Over the course of the 1980s, 90s and early ‘aughts, the length of the average North American commute has continued to very steadily and dramatically increase. In an effort to get something useful done during those long commutes, besides talking on the cel-phone, many professionals have taken to riding the bus or train. Public transit is going through something of a renewal now that its become almost fashionable to ride it again.

Perhaps the most public of these projects are the many light rail systems that have sprung up in and around municipalities all over the US and Canada. Thanks to some forward thinking transportation planning in the late 1990s, many areas now have light rail lines that connect urban cores to the regional airports. Something that handy is always popular and tends to encourage increased spending on large scale public transit.

However, in most cities, public transit means riding the bus. Though this is somewhat less glamorous than taking a subway or sky-tram, buses get people to work and school throughout the world. They run whether you’re on them or not, so when full, represent a tremendous energy savings in the number of cars that aren’t on the road.

Well, all public transit systems are a bit different, but they all tend to involve bus routes that go into the more distant areas of town and all meet at centralized locations. Most often, this is the city center, but along most routes will be areas of revitalization that have sprung up around these oft-used routes.

Fares are usually based upon the distance traveled, the speed of transit involved and whether its during peak hours or not. For instance, direct or “express” routes often have a price premium, most often during the peak hours during morning and evening weekdays.

In areas with highly developed public transit systems, there may be several different ways to get from one place to another. Frequently this will involve direct access to stadiums and shopping areas from several different parts of town through park and ride locations.

Most public transit systems provide accommodation for handicapped riders. Many systems also have facilities for you to bring your bike along, sometimes for an additional fare. Senior citizens and students are granted low-cost fares in most systems.

While many people use public transportation in lieu of having a car, many more people are using public transit to get to work during the week and using their own vehicles during evenings and weekends. Many people with their own transportation are choosing to share vehicles and replace them with environmentally-friendly ways of getting around.

Since buses and trains continue to run whether you’re on them or not, it good rates of ridership are not only essential in saving as much pollution as possible with each trip, but also encourages the expansion of a service that can be considered lacking in most US cities, especially when compared with the transportation planning as seen in Europe.

While many people are intimidated when they first begin riding the bus, it’s easy to become an old pro in just a few trips. The more urban the area you’ll be traversing, the less time you’ll likely have to spend waiting for the bus to arrive and driving around through miles of side streets.

For those traveling to other cities, it is often much easier to get around and much more economical to stay closer to an urban center than to rent a car and drive all around the countryside. Some urban areas even have fareless zones to encourage patronage in a downtown area. Public transit often is offered between major downtown hotels and the airport. If you usually travel light, public transit options can satisfy all your travel plans. It’s also a great way to introduce yourself to just about any given city.

Using public transit at home, going to work and when traveling is part of a new 21st century ethic that has been driven, in part, by sharp increases in the price of oil. While this has driven up the cost of fares in most systems in recent years, public transit is still the least expensive option for commuters and travelers, alike.

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Today people are raising their own free-range chickens in the backyard and getting hundreds of organic eggs each year from as few as three hens. People swear by the “farm fresh” taste of these eggs from free range chickens. Even better, keeping just a few laying hens can save a household a few hundred dollars per year.

Of course, any monetary savings require that you don’t go crazy making an enclosure. Many people use a movable coop, while others allow the birds access to a protected or semi-protected area. Birds can be raised from chicks that are available at farm supply stores, or they can be purchased from someone else as pullets or proven layers.

Be advised that while it can take as long as 5 months for some breeds to begin to lay, young hens lay far more eggs than older hens. For this reason, many commercial layers are made into soup within 18 months, if they survive that long in a confinement system.

Purchasing your own chicks is also a lot cheaper – your biggest expense will be the energy to run a heat lamp that will keep the chicks warm while they grow real feathers. They can be anywhere from a day old, to a few weeks old when you pick them up at a store.

Organic eggs purchased in the grocery store have not only traveled as far as 50 miles, even at a co-op, to get to you. That makes the price of grocery store organic eggs a daily-use commodity something that is highly subject to changes in the price of gas, which seems to be going unrelentingly up.

While the price of purchased feed (whether you mix your own or not) is also tied to the price of petroleum, this is far less than purchasing the eggs at the grocery or farmers’ market.

