REMINDERS FOR LIVING SUSTAINABLY! (For Inside the Cover of the Little Book on Applied Ecology/PEACE, Games We Play: …):
LITTLE THINGS WE CAN DO TO HAVE HEALTHY & BETTER LIFE AND A HEALTHIER, MORE SUSTAINABLE EARTH
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Eat healthy and exercise regularly. (Truly integrate this into your workday and lifestyle.)
Experience the real world—your yard, open fields, farms, ranches, parks—and stay away from TV, computers, cell phones, video games & other electronic gadgetry. Get physically, intellectually & spiritually in touch with Nature, the Land, Community and People (the very young and Elders).
For short trips: walk, run, ride bikes, or skateboard.
For long trips: car-pool. … Take a train or bus.
Help your family start a garden. … Maybe an organic garden.
Appropriately incorporate grazers, browsers, and other heterotrophs into local rural/urban foodsheds.
Volunteer to help with community gardens or your school’s garden.
Buy something at the Farmers market—and get to know the farmers.
Encourage your family to mulch-mow … and to mow, water & fertilize the yard less. Use locally-adapted native vegetation, and introduce vegetable and fruit-producing garden areas into the landscape.
Compost all leaves, grass clippings, food scraps, and other organic matter.
Buy less, reuse neat old things, and recycle. Carry a cup for drinking.
Use less!!! And use less plastic. … Don’t use disposable (plastic) water bottles.
Keep air conditioning and heating systems off. Open windows. … (At least keep thermostats low in the winter and high in the summer.)
Help caulk cracks around windows, door and in other leaky areas of your home. Place weather-stripping around doors.
Use less water. Take shorter showers, catch water & and use in the sink, help family fix dripping faucets, etc.
Put a bucket/tub in your shower to collect the “warm up” water & overspray. Use it in your garden.
Use rain barrels to catch roof run-off. (Your plants will love the soft, low mineral water.)…Completely turn off lights/electricity users! (Use power strips!)
At stores refuse plastic bags. Take your own homemade “cool” bag.
Hang your clothes to dry out on a line & let the Sun/wind do the job.
Build a solar-water heater. Do not use an electric water heater.
Prepare to be an educated & responsible ecological-friendly voter who is active in local & global community.
Work/have a career in “jobs” that help others & enhance ecological systems. (Sustainable livelihood.)
Work on a farm, ranch, summer camp and/or park system for the summer &/or after school.
Learn about ecological, carbon, water and energy “foot-printing” & life-cycle analysis.
Encourage peers and adults to be truly responsible in using prescription drugs, alcohol, etc. … Work hard at discouraging addictive drugs such as nicotine (smoking, snuff/smokeless tobacco, etc.) and other such drugs.
Learn about your family and community/regional history.
Learn about the flora and fauna of your backyard, nearby vacant lot and local community (Natural History).
Go for a walk with a small child and teach them the names of birds, other animals, trees, other plants, mushrooms, and other biota (cyanobacteria, bacterial disease symptoms) that you see along the way.
Read, write and do arts and crafts of some type. Do “hands on” projects and keep your mind challenged with mathematical and other puzzles, problem-solving, and critical & creative thinking.
Conserve, help the poor with “hands up” … and stay debt-free.
Work for open borders and real enduring Peace and Justice. (War is NOT the answer!)
Live “Sabiamente, Simply, Smally, Slowly, Sharingly… SUSTAINABLY
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From: G. Tyler Miller, Jr. 1990. Resource Conservation and Management. Wadsworth Publishing Co.
