Growing up, I was a hardcore carnivore. I didn’t know what a balanced diet really was until I went to a private high school and saw all my friends eating salads and vegetables. For the record, I hated salads. I wasn’t a rabbit and had no intention of eating a bowl of lettuce. No thanks, please pass the steak.
Recently, as I’ve started to commit myself more and more to living green and eating organically, I’ve started to also educate myself by reading books, watching movies, and browsing the Internet. The task of living an eco-friendly lifestyle seems…daunting. The minute I start to pat myself on the back for buying organic peanut butter, I start to find out about other items I need to get rid of–like my toxic cleaning supplies, my dog’s flea control…even my OPI nail polish!
At times it can be overwhelming and I ask myself if I am even making a difference. Who knows, right? But I would rather attempt to be green–however small that may be– and feel like I am contributing to a better future, than to be ignorant and continue to lead a large carbon footprint life.
Eric and I compiled our Eco-friendly Goal list and will continue to add to it as we learn more and more about how to be green. Some goals may take longer than others, but I learned it’s not a race, it’s a journey.
If you have any tips or resources, please list them in the comments below! We’re always looking for other eco-friendly, budget-friendly, or newlywed-friendly blogs to read!
Interesting tidbits I learned from the book “Living Green Made Easy”:
- With the energy needed to produce a single hamburger, you could drive a small care 20 miles AND save about 1,500 gallons of water.
- More than 80% of all lip balms and bath products for babies are contaminated with impurities linked to cancer and other health problems.
3 comments
I’m loving your blog, it takes a lot of courage to just put out your debt for everyone to see. Thanks for sharing your struggles with debt and keeping on a budget. I feel you on a lot of it!
Since you are such a carnivore, I wanted to share with you something that may brighten your day (if you’re still wanting to eat lots of meat while maintaining good eco-friendly status). When I first started looking into eating more healthy, organically, locally and sustainably, I thought I had to eat more produce and less animal products, too. Then I found the Weston A. Price Foundation and it totally changed my life for the better in almost every way: http://www.westonaprice.org/beginners-tour.html .
The foundation is based on the findings of a dentist who traveled the world in the 1930s and studied native cultures and what they ate. I encourage you to check it out for yourself, but mainly the idea is to return to a more natural way of eating, much like our ancestors used to (back when heart disease was non-existent!). And not all that stuff you hear about saturated fats, cholesterol, or even carbon footprints are true (at least not when you eat pastured/free-range/wild animal products). And yes, I know these are more pricey, and my own budget did get hit pretty harshly when I first started eating this way, but I found that I was very full just off of a little bit of this super nutrient dense food. So the higher prices didn’t hurt too badly after I realized how much I was saving as far as how much food I was needing to eat on a daily basis.
You might also like to know that a lot of big families with super awesome blogging moms feed their large families on this diet on small budgets, and I mostly learned how to cook and bake (and thus saving me a lot of money on foodage in general) from these awesome blogs online.
All of this stuff came to me at a huge shock, but eating this way has truly made the difference for me in so many ways, one of which was allowing me to feel like I could quit my unpleasant day jobs, become an entrepreneur/blogger and do what I love while making ends meet and so much more.
Anyways, I’ve probably said way too much, but if any of this piques your interest, let me know, I’ll be happy to send you more information on any of it. And if it doesn’t make sense to you, no worries, I know it’s not for everyone, but I figure a fellow carnivore would like to know it’s possible to still eat animal products, keep on a budget and be eco-friendly. 😉
Woah! Check you out over here! Welcome to the organic world. The best thing I was told when I started organic was worry about your dairy and meat first. It makes it not so overwhelming. And get rid of eating frozen/boxed stuff. It gets easier from there. I will now spend my afternoon all catchin up on you over here….super cool. Then in an hour I’m giving my notice…ladeda
It is so scary all the stuff that’s out there – I do think it’s a question of a step at a time, and everything in moderation… for example, I’m going to keep giving my dog her flea and tick medicine, but I also gave up bottled water in favor of a bpa-free bottle that I fill w/ tap water…