Also, having your own flock of free-range chickens allows you to recycle some of your kitchen scraps back into your own food. This is especially useful if you’re growing an organic garden, as well, since most chickens aren’t finicky, as long as they get plenty of pasture or greens.

A surprisingly large number of urban areas, large and small, allow you to keep a small number of hens – usually three – in a yard. As long as there are no complaints about the smell from your neighbors, you’re free to raise small fowl as you like.

Keeping the smell down is accomplished by using plenty of absorbent straw, cedar shavings or grain hulls to collect waste. This waste makes highly nitrogenous compost that is an invaluable amendment to an organic garden. Fragrant bushes can also be planted outside a well-ventilated and warm coop to mask any stray odor.

A flock that’s maintained well, kept reasonably dry and warm, will give you between 150-200 eggs pre year from each young hen. If you call it an even 500 eggs, or about two a day, that can take care of the need for organic eggs for most small households.

If you figure into it a cost of $5 per dozen of those eggs when purchased from the market, that’s over $200 worth of eggs. If you spend even $80 per year on feed, that’s over $100 in savings with just three hens.

Keeping free range chickens in you urban environment is also a great way to relax with the antics of some very personable and unusual pets. A pure-bred bird (as many backyard layers are) can live as long as 10 years, though egg production fall considerably as they age.

In areas where it’s legal to keep free-range chickens, it’s makes a great deal of financial sense to try your hand and keeping a few birds. This hobby has become very popular in some cities and could potentially go a long way towards making cities even a little self-sufficient and have a significant impact on the local environment as well as climate change.

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Today making green changes is easy with the help of your neighbor. Not only does this trend make stocking close to home something that is far more livable, but it is also the basis for a neighborhood watch and the ability to share resources between homes.

Having a home garden, for instance is a great example. If one neighbor has fruit trees and another has vegetables, you can trade and save yourself the bother of canning. Alternately, you could share canning supplies between several different houses, so each person doesn’t have to buy the supplies. The sharing of resources can be done with quite a few different tools and pieces of equipment that are used infrequently, such as a carpet cleaner or hedge trimmer.

This sort of “neighbors helping neighbors” approach might seem like something out of a 50’s sitcom to a lot of people who’ve grown up in the somewhat insular world of the suburbs or even highly urbanized areas. While people now have a great many distractions, as the cost of travel increases with the price of petroleum, many people are going to spending more time around the home. Now is a better time than ever to get to know the neighbors

It’s not as if its something new. This is, in fact, how people have lived near each other for most of human history and continue to live in some parts of the world that are routinely praised for their relaxed lifestyle. Just as people in North America have gotten out of the habit of growing their own gardens, it’s surprising how quickly people forget.

The good news is that it’s easy to be easy with most neighbors Helping neighbors along with some of the most common tasks that you see them performing, such as yard work or asking them if they can keep an eye on your house while you’re gone is the sort of give and take that comes easily when you spend a little time getting to know the people next door.

Being out in the front yard with a garden is an especially good way to meet people in your neighborhood. Having a neighborhood party is also a wonderful way to meet the neighbors This tends to happen very quickly if families have children of the same age, and the adults will meet each other through the children.

The community of a city or suburban block can be very tight, though those in rural areas may have neighbors who are quite a long way off. In this case, the neighbors are usually a small community that gathers at a public place such as a coffee shop, church or park. People with dogs in a nearby area often meet each other at dog parks while their animals are running off-leash.

Not only do neighbors make it nicer to stay near the home and save the monetary and environmental cost of driving around (or even taking public transport) to go out. They make the community more livable by simply being friendly. A neighborhood tavern is a long tradition in just about every part of the world, and it’s very handy to be able to know your friends and neighbors will be at the pub when you walk there from your house.

If you have a neighbor who has a truck, you can trade them for helping you move the occasional large thing that you don’t want to drive a truck around all the time to justify. You may even be able to split up cost-saving wholesale sized packages of goods, forming a sort of neighborhood buying club that saves on all the individual trips that would otherwise be made.

The environmental benefits of sharing resources with your neighbors are only part of what makes such relationships valuable. A neighborhood where people know each other is also a safer community where people keep an eye our for other’s kids and drive slowly. Yards tend to be kept a little better and people have a reason to hang out and simply interact with each other.

