Category: Treehugging

Happy Earth/ Creation Day

The way you treat the creation reflects how you feel about the creator.

I refer back to this quote a lot.

Usually in how we treat one another (as in it’s original context) but I think it also goes right along with Creation care as well.

Growing up I remember making jokes about Treehuggers and thinking they were all a bunch of liberal bleeding heart crazies.

But a big change happened when I started to see “Environmentalism” as Creation care. It’s not just a liberal cause that’s tied to a political agenda. It’s actually more about our call to be good stewards of what we’ve been given.

If you’re on the fence about Creation care, I’d encourage you to listen to a couple interviews I did on the something beautiful podcast.

One with Jonathan Merritt and the other with Ragan Sutterfield.

And for grins, enjoy this NSFW animation from Luis C.K.

Fewer chemicals = less cancer

IMG_1355
White House dinner | Photo by crespoluigi

A White House panel is set to release a report today stating something organic fans have been preaching for years — chemicals threaten our bodies.

Nicholas D. Kristof has a preview of the report in the New York Times and shares these main points of the 200-page report:

  • Particularly when pregnant and when children are small, choose foods, toys and garden products with fewer endocrine disruptors or other toxins. (Information about products is at www.cosmeticsdatabase.com or www.healthystuff.org.)
  • For those whose jobs may expose them to chemicals, remove shoes when entering the house and wash work clothes separately from the rest of the laundry.
  • Filter drinking water.
  • Store water in glass or stainless steel containers, or in plastics that don’t contain BPA or phthalates (chemicals used to soften plastics). Microwave food in ceramic or glass containers.
  • Give preference to food grown without pesticides, chemical fertilizers and growth hormones. Avoid meats that are cooked well-done.
  • Check radon levels in your home. Radon is a natural source of radiation linked to cancer.

Have you adjusted your eating to eat more organic, chemical free foods?

I’d love to know what you’re doing.

A Fool Month of Purging

April Fool's Day
Photo by demibrooke

I’ve got a little challenge going on over at WeLiveSimply starting tomorrow – April 1 – April Fool’s Day…

To kick off April we’re starting a Living Simply Challenge – A Fool Month of Purging.

Based on Ross’ challenge from rcThink earlier this year, the goal will be to rid ourselves of the stuff we’ve been “fooled into thinking we need.”

The challenge begins Thursday — April 1 and ends April 30.
Continue reading A Fool Month of Purging

The parable of the bar of soap

What can be said about a bar of soap and our faith and relation to the world around us?

Claudio Oliver has spent 20 years working with the urban poor, and on community development, dental and medical projects, team equipping, and teaching in Curitiba, Brazil.

He shares just a few of the reflections one small bar of soap can spark — spiritual, sociologic, entropologic and ecologic.
Continue reading The parable of the bar of soap

Sustainable Dave limits trash to almost zero

What would it take for you to really reduce your trash impact? Could you reduce your waste to less than 30.5 pounds of non-recyclable trash in a week? How about a month? Or a year?

Dave Chameides did just that — creating less trash in all of 2008 than an average American family throws out in a week. And more impressively, he did this without changing his eating or lifestyle habits to drastically.

“I didn’t want to change the way that I was living my life,” Dave told Sustainablog. “If I wanted to drink beer, I wasn’t going to say, well, I can’t find a way to drink beer without creating packaging, so therefore I’m not going to. Instead, what I’m going to do is look at the packaging in beer and pick the most ‘eco-friendly’ way to do it.”

He’s got several cool videos on Vimeo, including how he composts food and junk mail with 6-7k worms in his basement (and it only takes up roughly 1’x1′ of floor space), as well as what he carries in his bag each day to help reduce his trash impact.

In the end, Dave amassed just 30.5 pounds of non-recyclable trash. However, that wasn’t the only stuff he piled up in his garage though — Dave decided to keep his recyclables for the year too, to show that “recycling isn’t the answer.”

“If you look at the majority of the waste that I put out there, it’s recycling,” Dave says. “That’s gonna take energy, it’s going to take resources, it’s going to take all sorts of things. I think we’ve been trained in the U.S. to think that recycling is the answer. But statistically, only 10% of everything that can be recycled is recycled.”

Check out his Vimeo stream or his blog sustainabledave.org for more ideas.