Adventures in Sustainable Living

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 196

 Is Going Organic Better for Your Health?

Colorado is one of those places that has plenty of grocery outlets for the purchase of organic food. Despite this easily available opportunity, for years I refused to buy organic produce because of the cost. I always questioned whether or not it was actually beneficial. 

Furthermore, I questioned whether or not there were added nutritional benefits of going organic. And of course I kept right on doing what I was doing and never bothered to actually look into it. I just never took the time to educate myself on this subject.

Finally I got around to doing my homework. And what really encouraged me was one particular article I read that was published by the Environmental Working Group. 

So join me for E196 which is called Is Going Organic  Better for Your Health? 

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E196 Is Going Organic Better for Your Health? 

Now I must say that there is a lot of controversy over whether or not eating all organic food is better for your health. Are there actually increased nutritional benefits? Are there potentially other benefits that we do not know about? Or are we just kidding ourselves? These are the questions I want to examine. Additionally I want to share the reasons I finally started purchasing organic produce. 

But first, here comes the sustainability question of the week. 

What are some beneficial and detrimental affects of tourism and travel? 

Good news story of the week

This weeks good news story comes out of Paris and has to do with paper production. Current estimates are that somewhere between 6 and 9.8 billion trees are cut down every year just to produce paper products. But there is a start up company that has found a solution to that. They are using dead leaves to produce paper. 

It is estimated that the average city produces 8,000 metric tons leaves every year that clog gutters and sewers and have to be collected to be burned, composted or dumped into landfills. The the start up company, called ReLeaf Paper with headquarters in Paris, is now using 5,000 metric tons of leaves to produce 3 million paper carrier bags per year.

ReLeaf has joined forces with landscapers across Europe to have thousands of tons of leaves delivered to their facility.  They use a low-water, zero sulfur, zero chlorine production process  to create paper with a much smaller water and carbon footprint. 

The company uses leaves to produce paper then returns a by-product called lignin, to be used as a fertilizer compound. Lignin is a complex organic polymer in plants that is used for structural support. The fertilizer is used on trees and gardens. ReLeaf uses an organic material that would have otherwise gone to waste. They save millions of trees in the process and they return fertilizer to support the growth of other plants. So the situation ends up being a win-win.

This weeks round of applauses goes to ReLeaf for their enterprising efforts to save trees. It is a perfect example of a true circular economy. 

So, let’s move on to this weeks episode. 

If you listened to my last episode you know that I closed with making some remarks about several people I had met that were diagnosed with chronic diseases. All of these individuals were on multiple medications and given a relatively poor prognosis for long-term survival. Each of these people moved into a rural area where there was considerably less stress, gave up all processed foods and went completely organic.  Within one to two years everyone of them was off all medications and leading a healthy life. 

So, is that the result of going all organic or are there multiple other factors to consider? 

Surely you have heard me mention how I grew up with two working farms in the family. The reason I make a point of this is that all the things I was exposed to growing up truly shaped much of what I do and how I now live. The reasons I share these experiences is because it had such a tremendous positive impact on my life. It also taught me a lot about how to provide for myself. But there are precious few people I know these days that had similar experiences. 

There were three ways in which we provided ourselves with food. My grandparents raised various farm animals for meat. We maintained a large garden. We went hunting and foraging for wild game, fish, nuts, berries and even some fruit. And if that was not enough, we would go to the local farmers market and buy bushels of fresh produce which we would can and preserve to use over the winter. 

The point being is that we were actively, and almost constantly involved with where our food came from and what we ate. Everything we raised for meat and all the vegetables we grew were produced in a natural way.  I have no memory of my grandfather being out in the field with a huge machine spraying pesticides or feeding the cows antibiotics or hormones. In many respects, this was a great example of organic farm production long before this term “organic” became popular. 

At some point in time most of us have likely heard the phrase “You are what you eat.” There is actually a phenomenal amount of health related studies that proves that very statement. Considering the following: 

In much of the developed world people eat a diet that is high in calories, fat, added sugars, and low in essential nutrients. Nearly 20% of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes is attributed to poor diet. The incidence of multiple chronic diseases among adults is now 27.2 percent with 51.8% now having at least one chronic disease. 

