Being personally responsible for our own wasteful habits, in my mind, has to be the most important and easiest environmental issue we face. Whether getting a cappuccino at the corner Starbucks, peeling an orange in your kitchen or buying groceries, you have choices. The idea that you have a choice is one of the most important facts when looking at environmental sustainability. You have choices. Here are a couple things to consider:

When choosing a product to purchase, take the amount and type of packaging into consideration. The less packaging and less toxic the packaging, the better. Preferably no packaging.

Is this product recyclable? Will I recycle it? Does my community support this type of recycling?

Can I make a choice that changes my habit? Bring your own travel mug into the Starbucks for a refill. Compost the orange peel. Use canvas shopping bags instead of accepting paper or plastic from the store.

I am not suggesting that we all change in every appropriate way immediately. As ideas come to you, consider making different choices. You will move into them smoothly when you are ready. Pretty soon, you will become so aware of the possibilities around you that you will wonder why you didn't see them before. No worries, this all comes in time.

What you are eventually doing is precycling. An act, a choice that leads to the elimination of the need to recycle. What does this have to do with my health you say? What we waste or throw in the trash eventually goes into the air as incinerator smoke, ends up in the landfill or gets dumped into our oceans, polluting our air, soil and water. Landfills brew a toxic soup called leachate, the product of the decay and breakdown of all we throw away. This eventually reaches our groundwater and soil it if is not collected properly.

So the next time you "throw something away", think about the fact that nothing ever goes away. A cow eats grass in the pasture, you drink the milk and soon can find the calcium originally from the pasture in your bones. I am breathing in the air that has circulated through countless beings over millions of years. You have a choice and the choice is yours.


"The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence." Thomas Berry