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Consider that what you have in abundance isn’t worth retail price to you – only when sold. You can usually come out better in a good barter deal that is always possible when cash is involved. Also, many people feel better about entering into barter relationships with people they know than letting money get in the way of things, especially when money is tight.

The Internet makes barter especially easy. There are dedicated barter sites such as the very popular Barter Trade site as well as free listing sites such as yahoo and craigslist. Online barter has become a very common method of getting rid of second-hand objects just as it can be an uncommonly good source of goods if you have a service that’s in demand, such as massage or photography or welding – the list is endless.

When it comes to setting up a barter, trade is usually best restricted to items that you are either looking to get rid, but can wait awhile. The same can be said of items you’re looking for. It can take awhile to get the right bargain struck, or to find someone who has the specific qualifications or items you’re looking for.

You might also want to consider items that you’ll be able to be somewhat flexible about. If you absolutely must have a specific item to complete your collection of My Pretty Ponies and, you want to barter, it’s best to find a site that is dedicated to that sort of thing and has a forum for swapping. In fact, there’s nothing preventing you from contacting the administrator of a specialized site to see if they’ll consider opening up a swap section on their online forum.

Those who are in business can find quite a few resources for online barter in the form of services registry. These search-able databases allow businesses to easily find each other, based upon services, location or both. One may also find directories of local barter clubs that exist in different states and cities that they can join to find out what’s available, though there’s no reason you should have to pay a fee to access the local barter market anywhere. There are always free forums available.

Some websites that cater to freelance artists offer online barter forums for their members. This is especially useful for art, since many people are more willing to “purchase” art if they’re able to get a better perceived deal in a barter arrangement.

Other sites are set up in such a manner that you don’t have to find someone who needs exactly what you’re offering. Instead, you deal in various online “currencies” that allow more flexibility – just like “real money.” The difference is that this one isn’t tied to the speculation of others in currency markets, causing the value to go up and down. Instead, the value goes up and down by the quality and demand for the items offered.

In other words, the better the stuff is, the more you end up paying for it – just as you’d expect. Anyone who has watched the price of a given commodity of eBay has probably noticed how the average price (before shipping) fluctuates according to semi-independent market forces that sort of exist only on eBay. It’s like that with online barter, except a bit less so.

Second-hand items have lost much, if not most, of the stigma that once people once felt about used things, especially since the 1980s. Much to the horror of people who have been hip to thrift-stores and barter for a long time, a great many people are getting used to different ways of getting things they used to purchase new. This makes it harder to find good “scores,” but the increase in the price of basic services and the credit crisis that has affected most is responsible for thriftiness to become fashionable.

There is also an environmental angle to barter that takes the carbon-emitting process by which new items are made and delivered right out of the picture. Moreover, whether you call it barter, trade or swapping, there is a personal angle to being connected to your purchasing decisions to someone other than a shop clerk.

Barter is a practice that offers multiple benefits in the environmental and economic climates of the 21st century.

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Every year millions of people loose their jobs and are never employed again. No, it’s not that they’re unqualified – quite the opposite. They’ve decided to give up working for other people and pursue freelancing. A long time staple of the arts, freelancing jobs now apply to just about every reasonably well-paying field, especially those that are able to be done remotely.

Telecommuting has really gained in popularity since the price of oil spiked. For many, the only option is to trade the SUV in for a newly valuable, fuel-efficient car or scooter. Even then, some commutes are simply too much for any one to handle on a regular basis. Companies that use the telecommuting offices need to make sure their employees are doing their job to their satisfaction. Firms that do grant the ability to telecommute are often better able to keep employees.

Both are especially attractive to those who are trying to do their part to combat climate change, since freelancing allows you to have a lot more flexibility in the jobs you’ll choose as well as how you’ll conduct your business, within reason. In fact, for many, the lure of not having a typical commute and being able to visit their favorite breakfast restaurants without facing a line is enough of an incentive. On all counts, the environment and climate come out of this arrangement much better than with the old setup.