Changing your diet to something more healthy should be a no-brainer. But, there is another more subtle component to what we consume, that being all the chemicals that are in our food in the form of pesticides. 

While most people have the impression that pesticides are a function of modern food production, their use actually dates back as far as 2500 BCE in Samaria. It wasn’t until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that we saw the development of synthetic organic pesticides including DDT. 

You would think that pesticide use could be easily avoided. Agricultural activities could be planned around the cycles of nature instead of using organic or synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. This type of food production promotes the formation of local species that are resistant to plagues and disease. Farm animals could live in a semi-free environment with no antibiotics or hormones. 

But due to the pressures of feeding a growing population we soon resorted to industrial agricultural practices. Consequently we are dependent on the use of chemicals and pesticides in order to maintain our rate of food production to feed a growing population. As a result of this consumers are constantly exposed to chemicals and pesticides in our food. 

Truly there is a lot of debate over the potential health affects of pesticide residues in our food. 

You have to ask yourself if this is healthy. But when you do ask all you hear is “Studies are on-going.” or “The long-term health affects have not yet been established.” 

But I want to quote some statistics from the Environmental Working Group on pesticides in produce. This is from their publication on The 2024 Dirty Dozen where they tested 46 items of produce and listed the 12 items that were contaminated with the most pesticides. 

These are statistics directly from their webpage, credit goes to the Environmental Working Group and their report The Dirty Dozen. 

-209 pesticides were found in total

-More than 50 different types of pesticides were found on every crop on their list except for cherries

-More than 90% of samples of strawberries, apples, cherries, spinach, nectarines, and grapes tested positive for residues for two or more pesticides. 

Additionally if you listened to my last episode about living healthy in the chemical world, then you know the pesticides in our food are only a small part of all the chemicals we are exposed to. But since we are on the subject of food, the big questions if whether or not we should go organic? Besides, eating organic is growing in popularity because many people believe it is better for your health. 

What does it mean for something to be “organic”?  

The US Department of Agriculture defines organic as crops that are produced on farms that have not used synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers for at least three years prior to harvesting the food. Additionally there must be a significant buffer zone between other farms to decrease contamination. These farms must also be free from genetically engineered crops, any sort of ionizing radiation and the use of sewage sludge for fertilizer. 

Animals must be fed organic feed and live on pasture that is considered organic. They must also be raised without routinely administering antibiotics or hormones. 

What most people do not realize is that free range does not mean organic. It just means that animals were raised without confinement to small cages. If you see “natural” on the food label it means there are no artificial flavors or color added. It does not mean it is organic or free of pesticides. 

Why is organic food more expensive?

The other question that people often ask is why is organic food more expensive. Well, there are actually a number of reasons for that. 

-Labor costs are higher because of the need for manual weeding and pest control. 

-Tighter regulations means that organic farmers have to adhere to strict guidelines. 

-Higher production cost because organic farmer often produces less food per unit of land

-Certification and inspections are a rigorous process and adds to costs. 

-Compost and animal manure as a natural fertilizer cost more to produce and transport. 

If you wanted to switch to organic food, where would be a good place to start? 

And I think most people who are concerned about going organic may not know where to start. Personally, I think the best place to start is to visit the web page for the Environmental Working Group and look at their dirty dozen. Any produce that is on that list should be purchased as organic. It is a good way to start reducing your exposure to pesticides. 

Once I found this page, I immediately started buying organic produce. This web page has some rather alarming statistics about the amount of pesticides that are in the foods we consume almost daily. Yet most of us have no clue of what we are being exposed to. 

Even though there are on-going studies about pesticide residues in the food we consume, nothing has yet been proven about the long-term affects. But just imagine how people would react if every produce item in the supermarket were labeled according to pesticide residues. Would you purchase strawberries in the supermarket if they had a label that said, “This product was independently tested by a third party laboratory and found to contain 57 different pesticide residues.”

Does organic food have added nutritional benefits? 

