Eco-Wellness – Merging Environmental and Personal Health
Eco-Wellness refers to an appreciation, respect, and reverence for nature that can help individuals better handle challenges while remaining physically healthy. According to studies conducted, connecting to nature may provide therapeutic support.
Environmental wellness encompasses personal spaces like homes and offices as well as larger communities and geographic regions. Integrating environmental wellness into daily life is beneficial to all involved.
1. Reducing Your Carbon Footprint
Every activity from driving your car, planting your garden and roasting coffee contributes to greenhouse gas emissions – this total sum is known as your carbon footprint.
There are various ways in which you can lower your footprint. From easy measures like recycling and using light-emitting diode bulbs instead of incandescent bulbs to more difficult strategies such as eating less, forgoing air travel and ditching your car – there are multiple approaches available to you for lowering it.
Though your efforts may seem inconsequential in comparison with global greenhouse gas emissions, any reduction is important. Eating less meat-based meals reduces your carbon footprint by 8 kilograms of CO2 daily (which is more than you would save by going car-free for one year!). You could also purchase 100% green electricity that offsets electricity use with energy conservation efforts; many activities that promote EcoWellness also improve mental and physical wellbeing.
2. Growing Your Own Food
Growing food yourself can be an amazing way to reduce your carbon footprint and learn more about the environment, while giving you the satisfaction of eating produce that was produced right under your nose. Many people swear that home grown fruits and vegetables taste superior than their supermarket counterparts!
Behavior eco-wellness is an emerging subfield that examines how individuals can make healthier and more eco-friendly food choices through diet. Unfortunately, accurately measuring individual dietary eco-wellness is notoriously challenging: food frequency questionnaires and 24-hour recalls take too long and may contain errors due to memory errors and social desirability biases that interfere with accurate assessments.
Although a full-scale edible garden may not be feasible for everyone, even small kitchen gardens can bring many health and environmental advantages. A kitchen garden allows you to grow fresh herbs and produce at near no cost while creating a circular waste stream by making use of your own compost. Furthermore, kitchen gardens serve as great learning experiences for children by teaching them about nature as well as encouraging an environmentally sustainable lifestyle.
3. Reducing Your Waste
An effective Eco-Wellness strategy requires adopting a zero waste lifestyle. This involves purchasing items that will ultimately become waste (like plastic-free food storage and utensils), shopping at thrift stores, or opting for nontoxic cleaners with reduced environmental impacts than their conventional alternatives.
One effective way to cut waste is to limit the amount of water you use daily. While it might be tempting to enjoy long shower sessions, even cutting back to 5 minutes per shower session could save thousands of gallons a year!
By taking these small steps, you can help mitigate the damage done by industry pollution and consumer over-consumption, which contribute to climate change while harming oceans, ice caps and natural habitats. Furthermore, adopting eco-wellness practices into your daily life will improve both personal health while contributing to overall planet wellbeing.
4. Reducing Your Carbon Footprint
Your carbon footprint measures the greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases) you produce during daily life activities like car-commuting, heating and cooling your home, eating as well as using paper, electronic devices and disposable plastic products like paper plates.
Travel has an enormous effect on your environmental footprint, so try to reduce its effect as much as possible by carpooling or taking public transit whenever possible. Also, when flying economy class will help lower carbon footprint.
Food choices have an enormous effect on your carbon footprint. Meat and dairy consumption account for 14.5 per cent of global manmade greenhouse gas emissions due to energy requirements for production as well as methane released as byproducts that is 25 times more potent than CO2. Consider switching to lower-carbon proteins such as beans and vegetables instead, or only buy what you know you will consume – waste contributes greatly to carbon emissions! Also avoid overbuying: this only increases wastefulness.