Of course, it’s not all wine and roses as a freelancer. You do still have to give up sometime, and the odds are pretty good that you’ll actually be putting in far more time than you were at your previous job. There are plenty of things around the house to distract most people in any given day, so people often end up reverting to going to an office anyhow, in a bid to be more productive. Without someone to look over your shoulder, i can be far too easy to do anything besides work.

Assuming you can handle the responsibility of working for yourself. In the US, freelancers also have to pay double taxes. As it’s currently set up, those who keep working for another company, even if they are telecommuting, will have half their “employment” tax paid by their employer – the rest is the income tax you’re already used to.

Medical insurance is also a major sticking point for many people in the US. Unless the freelancing opportunity is quite good, it is unlikely that one can actually afford to pay for a medical insurance premium. As a result, many people who would make wonderful freelancers are stuck in jobs they hate because they have a family or some other condition that makes it impossible to get by without insurance. These workers are best served by taking the opportunity to telecommute as many days per week as possible. Of course, this isn’t a problem in Canada.

The freelancing trend in North America and abroad really picked up steam in the 1990s, as well-paid professionals who’d become bored or burnt out on their jobs decided to go into business for themselves as consultants. A great deal of freelancing work is done by people who have a very specific knowledge set, often in unusual fields of interest.

Some fields are just very well suited to freelancing, such as computer network administration and any kind of code writing, editing or bug testing. IT freelancing can often pay far better than working for “the man.” Moreover, many clever people enjoy working on challenging problems and then moving on. They are like problem assassins and prefer the constantly changing approach to work that IT freelancing provides.

In the aughts, the major incentive to freelance has to do with the price of housing near urban centers (after revitalization) and commutes. As commutes became longer and longer in the last part of the 20th century, many people simply threw up their hands and decided they had to find another way. Being a very big place with lots of traffic, California led the continent with a freelancing revolution.

It takes more than a hatred of your current job to set out as a freelancer. For most, they try to pick up a few jobs in their field on the side. For some, this is an artistic idea that blows up into something that allows the to quit their jobs. However, for most, it’s a long period of working and striving that allows them to finally throw off the shackles of work that bind you to your car and high-carbon use lifestyle.

Freelancing work does go through up and down periods. Often this coincides with summer holidays if you do work in Europe, though there are no such month-long holidays in the Americas or Asia. It is important that you make sure to cover all the light spots in your schedule by saving up money to get over those spots. If you’re just making enough to get by, then a lean month is sure to cause you undue stress unless you prepare.

The life of a freelancer is, for many of those who’ve made the leap, is like a breath of fresh air. Most don’t see how it could be done – or want to accept the responsibility of actually running your own small business. Some who begin taking freelancing work end up giving up their cars completely, preferring to bike or bus it to infrequent client meetings. It certainly can be done, but you’ll need that first wonderful idea or skill first.

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There are nearly 20,000 man-made chemicals on the market, many are used in most cleaning supplies, causing warnings about ventilation and overwhelming “fresh” scents. These chemicals, include foaming or anti-foaming agents, fragrances, dyes, solvents and all manner of substances that are allowed to be mildly toxic by the governmental bodies that govern such things.

No one knows what the vast majority of these chemicals do when they interact with each other. A mounting body of evidence would suggest that even some of the more common combinations that people expose themselves to can cause shocking amounts of damage to our systems. While there are plenty of things in your house that may be releasing fumes or other breakdown products into your home environment, and many of them are expensive or impossible to do anything about.

However, cleaning supplies, are among the worst offenders, and something you can do something about. Fragrances and dyes are not monitored as closely as many other ingredients for toxicity, and many such products are a toxic soup of those chemicals that are not cheap.

On the other hand, homemade soaps and polishes can take a bit of extra scrubbing. While the results from natural cleaning chemicals can be even better than their synthetic counterparts, it does take a bit of effort. This extra effort, however, can be as simple as shaking up the bottle before you use it or making a new batch of the cleaning product each time.

Regardless, there are plenty of good reasons for choosing natural cleaning products, not the least of which is how such chemicals can trigger headaches, asthma and allergies in people. Over cleaner is a good example of a product that anyone can tell is made out of sketchy stuff – a natural oven cleaning product is one that appeals to most people, given the caustic nature of the synthetic substance most commonly sold.