The next obvious question is whether or not there are nutritional advantages to consuming organic food. In other words, is eating organic better for your health? 

If you walk through any supermarket these days you will likely find a lot more space devoted to organic foods. From produce to canned goods to basic staple foods, more and more labels bear the seal of being organic. 

In 2024 the global organic food and beverage market was valued at almost $259 billion USDs. By 2030 the revenue forecast is expected to be a bit more than $564 billion USDs. And just for the sake of comparison, in 2014 sales of organic products were estimated to be slightly less than $36 billion USDs. Obviously the market is growing. 

According to dietitian Kathy McManus, director of the Department of Nutrition at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, “I think people believe these foods are better for them, but we really don’t know that they are.” 

After reviewing several articles written by dietary experts, physicians, and university researchers, here is the bottom line on the nutritional value of organic foods. 

Kathy McManus, quoted just above, says, 

"There've been a number of studies examining the macro- and micronutrient content, but whether organically or conventionally grown, the foods are really similar for vitamins, minerals, and carbohydrates.” Organic foods don’t appear to have a nutritional advantage over their conventional counterparts. 

According to Dean Blumberg and Lena Rothstein, two pediatricians and UC Davis Children’s Hospital, “Organic foods are not healthier, per se, in terms of nutrients. You are still getting the same benefits in conventionally grown foods as your are in organic foods. 

According to one study conducted by Stanford University "there is no evidence about a higher dietary value or of the fact that they are healthier than conventional products. But it has been demonstrated that their consumption reduces the exposure to pesticide waste and antibiotic-resistant bacteria". 

Another study published in the British Journal of Nutrition came to the conclusion that organic products contain up to 60% more antioxidants, 87% less nitrites and 50% less cadmium.

So the bottom line is that there is no conclusive evidence that organic foods have a higher nutritional profile compared to conventional foods. Several studies have shown that organic and conventional produce have similar nutrient profiles, and the differences between the two are often small and inconsistent.

The challenge for us as consumers is that organic foods are often marketed as healthier, and many  people perceive them as such due to the “organic” label. But, as is usually the case, this perception is often driven more by marketing and consumer psychology as opposed to research based scientific evidence. 

So what is the real benefit of going organic? 

The bottom line is that there is no significant nutritional benefit to eating organic foods. So, what is the real benefit? Are there other advantages to going all organic. Well, consider the following points based on real science: 

-Nutrient profiles have demonstrated that organic foods have increased antioxidants. These are components that help to reduce the risk of various types of cancers. 

-Organic foods contain measurably lower levels of pesticides. Again, check out the resource produced by the Environmental Working Group on the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen. 

-Increase exposure to pesticides have been linked to increased risk of ADHD, autism, reduced cognitive skills, Parkinson’s disease, fertility issue, cognitive decline later in life, and cancer. In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified three common pesticides as carcinogenic. The primary exposure in humans was diet. 

-Organic farming does have a positive environmental impact. Typically these practices use less water, less energy, and reduced greenhouse gas emission. Organic farming also uses significantly fewer pesticides and use organic fertilizer. 

On the other hand, industrialized farming promotes climate change, produces significant contamination to the surrounding watershed, results in soil erosion, nutrient depletion, biodiversity loss and deforestation. 

Additionally, modern pesticides, such as organophosphates, are particularly toxic to bees. It is estimated that as much as 50% of pesticides used today contain organophosphates. 

Several long-term studies have shown bee populations have declined as much as 80%. If bee populations continue to decline, it will have a significant impact on global food production. Seventy out of the top 100 food crops that feed the world rely on pollinators. 

Things to consider

So what I want to do at this point is to summarize and emphasize some things to consider if you are on the fence about whether or not to go organic. 

-Eating organic does not mean better nutrition. There is no magic bullet, no mysterious elixir to make you healthier. Having a healthy lifestyle encompasses many factors. Fruits and vegetables have many positive health benefits and are highly nutritious when they are part of a balanced diet, regardless of whether they are organic or conventionally grown. 

-Organic food has been shown have increased antioxidants, which is a good thing.

