When you want to cool down your house or apartment in the summer, do you turn on the air conditioning or open a window? When you want a salad, do you go to the local supermarket to buy vegetables, or have you figured out how to grow your own, saving you money while at the same time helping the soil outside your residence? Those are just two questions about your daily habits, but your answers reveal a great deal about whether you’re living life sustainably.
Don’t Take Nature’s Bounty for Granted
Only in recent decades has humanity realized at some cost the negative consequences of living life unsustainably. It’s much easier today to actively practice sustainable living, and perhaps this is a bit ironic when you consider how technology that once separated us from nature can be developed to instead help us reconnect with it. It’s also worth considering how our construction habits wreak havoc with the course of nature.
Go Green, Keep Earth Clean
Deforestation has an undeniable impact on the environment. Animals lose their homes, and soil can become less stable. Sustainable living is about letting us be us, and nature be nature. Humans and the surrounding environment can coexist quite easily if the former try. Even if you desire a magnificent mansion on a large plot of land, you can have that without robbing the surrounding area of its natural beauty. You need only look to local farms to see examples of Maui sustainable living in action. A farm that doesn’t coexist with nature is a farm whose animals won’t live and reproduce. Wise farm owners know this, and seek to blend modern sensibilities with natural wonder in order to create a balance.
Shower Less, Save Water
If you’re like so many others, you spend more time than you think in the shower each day. It’s a great place to daydream, after all. Over time, this practice can add up to a lot of wasted water. Look at California as it suffers an unprecedented drought, and you might have second thoughts about your own water usage. Those in the know about sustainable living would recommend conserving water by taking shorter showers. As wonderful as a shower break can be, enlightenment could be found with less water wastage.
Your home could probably respect nature a little more, so long as you have a hand in designing it. Green tech such as shower heads and insulated pipes that result in less water usage and shorter heating times have helped to reduce the amount of water we waste annually. Then again, shorter showers work, too! With a little mindfulness, you could practice sustainable living without making too many changes to your current lifestyle.