Even better, you may be surprised how much money you shave off the monthly budget by replacing store-bought cleaning chemicals with natural home care products. Those products, while already expensive, are shipped in from their respective factories, so they are impacted by a rising price in petroleum, just as just about everything else that people typically purchase at the supermarket is.

As an example, the three ingredients of baking soda, lemon juice and vinegar can handle a great many chores around the house. This includes cleaning windows, washing and deodorizing kitchen surfaces, cleaning the toilet bowl, wiping down the bathroom fixtures, de-scumming the tile, cleaning floors, softening the laundry and countless others. Wood floors and furniture can be polished with vegetable oils. All for a fraction of what their synthetic counterparts cost.

The addition of common essential oils can infuse with just about any fragrance and important anti-microbial properties that are more effective over the long-run than lab-derived synthetics. Some of the most effective in moist environments are lavender, tea-tree, myrtle, myrrh, rosemary, eucalyptus, mugwort and many others that fight both fungus and bacteria.

Both oils and other common ingredients of natural, home made cleaning supplies have the advantage of being rather inexpensive. A gallon of distilled vinegar costs less per use than a bleach that releases toxic levels of chlorine gas into your home atmosphere. You can get a basic cleaning kit at the grocery store for under five dollars that will deal with a large number of cleaning chores that you might involve several dozen synthetic chemicals for each product and up to $20 for a basic compliment of such products.

Even if you don’t go to the bother of making your own homemade soaps (and it’s surprisingly easy to do), you can still purchase castile soap in bulk and make natural soaps and personal cleaning supplies, too. One may also just reuse liquid soap dispensers and use your own soap that you can make smell like whatever you like. You can even introduce anti-microbial properties without introducing synthetic anti-microbial compounds into your environment where they can react with other household toxins.

Making your own cleaning supplies takes a bit of a shift in the way you approach cleaning the house. Frankly, it’s something that most people don’t bother with. Just consider, for instance, the environmental impact of all the bottles. These go into landfills, coated with chemical materials in what could be looked at as a grand experiment in synergistic chemistry.

Your own health as well as that of the local environment and the water you’ll eventually drink is at stake when the impact of purchasing cleaning supplies that are made at chemical companies rather than the grocery store or co-op. You can even grow some of the materials yourself if you have the right climate. It simply makes good sense for yourself and others.

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People have become very accustomed to purchasing dog food in bags from the grocery or a specialty pet food store. This hasn’t always been the case, as you might imagine. While there are now lines of “natural” pet food available, you also likely have natural pet food ingredients right in you house, allowing you to actually make the food fresh for your animal.

After the incident where nearly 350 dogs and cats were poisoned in 2007 and a similar incident in Asia (during 2004) where over 1,000 animals perished, people have begun to wonder. Those incidents were caused by a single Chinese company putting a slightly different formulation of a chemical called melamine in the pet food.

Given the low rates of acute toxicity from “agriculturally” treated melamine, it’s very possible that this ingredient has been in pet food for years – this was just the first time the pure chemical mixed with a bit of it’s pesticide form synergistically combined to cause severe damage. With such a batch, usually sent for processing into plastics was substituted, for the usually more pure “feed grade” chemical.

Like many of the other things put in dog and cat food, such as the credible reports of euthanized companion animals being routed back into the pet food supply, the use of malanine is a crass cost saving measure. It is added in an effort to make pet food meal come out with higher protein-levels in a lab analysis.

Most of the deaths in those cases were due to cats suffering acute renal failure, as their kidneys simply gave up when exposed to that adulterated melamine with the “sludge” from the manufacturing process mixed back in.

Regardless of the type of melamine used, there are documented changes in a dog or cat’s bladder response when exposed to this chemical in their food for an extended period of time. There are purported to cause cancers and a very slight amount of internal bleeding. This is, of course, not a problem when you spend a few more dollars and purchase a good-quality natural pet food or ensure the quality by making it yourself.

Of particular concern is the news that inclusion of the less critically toxic form of this chemical is given to farm animals, from shrimp to pigs. Both in China (where it is often used in cakes and pastry without any regulation) and the US, this chemical has migrated into the human food supply, though to what extent is a matter of some hot debate.