-Pesticides are commonly used in modern food production to improve crop yields by controlling weeds, insects, fungus as well as other things. Visit the webpage on the Environmental Working Group and read their reports on the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen. This is a great way to educate yourself about potential exposure levels. 

-Eating organic foods is a good way to reduce your exposure to pesticides. Pesticide exposure has been shown to have detrimental effects on your health. 

-Organic farming has proven beneficial affects on the environment. It is obvious that human activity is the primary driver behind climate change, environmental degradation, habit and biodiversity loss. Reducing, eliminating, and reversing these factors is crucial to whether or not we continue to live on this planet. So, why not patronize the people who do things to accomplish that very thing. 

-Educate yourself on product labels. Know what it means when something is labeled “100% organic”, “Organic” versus “made with organic___.”

-Organic foods do cost more for a variety of reasons.  If you are worried about the additional cost then determine the percentage of your grocery bill that is made up of fruits and vegetables. Chances are it is small. Then go all organic for those products that are know to have a high level of pesticides. Go non-organic for those products where it does not matter. 

-Since organic produce contains very little if any preservatives, it will spoil faster. It is better to buy in smaller quantities in order to avoid food waste. 

-Buy meat directly from the rancher. This is what we do. Is is organic and pastured raised. We buy a large quantity and it ends up costing us $3.50 per pound. Any prime cut of supermarket these days is closed to $16/pound. 

Conclusion: 

There are pros and cons to anything you do. There is not magic formula for having a healthy and sustainable life. It is a combination of multiple factors. Going organic, which does have obvious benefits, is just one part of the puzzle. Despite the additional costs, if you want to eat organic, as mentioned above, there are ways to mitigate the extra expense. Eating organic is beneficial for the environment. Consequently, several months ago I started purchasing only organic produce. 

Now to start wrapping things up, let’s address the sustainability question of the week. What are some beneficial and detrimental affects of travel and tourism? 

What are the benefits of tourism and travel?

Tourism has many benefits if people are mindful about what they do. One of the obvious direct impacts is that it supports the local economy and sometimes the entire country. That economic impact often extends into the social community of the locals  by increasing their quality of life. Tourism also increases global  and cultural awareness. And quite often, it is tourism dollars that support local conservation efforts. 

What are the detrimental affects of tourism? 

According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, since 1950 there has been a 56 fold increase in international travel. As of 2018, there were 1.4 billion international arrivals and that is expected to increase to 1.8 billion by 2030. 

All of this travel produces enormous benefits but this often comes at the expense of the environment and the local communities which are impacted by crowded streets, pollution, habitat loss, and even changes to their culture.

So, just a couple of final remarks. When deciding whether or not to go organic, or to lives sustainable as possible, as a consumer you have to consider multiple factors such as cost, the environmental impact and even your personal values. This is what will guide you to make the best possible decision. 

Well folks that about wraps it up. I hope you have found this episode informative.  Don’g forget to visit the podcast home page found at adventuresinsustainableliving.com

Until next week this is your host Patrick signing off. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.  

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 195

How to Live Healthy in a Chemical World

Working as a practicing veterinarian I commonly have to deal with infectious diseases. For the most part it is something benign. Occasionally I have to deal with things that are potentially of great concern for human health.

One such disease is the Bubonic Plague. It is endemic in the prairie dog population in Colorado. Every now and then people get excited about it then the concern fades away. But, it is always there.

From my perspective there are so many other things in our world that pose a great threat yet we completely ignore it. One such thing is chemical pollution. I start to question whether it is possible to live healthy in a chemical world.

So join me for episode 195 How to Live Healthy in a Chemical World.

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E195 which is called Twelve Tips to Live Healthy in a Chemical World.

In this episode I first want to discuss the extensive nature of chemical contamination in our world and how exposure is unavoidable. But then I want to give you twelve very simple tips on how to live a healthier life.

But first let’s take care of a couple of quick things.

Sustainability question of the week

What is workplace sustainability and how can I tell if my company promotes sustainability practices?

