by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
This shift allows you to recognize that with every choice you make, you are voting either for or against the kind of world you wish to see. When you assume this as a way of being, your choices become easier. Using a reusable water bottle, recycling and making conscious daily consumer choices are just a few…”
All too often, however, people think that they have to do this or that to go green and worse still they believe that they have to buy this or that product, preferably all green products, in order to live a environmentally friendly lifestyle. They do not see that the change has to first and foremost come from within themselves and then from things they do, such as reusing the things they already have.
Buying green products as a replacement for what one already has is also but consumption, though of green products, and hence the term greensumption is being used for this. In addition to that many products that are being claimed to be green and environmentally friendly often are none of the sort with bamboo products and especially bamboo fiber being the prime example here, but it is but one.
And too many, believing that they have to get all those green products, think that, because they do not have the money, that they cannot go green. But going green should not just protect the Planet, it should also protect your finances and save you money.
The real start to going green is to think what you can do not what you can buy. Where can you make changes that benefit both the Planet and you is the question and for starters it is by reusing – yes, I keep harping on about this – and buying less of what you really do not need in the end.
Make things yourself... and reuse and repurposing “waste” materials is a start... this is where the shift in consciousness also starts. Namely in realizing that not everything they you may need (or want) has to be bought from a store.
However, even people in the green movement have been brainwashed to such an extent that many can but think consumption and buying, though so-called “green” products, rather than making things for themselves.
And it is not just from “waste” materials that we can make the various things that we may need and want. Also from other materials found around us, including and especially wood from coppicing operations that the woodsman does not consider being of use may be just the ticket. The same also goes for tree prunings that are often discarded, creating thus more waste in the waste stream even though wood is a biodegradable product.
Going green starts with reevaluating how we do things and that means a total shift in consciousness as to waste and to the way we consume.
We seem to have forgotten how to live without immediately running for everything that we need or want to the stores. Our ancestors though before they did that as they did not have the money to go and buy everything they wanted there and then and made do with what they could reuse, repurpose, upcycle (though they would not have known the word, and make themselves from other things, including wood from the forests.
We must bring sanity into our lives to become green and the change has to begin withing ourselves and no matter how many green items we buy unless we change our mindset it makes no difference for in buying, even green products, we are still part of the problem and not part of the solution.
© 2014