What is a person or pet owner to do? If you tend to use one of the larger brands of pet food that is commonly available at discount stores and grocery aisles, the odds are very good that you’ve been giving this dicey chemical to your dog or cat. Natural pet foods vary widely in the amount of nutrition they offer as well as some of the specific protein sources they use. Moreover, they can be very expensive.

The best way to make sure you’re using the sort of quality ingredients you’d feed yourself is to make the food yourself. It’s easier than you might think. There are plenty of natural pet food recipes online – many of them from veterinarians who understand animal nutrition. Often times, this will include a mixture of meats and vegetables or require the addition of vitamin supplements.

However, as you will find when making your own natural pet food, there’s a lot less bulk in these items as you might be used to. Not only does the amount of food you give your animal decrease, but the amount of waste generated is also decreased. This, in and of itself, is enough to sway a lot of people who live in urban areas and need to pick up after their dogs or fish out the litter box.

It is important that you make sure the natural pet food recipes you choose will supply plenty of the nutrition, giving a complete meal. This is either accomplished using a variety of vegetables, oils and seeds or using chemical powders. Calcium is often given in the form of a powder or baked and crushed eggshells. Flax and hemp seed oils are a good source of important Omega-3 fats. Carrots and beets are a very common addition that also add sweetness.

Natural pet food ingredients tend to include things you might have lying around and focus on using good cuts of meat that have a high protein to fat ratio. You can also use organ meats, making this already money-saving venture even more cost effective.

It may be a good idea to avoid a few things when making your own natural pet food recipes. Some pets have the same sort of food allergies that people do. Many natural dog food products, for instance, don’t use corn or wheat. Other types of natural pet food focus on a specific fat and protein source, such as lamb meat and avocados. You can certainly experiment and determine what seems to work best for your pet. Keep an eye on their energy levels, watch to see what makes their eyes bright and coats shiny. Ask a vet, if you want to double check.

Making your own natural pet food is the only way to both save money and ensure that your best friend isn’t being poisoned by some multi-national corporation that doesn’t think taking a few years off your dog or cat’s life is an acceptable risk.

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At the turn of the 20th century, over 90% of the population of the United States was somehow engaged in farming, at some level. A century later, fewer than 1% of the population are involved in agriculture. As a result of that shift in first-hand knowledge, very few people understand the fundamental nature of the farming practices that are of interest to the general population again.

Much of the reason that the state of the food quality in North America has become so out of control, in the eyes of many, is this lack of participation by the populace and the influence of agribusiness. Such companies have sprung up since the 1970s, causing farms to get bigger and bigger, vertically integrate with the oil companies that make chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and become reliant upon deals that have tended to sacrifice food quality and nutrition for size and weight.

Farming Practices

For instance, there are many different and controversial farming practices. Such practices can have an adverse effect upon the local ecosystem, food quality and human health. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and USDA (US Department of Agriculture) were created to assist farmers and protect consumers. However, they often protect business and look the other way when they can.

For instance, a food dye that is also a known carcinogen is routinely injected into the skins of oranges in the US in an effort to make them look more orange on market shelves. Though it’s assumed that most people won’t eat the skin, anyone who has ever zested an orange knows this is dangerously untrue. And, that’s just one example of a common “conventional” farming practice that can have potentially deadly side effects when consumed over a lifetime.

When the general public becomes aware of such farming practices, there is very often an overwhelming outcry against them and the farmers who use them. As a result of this reaction, the few (almost exclusively men over 60) who do work in what is now called “conventional” agriculture feel besieged by such attacks. That such criticisms come from people who don’t know the hardships that face those practicing the business of farming makes for a type of class conflict that is often difficult to overcome.

However, it is very important that anyone who eats understands, on some level, what is involved in farming, so they can make good choices. The creation of the USDA Organic standard was meant to be a brand that people could support without having to know what that really entails, since the concepts are complicated enough to encompass entire years in an agricultural college, now that a few of them are teaching organic methodology.

Sustainable Farming

One of the hallmarks of organic or sustainable farming is a care for the local environment. Even if a farm isn’t actually certified by a third-party agency on behalf of the USDA, sustainable practices are designed to work with (rather than against) the natural environment. Taking inspiration from the complex ecosystems that balance each element in nature, such farming practices fundamentally differ from “conventional” farming.