Good news story of the week 

This weeks good news story is something I thought was very appropriate considering the topic of the podcast. It is about micro-plastics.

Most of us have likely heard just how contaminated our world is with microplastics. Most research has shown that these plastics are accumulating in our bodies, the affects of which are not clear at this point. But it is estimated that most of us have at least 7 credits cards worth of plastics floating around in our body. Furthermore, almost all of the water on the planet contains these plastics, including bottled water.

But, there is good news.

A group of scientist found that boiling water prior to drinking it can remove somewhere between 25% and 90% of microplastics. This was the conclusion of a study that tested both hard and soft water.

Since hard water contains more minerals, boiling of the water traps the micro-plastics in the mineral residue as a result of boiling.  Since soft water contains fewer minerals, less plastic are removed.

At least in the US most of our water is considered hard water. The same is true of most bottled water. Consequently, simple boiling of the water can significantly reduce your exposure.

The concern with micro-plastics is that no one yet knows the long-term affects as they continue to accumulate in our bodies. Studies in mice found microplastics in all major organs including liver, kidney, brain and even placenta.

But it will of course be years and years before the government places any restrictions on micro-plastic contamination. In the meantime you can limit your exposure and consumption by first filtering your tap water and then boiling it. By doing so you can potentially remove up to 90% of contaminates.

So, let’s get moving on this weeks episode on how we can live healthier in a world full of chemicals.

Sometimes I think that our society constantly focuses on all the wrong things. This is a case of what I call shiny object syndrome. Every time a new shiny object comes along that is what we focus on. But in many respects this is the result of our constant media exposure and our fascination with the unfortunate.

Bad news after bad news after bad news keeps us distracted from the real issues in our world that truly need to be addressed. It also does not help that we are exposed to a constant flow of information about our planet much of which is not founded in true science.

A perfect example of shiny object syndrome is the Bubonic plague in Colorado. The plague is carried by fleas that live on the prairie dogs. It is endemic in their population. It seems that every 10 years or so there is a massive die off in the prairie dog colony which gets everyone’s attention. That’s when the infectious disease professionals test for the plague, the results of which turn into a media circus.

People get really excited about it for a while and then all calms down for a few more years. People tend to forget about it for a decade or so and then there is another die off. But in between this oscillation of excitement it is always there, always posing the same potential threat.

Another perfect example is the so called forever chemicals. These chemicals have actually been around since the 1940s and 1950s when they were first used in nonstick and waterproof coatings in consumer goods. Now all of a sudden people feel the need to make an issue of it.

This of course completely glosses over the real issue. We are exposed to hundreds of chemicals every day. Consider the following examples:

The air we breath: The average person takes 22,000 breaths per day. Every time we take a breath we inhale pollutants such as particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and a whole lot of other things.

Air pollution from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil or gas typically contains nitrogen dioxide. But it also releases formaldehyde and benzene, both of which have been shown to be highly toxic even in small amounts. The World Health Organization (PDF) considers exposure to benzene a major public health concern.

Higher exposure to air pollutants has been associated with lower birth weights, preterm deliveries and congenital heart defects. 

Organophosphates, which are a class of neurotoxic compounds, were used during warfare in the 1930s. This set of compounds accounts for about 50% of all pesticides used in the US today. The food and water we consume contains residues of pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals commonly used in agriculture.

Children exposed to higher levels of these pesticides have been found to have higher rates of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. (ADHD)

Toxins commonly found in furniture and carpets, such as formaldehyde, phthalates, polybrominated,  perfluorinated and volatile organic compounds which have all been connected to a variety of ailments such as respiratory disorder, hormone disruption, thyroid disorders, birth defects, cancer, and even neurodevelopment disorders.

Polybrominated compounds are used as flame retardants. They can be found in televisions, computers, insulation and foam products, including children’s toys and baby pillows.

Benzene has long been known to be highly toxic even at low levels. It is a potent carcinogen. And yet, a couple of years ago, an independent lab found benzene in hundreds of personal care products such as shampoo, antiperspirants, sunscreens and hand sanitizers.

