Green Tips From The Community - December 2025

 How do we make sustainability more holistic in our lives? When I say holistic, I mean, so that we are looking at the big picture of things when we are making our everyday basic choices.

There are so many ways for us to choose sustainability.  It is difficult to have a perfect foot print and yet we are finding ways to contribute while still needing to / choosing to compromise in other ways. As we close this year, I challenge you to look for more ways to make sustainable choices. Starting from wherever you are, look at things like, what you eat, what you clean with, what you put on your body, what you wear, what you bring into your home and how are treat your landscape. Here are some category questions and ideas…

Food…

Are you buying clean (organic) fruit and veggies? Are the farmers caring for the produce and land they are grown on?

Is the meat and fish that you are buying from ranchers and fisherman that care about their sustainability practices? That care about the animals quality of life? That care about the land and the sea?

Are your food choices supporting the health of you, your family and the planet? 

What is supporting the planet when it comes to food choices (i think there are some different perspectives to explore here)?

Cleaners…

Are the detergents and cleaners in your home supporting a healthy home or a chemical home? Is there a difference for you? Things like baking soda, white vinegar and sal suds are great cleaners without chemical. 

There are easy, clean recipes out there for laundry and dishwashing detergent. 

Body products…

Wow… there is a lot of not very good stuff out there! I think this is a difficult department to get right. Start looking at it! My experience has been, products with less ingredients are generally better. And then there is the question, do you really need this product?

Home…

When you buy something to bring into your home, are you considering this items impact on the health and air quality of your home enviroment? Example, i don’t have breathing problems but if I go into a home with too much particle board or too much acrylic clothing or other acrylic fibers, i find it hard to take a full breath. So the question is, are things like particle board good for the environment and you or not?

What type of paints and stains do you use, what about construction materials and types of water pipes? How do you heat your home, what about solar panels? What are the right choices here? 

Landscape…

Do you have a good relationship with your landscape? Are you doing it sustainably? Is your landscape working for you everyday to manage your water, to offer you a healthy eco system and is it providing you the best quality air for you to breathe? Try walking down the road and take a deep breath at each property, some will offer you better air than others. 

In today’s world being sustainable in all areas is not an easy task. The question is, where do we and where don’t we compromise? I hope you will have fun exploring new ways to support the health of you and the earth. 

Thanks for reading this and see you soon,

Kippy Irwin


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