In fact, agribusiness-inspired “conventional” farming practices are a relatively recent invention. In 1900, all farming was organic because there was no other way. As early as 1940, just a few years after chemical pesticides and fertilizers were introduced, the term organic was coined and a return to previous farming practices was called for.

Another difference between the farms of yesterday with the “conventional” model is the sheer amount of energy that is embedded in each act or amendment applied. With the exception of a few mined minerals and compounds, the vast amounts of energy that now characterize farming were also rather recently invented. Hence the call to “get big or get out” that went up during the 1970s at the behest of big agribusiness.

During that time, it was deemed far more cost effective to breed a crop that was grown for agronomic characteristics such as shippable and a very uniform development that ensures only one pass with a giant harvesting machine is necessary. You will notice that taste, nutrition and pest tolerance are not part of these requirements. In fact, the requirements of getting a crop to market over the typical 1,300 miles a given fruit or vegetable might travel to reach the supermarket causes plant breeders to choose transportability and compatibility with mechanization over everything else.

For this and many other reasons, the quality of the food you purchase or grow yourself is fundamentally influenced by the farming practices used. It is well worth anyone’s while to learn more about farming practices in order to make good choices for themselves and the environment.

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Since the 1970s, those who avoid eating meat have been evangelizing the virtues and benefits of a vegetarian diet. Not only are the benefits to human health clearly demonstrated, given the naturally cholesterol-free regimen, but the amount of energy and bother involved in growing grains, fruits and vegetables is far less than producing a similar weight or caloric measure of meat.

Though people who’ve grown accustomed to having a hamburger whenever they like would chafe at the mere notion, cutting out just a few meat-based meals per week can actually save quite a significant amount of energy and pollution. For example, it takes more than 50 times as much energy to produce a pound of red meat compared to a pound of organic vegetables.

Also saved in an acre by acre comparison of confinement animal production versus organic vegetables are the energy and harmful side effects of the systems. For instance, both the pesticides and inorganic fertilizers that are used to control weeds and insects in conventional livestock operations, including the grain that such animals spend much of their lives eating, are significant.

Also consider the amount of petroleum-derived carbon that is liberated into the atmosphere when transporting such animals from farm to feed-lot to slaughter – it’s not just the trip from the slaughterhouse to the grocery store that counts where climate change is concerned. Meat, as well as eggs and diary (to a lesser extent) are highly energetic foods. It has been proven that the amount of these foods that are useful for human health is far less than many North Americans consume.

Reducing one’s consumption from the typical twice per day to twice per week could save far more money, fuel and pollution than buying a hybrid car or switching to buying energy from 100% renewable resources such as wind and solar. It is not necessary to eliminate meat entirely from one’s diet to make a significant impact – just reducing your personal intake of red meat by a fraction has a tremendous impact when done half a billion times over.

Part of the major increase in the severity of the climate change problem is due to other very populous parts of the world switching from their traditional vegetarian diets to a more “American,” meat-based diet. Nations such as India, China and Pakistan that account for nearly half the world’s population are adopting the lifestyle that the more developed world has touted as an ideal for a hundred years. The result is a system that is quickly being strained to the point of breaking, as evidenced by skyrocketing commodity crop prices and food riots as those seen in early 2008 all over the world.

The fragile state of the world’s water resources is also significant, and a vegetarian diet, even part of the time, can save a considerable amount of it. In a 2001 Scientific American article, it was revealed that while one pound (.45kg) of maize takes between 100 and 250 gallons of water to produce, that same pound of beef will take between 2,000 and 8,500 gallons of water. That represents between 20 and 40 times more water that must be pumped from fragile rivers, groundwater supplies and estuary environments that are already in trouble.

Even if you don’t take into consideration the impact the loss of freshwater has on the health of the environment or billion or so people who don’t have access to sanitary freshwater, that the aquifers in North America have begun to run dry should give anyone pause. While it is very common for fruit orchards and vegetable field to be watered with very efficient systems that water the ground where it’s needed most, most crops for animal feed are grown with inefficient overhead watering that encourages pest problems and looses a great deal of water to evaporation before it even reaches the plant.

A vegetarian diet has also been proven to be far healthier. Given that the largest killer of people in North America and the most developed world are diseases brought about by consumption of animal products and tobacco, it should be a national priority to get people to eat as many fruits and vegetables as possible, but there are powerful business and cultural forces that prevent many people from even considering it.

