What Is Sustainable Living? | Green Living

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• published: 17 Dec 2013
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You already love Spotify, but do you know how to get the most out of it? Click here to learn all the Spotify Tips and Tricks you never knew existed. http://bit.ly/1VfW63R Watch more Green Living Guide videos: http://www.howcast.com/videos/514792-What-Is-Sustainable-Living-Green-Living Hi. Alegre from Ember Living, here today to talk about green living. What is green living exactly? It's a philosophy. It's a philosophy that encourages you to make choices that will optimize your health, the health of your community, and the health of the planet by avoiding toxic products, by choosing to use resources in a mindful manner, and by choosing to buy things that last for a long time, are multi-functional, and are non-toxic to your own health. So green living isn't about doing different things. I'm not asking you to live off the grid in the countryside and grow all your own food. I'm just asking you to do things differently. So I live in a city. I drive a car. But I try to maximize resources by driving my car 55. I try to eat healthfully and eat in way that's not harmful to the planet by buying organic products and buying organic food from the local farmer's market. So I'm not asking you to do anything radical here. I'm simply asking you to be mindful about your choices. And why would you want to do this? Well for a number of reasons. It benefits you personally. There are a lot of health benefits to choosing non-toxic products. It will impact your health in the long term and in the short term. By switching to non-toxic bath and body products, I've actually found that my hair is healthier and shinier, and my skin is clearer and prettier. So there are a lot of immediate benefits, but there are also long term benefits. A lot of the choices that you make in terms of things that you put in your body and on your body can affect your long term health in terms of cancer. A lot of the chemicals that are in bath and body products and cleaning products are actually carcinogenic and can lead to long term health problems. And it's also good for the planet, because the reality is that whatever's good for you tends to be good for the planet, too. So if you're putting these toxic chemicals on your body and then you're rinsing them off into the ocean, for instance chemical sunscreens. They're carcinogenic for you, and they're also killing the coral reef and polluting the ocean. So I avoid any sunscreens that aren't zinc or titanium oxide. So you see a lot of times the choices that are right for you are also the choices that are right for your community and the planet. And that's what sustainable living is about. It's about living in a way that maintains the health of the planet and the community and yourself. I personally believe that sustainable living is important, too, especially if you're living in a big city in a traditional, mainstream manner. Because you need to control the things that you can control. There are so many things that are out of our control. The air we breathe, the gasoline that we use. But if you control the things that you can control, like the products that you put in your body and on your body, and the way you store your food to ensure that chemicals don't get leached into it, then I really believe that you can positively impact your health by controlling those things.