small and large ones), beliefs, likes and dislikes, interests, manners, and even deeply engrained ethics from their parents. It may seem superficial at times, but when you get to know someone closely, and their family, you can get to see how deep what they learned actually goes.
We put a lot into the future of our children. We want them to have a good education, good friends, want them to be polite and respectful. We hope they will learn what’s important in life and what’s not as important, and we do our best to help them learn this.
All of this being said, what do we do to educate them about the environment? We do some things on a superficial level — we might recycle and tell them how to recycle and what recycling is; we might be conservative in the use of lights and water and such resources. We give some passing mention of the importance of the environment. But is this a true environmental ethic and are we doing what we should in this field?
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GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily talks with green blogger and ecofashionista Starre Vartan of Eco-Chick.com. Starre founded Eco-Chick in October of 2005 with the idea that women who cared about the planet needed a place of their own on the web. At the time, most environmental blogs were guy-oriented, and very serious, and Starre thought that while discussion of scientific issues was important, consumer action would be second only to policy shifts in protecting the environment and creating a more sustainable culture.
[Courtesy of our friends at GreenLivingIdeas.com]
GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily talks with Daniel Lyons and Jack Short of Factory Green , a purveyor of eco-friendly, fashion-forward apparel, accessories, and apartment wares, provides socially and environmentally aware consumers with an expressive way to live green.
[Courtesy of our friends at GreenLivingIdeas.com]