However, for one’s own health and the state of the environment we must all share, it is becoming increasingly important and apparent that choosing to eat vegetarian meals as often as possible really could save the world.

Related posts:

1. Sustainable Living – Include Supporting Local Farms
2. Rainwater Harvesting to Save on Your Gardening Bills
3. Sustainable Solutions for Human Health Concerns

In most parts of North America, some type of seasonal irrigation is necessary to keep common garden plants healthy and happy. Unless you plan on paying your city or municipal water supply, or taking your water from a private well at the cost of running the pump, it makes a great idea of sense to collect whatever water you can. Rainwater harvesting has become a very commonly used way to save the cost of bringing water in from somewhere else.

Like solar power, with the exception of very few places, everywhere gets at least a little bit of rain at some point. Even if its fewer than 15” per year, that’s 15” over the entire surface of your roof or whatever surface you’re using to collect. That’s hundreds of gallons that can be collected in just a few rain events from even the simplest rainwater harvesting systems.

The amount of water that can be collected by rainwater harvesting systems, in even a typical rainstorm, is tremendous. This is true whether you get the long, sustained and gentle rains of the Pacific Northwest or the blistering thunderstorms of tropical Florida. Most roofs are large enough to harvest dozens of gallons per minute.

As long as you have somewhere to put rainwater, this water is highly suitable for irrigating gardens and landscapes. It can even be a useful way to deliver water to a newly installed woody, perennial landscape during the first year or two that you need to water it while it becomes established. It is perhaps best used in many areas to grow food crops and flowers that are important to pollinating insects.

Most people getting started with rainwater harvesting will start with rain barrels. They’re inexpensive or free to come by if you want to make them yourself – the biggest cost is then the hardware to hook them together. Even with a single barrel, you can collect 55 gal of water that could water a medium-sized container garden through much of a dry season.

Purchasing Rain Barrels

Rain barrels can also be purchased from other people who have good systems of installation and filtering, as well as a touch for construction and using power tools. Some of the best systems allow you add expansion barrels on over time.

Harvested rainwater may then be used manually, with a good old-fashioned watering can. You can go quite the other direction and fully automate the delivery of water from the barrels with runs of low-pressure, horticultural drip-tape and a timer that opens the a screened valve.

Of course, you can harvest rainwater into containers other than rain barrels. You can also have a cistern installed that will hold a vast amount of water that can then be used for various things around the house, too. For instance, even without complicated treatment you can have water that is perfectly useful for so-called “grey-water applications” such as washing clothes, feeding the water heater.

Drinking water can be collected and used with rainwater harvesting ` drinking water if treated properly. This most commonly involves exposure to UV light in either the form of lamps or the sun, depending upon how the system in constructed. Carbon filtration is another option that is used to remove some organic pollutants as well as many off-flavors and colors Best construction practices will give you access to any kind of filtration that you need to change or check regularly.

If water is to be used for a large portion of your home water needs, you should collect a sample and send it off to the university extension office for testing, if possible. There are also commercial companies that perform that sort of analysis. Since pollution gathers on a roof between rain storms, the best systems will divert the first portion of the water before beginning collection.

For those in North America, some states and provinces in the arid West restrict the collection of rainwater. In many places, the water that falls from the sky is legally viewed as the property of those who own the rights to a given water shed. That map is determined according to the rivers that are fed by the nearby contours.

Most places do allow collection of rainwater off your roof – especially in urban areas. In fact, many green-certified buildings use collected water to supply landscapes, fountains and air cooling units. As the price of municipal water has gone up in recent years, many people are giving up on their lawns, especially in the face of watering bans.

You can still water a plot of vegetables from a rain barrel without using any of the city water. This is also very useful in extremely remote areas where regular access is a problem in terms of time and the distances involved. No matter how much you want to integrate into your water needs, rainwater harvesting can save money and precious natural resources, especially in times of the year and areas that rely heavily upon groundwater.

Related posts:

1. Rain Barrels Can Be Used To Survive Droughts
2. How Can Eating A Vegetarian Diet Save the World?
3. Bartering Today To Save Money and Resources