Happy Giving Tuesday!! I love how generous you are and that you are wanting to help out our world! I have to tell you one of the best places to donate your hard earned cash money! But first, a little story for you. So the other day I was at a chain craft store that I’m pretty sure is nationwide. I was picking up somethings for my crafty child and I started looking at the fake Christmas trees. Every single one was “pre-lit.” This little thing was such a HUGE revelation into just how disposable we have become as a society. I mean how wasteful is this from the resources to create it, freighting this product from China to America, trucking this product all across our country and then once those lights go out I bet 99% of those trees end up in the trash. (And this has gotta be what like 2-3 years tops because let’s be honest, Christmas lights don’t last long) This my friends is something that has to stop. So many people say they are into protecting the environment...but I’m gonna call a little bullshit on this. 99% of us are not living the way we talk. There I said it. Our consumerism doesn’t match our environmentalism, it far exceeds it. Just look at any busines model that is shipping products for a clue.
I hear it in conversations, I see it posted on SM…but how many of us are actually walking our talk? It’s sure easy to say I want to protect the environment, but my government isn’t… but guess what you can do a hell of a lot on your own no matter what the government is doing. So let’s start with something that every single one of us is doing. Eating. We all eat, every day. Your food VOTE is more important than almost any other vote. You see you cast it daily and those votes (aka dollar-dollar-bills-y’all) are building our world. Do you vote for local food, food that isn’t trucked even across state lines? Do you vote for food that maybe isn’t the most beautiful but is full of nutrients? Do you vote for food that flies half way across the world to reach you house? Did you know that most of the produce in our stores probably has more miles on it’s passport than you do? That’s a whole lot of jet fuel to get it to your plate. What about those huge monocropping farms? Monocropping is where the farm only grows one type of veggie or fruit on the land, sometimes up to hundreds or thousands of acres of one thing. Leaving this land ripe for pests, weak plants and really poor soil. Monocropping farms use quite a large volume of pesticide and herbicides and are often GMO. This is destroying our environment. Think about nature there is not one place on the planet that is only one species.
Our soil health is what is providing life on Earth and by voting with our dollars we can either change this or allow it. So you see you have quite a large impact every day, yet many of us aren’t changing our food to match our environmental beliefs. And while we are on this topic, feedlots are damaging the environment, but when cows are part of a regenerative farm, we get soil health. So cows are not the problem it’s how we farm them that is. You see nature has it right all the time, biodiversity is the key to life. Regenerative farms know this, they have tons of different species within the same farm which provides for health of the land, the food and the environment. The more regenerative farms that we have, we could easily put all the carbon that we produce in a year right back into the soil. So this whole carbon problem could be solved…but remember you’ve got to vote this way with your dollar. There is not one environmental plan by any government affiliated person or group that is letting you know this or has this as part of their solution. My bet is that there is a whole lot of money tied up in other things that sound pretty and like it will solve our problems and will line a lot of pockets and may never trickle down to the people. Yet this simple thing that we do every day could change the our environment without government even stepping in. You see how much power YOU have. You don’t need anyone to tell you this is regulated, or this isn’t, if we all ate the way that was healthiest for us, and the environment WE could solve the problem. Oh and don’t buy pre-lit trees.
This giving Tuesday, think about giving this this amazing organization, WWOOF. Worldwide opportunities on organic farms, is all about linking farmers, farms and people who care about them together across the world. They provide volunteer opportunities, share resources and strive build a global community conscious of ecological farming practices. Donating money to this organization would be voting for your future, for the environment and for health. Find out more by following this link: WWOOF.
