Eating Sustainably

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So you want to live a more sustainable life? I don’t blame you! As travel-lovers we owe it to our beautiful planet to make changes where we can in order to preserve nature, our oceans, and our atmosphere. It’s no secret that travel-related transportation is not sustainable at all. This is why lifestyle changes are so important.

Buy Locally Sourced Foods

The first thing that you can do is buy locally sourced foods. One of the best ways to do this is to visit your local farmer’s market. Not only does a local small business profit from this, but you are eating fresh and in season food. Another perk is that the food is not being transported for long distances. Besides making the food filled with more preservatives in order to transport food long distances which is undesirable, transporting food in large trucks greatly contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. If you do not have access to a farmer’s market, find sections of your grocery store that have locally sourced foods.

Eliminate Meat

Farming and meat production are not good for the environment because they produce huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Eliminating meat and dairy is a great that way you can reduce your carbon footprint. If you are not yet ready to go vegan or vegetarian, we suggest you at least opt for a few meatless meals a week. You will find that there are many ways that you can get your proteins and nutrients in even if you’ve eliminated meat from your diet. Harry and I participate in Veganuary each January, and through this challenge, we’ve adopted a more meatless lifestyle over the years (although we are not completely vegetarian or vegan).

Compost

Another way that you can help the environment is by composting your food waste. While we do our best to be creative with recipes when we find that we have random fruits and vegetables in our refrigerator, there’s still no way we are eliminating 100% of our food waste. Composting is a great way to do this. If you don’t know, composting takes organic matter and turns it into soil over time. It is a common misconception that throwing food away will allow it to break down; however, landfills are filled with so much other junk that the food doesn’t break down the way it would in a compost system.

I used to think that composting could only be done if you lived on a few acres of land. That’s probably because that is the only way I had seen it done before; however, it’s very easy to compost in your apartment, too. You can buy a small compost bin, like this one from simplehuman, to leave on your countertop. With new technologies, the seal typically hides the smell from food scraps. You’ll likely want to buy these compost bags to accompany the bin. Many major cities have locations where you can drop off your compost, and some even have compost pick-up services.