Becoming a healthier, cleaner, more sustainable community means rethinking some of our habits and considering alternative practices. This month, we are offering five simple actions that everyone can take to help lighten our environmental impact and to help raise awareness of the crucial need for environmental justice.

#1-Grow it yourself!

Grocery store produce comes with a number of downsides.Their produce is often transported over long distances in diesel trucks, and packaged in oil-derived plastic containers. Grocery stores usually purchase their produce from large scale agricultural corporations which apply synthetic pesticides and overuse water due to their concentrated, single crop production. Grocery store produce must be refrigerated for extended periods, burning fossil fuels in the process. 

A study at the University of Iowa found that “Producing more food locally is a way to develop a food system that is more resilient and has fewer impacts, in addition to providing fresher, more nutritious food.” Try growing some veggies on your front porch, in your backyard, or in a community garden! You’ll be amazed at how tasty berries, herbs, and veggies can be! 

#2-Use laundry detergent sheets or powder instead of plastic bottles of detergent.

Microplastics are often added to liquid detergents as fillers and abrasives. These microplastics can be released into the environment when clothes are washed. Additionally, liquid detergents are sold in heavy plastic single-use jugs. By eliminating these plastic jugs of microplastic-filled detergents from your routine, you can help protect our waterways, and reduce landfill trash.

Multiple reviews describe laundry detergent sheets and boxes of powdered laundry detergent as easy to use in HE, front loading, and top loading washing machines. Natural Living Tips sampled a number of sheets and determined that their two favorite brands of laundry sheets were Clean People and Tru Earth. Health Essential ran a similar review and gave top honors to Freddie Laundry Sheets.

Boxes of powdered laundry detergent are less expensive than plastic bottles of detergent, and boxes are much more easily recycled!

#3-Leave the Leaves!

Fallen leaves are important to many species of butterflies, spiders, snails, worms, beetles, millipedes and mites. That means that every bird, squirrel, chipmunk, and frog that eats those invertebrates depend on your fallen leaves for their survival. And - all the predators that eat the creatures that eat the invertebrates also need you to Leave the Leaves! 

Leaves provide mulch to maintain the moisture level in the soil and they add nutrients to the soil as they decompose. 

You can help to maintain natural cycles, promote biodiversity in your yard and save yourself a lot of time and trouble! Gently move fallen leaves to your beds, pile them in a corner of your yard, or mulch some of them back into the grass.

Aspetuck Land Trust

#4-Carry Compact, reusable shopping bags everywhere you go!

Single-use plastic shopping bags sit for thousands of years in landfills. They wash out into Lake Erie poisoning the lake and everything living in it. Single use plastic bags are dangerous to animals who can get caught in them or who mistake blowing plastic bags for food and try to eat them. The production of single-use plastic grocery store bags perpetuates the use of fossil fuels. And - single-use plastic shopping bags are not recyclable! 

Of course, reusable shopping bags only help when we remember to use them. Compact, foldable, cloth grocery store bags fit into your pocket or in a purse, so you never get caught in the checkout line without one. 

#5 Eat Plant Based Foods 

Did you know that plant-based diets are better for your health and better for the planet? When individuals choose to increase the amount of non-meat food in their diet they are helping the environment in a number of ways. 

First, growing fruits and vegetables locally for people to eat uses a lot less land than producing meat for human consumption. The process of getting meat products into a grocery store involves growing food for livestock, feeding the livestock, slaughtering the livestock, processing the remains of the livestock, then packaging, refrigerating and transporting the meat - all space and resource intensive commercial processes. Overall, following a plant-based diet can reduce diet-related land use by 76%. Shifting away from animal-based foods could increase the global food supply by 49% without increasing the space used as croplands. When greater amounts of land are left in a more natural state, carbon is sequestered, water is cleaner, the air is cleaner, and communities are healthier. 

Second, by shifting to plant-based diets, we can reduce carbon emissions and protect wildlife. According to UCLA Sustainability, “in one year, animal husbandry creates as much carbon emissions as the entire transportation sector.” A detailed study in NatureFood found that omitting meat and animal products from your diet can reduce wildlife destruction by 66%.

Third, plant based diets reduce the meat byproducts and waste that are now flowing into Lake Erie, polluting our water. The Ohio Environmental Council has studied the problems of toxic algae overgrowth in Lake Erie. In the past 12 years, people from Toledo to Carroll Township have been prohibited from drinking their own water due to contamination from toxic algal overgrowth in Lake Erie. Manure from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO’s) has been identified as a primary contributor to the algal toxin contamination of Lake Erie. By avoiding animal-based foods, we can shut down toxic CAFO’s, clean up our lovely Lake Erie, and make sure it is there as a source of freshwater for future generations.  

As Prof Peter Scarborough at Oxford University states, “Our dietary choices have a big impact on the planet.” 

*Plant-Based Nutrition: Good for You, Good for the Planet 

*The Case for Plant Based

*Vegan diet massively cuts environmental damage, study shows

*Ohio’s Concentrated Animal Feeding Facilities: A Review of Statewide Manure Management and Phosphorus Applications in the Western Lake Erie Watershed