Numerous cleaning products contain volatile organic compounds which have been linked to eye, nose, and throat irritation, headaches, nausea, and even damage to liver, kidneys and the central nervous system.

While many of these chemicals are not harmful in small amounts, prolonged or cumulative exposure can increase the risk of some very specific health problems. And the true challenge is that we are surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of synthetic chemicals.

Many of these chemicals have become an everyday part of our life. But despite their usefulness, numerous compounds have been found to have detrimental affects on our health.

According to some estimates, 6% of the world’s disease burden, including chronic diseases, cancers, neurologic and even developmental disorders, and 8% of the global death rate can be attributed to exposure to all the chemicals that are a part of our lives. What is even more concerning is that these numbers only take into account the small number of chemicals whose health affects are well established.

For example, in 2018 it was estimated that 300 million tons of chemicals were consumed in the EU. Two thirds of those chemicals were classified as being hazardous to human health. The additional challenge is that most toxicity studies are focused on a single chemical exposure while we are daily exposed to chemical cocktails.

The true concern is that persistent chemicals, such as the so called “forever chemicals” can accumulate  in humans and in the environment over time. These “forever chemicals” are a group of over 5,000 compounds found in our drinking water, food and food packaging, dust in the air, cosmetics, textiles and numerous other consumer products.

Chronic exposure has been linked to kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, liver damage and kidney damage, inflammatory bowel disease and a whole series of developmental disorders.

There are about 800 chemicals known to be endocrine disruptors, many of which are present in metal food cans, plastics, pesticides, toys, cosmetics, and food. As if that is not enough, some chemicals that were found to be toxic were substituted with other chemicals which are later discovered to be just as toxic.

Clearly we live in a world filled with chemicals. And unless you have your own personal supply chain it is difficult to know the exact contents of the products you use everyday. Even if you read product labels you need a masters degree in organic chemistry to full understand the ingredients. Furthermore, many ingredients are disguised behind terms such as “natural and artificial flavors” or “fragrances” while others are never disclosed at all. For example, the chemicals in containers or wrappers are practically never disclosed. 

To complicate matters even more, regulations around the use of specific chemicals in products vary greatly depending on the country. In the European Union, manufacturers have to first prove the safety of a given chemical before it can be used in a product. In the United States, many companies can use chemical ingredients in products with little over sight.

Such variation in regulations and enforcement leave the general public with a precarious presumption of trust. Most people presume that if a product is on the shelf it must be safe to purchase and use. As a result the public is being exposed to thousands of toxic chemicals without any knowledge whatsoever. 

At some point we have to start questioning why we are seeing a greater incidence of chronic disease, mental health disorders, autoimmune disorders, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disorders.

On one hand it is likely impossible to completely eliminate exposure to the thousands of toxic chemicals in our environment. On the other hand there are things we can do to greatly limit that exposure.

Read Labels

Especially at the supermarket it is important to read labels. Pay attention to the ingredients. If you need a degree in chemistry to understand what is in the product you are buying, choose something else. Always avoid brominated vegetable oil and potassium bromate.

Cook at home

One of the best things you can do for yourself is to learn how to cook from basic ingredients. This is by far the easiest way to reduce your intake of chemicals, preservatives, and various other additives.

Use cast iron and stainless steel for cooking

Cast iron and stainless steel  are by far the most economical, long-lasting cookware on the market. If you use non-stick cookware you run the risk of adding chemicals to your food especially if you over heat the cookware. Additionally, everyday wear and tear on this type of cookware means it will eventually have to be replaced. Cast iron and stainless steel will last a lifetime.

Limit the use of plastics

Your safest bet is to avoid use of plastics whenever you can. This includes bottles, bottled water, food containers and even toys.

BPA was a harmful chemical found in plastics and the use of it was banned. However, it was replaced with another chemical that can be just as harmful.

Never place hot food in a plastic storage container or reheat food in plastic. The heat promotes the release of chemicals from the plastic. Opt for glass or stainless as much as possible.

When buying fruits and vegetables opt for plastic free whenever possible. Buy in bulk and use mesh produce bags

Buy organic

Buy organic produce and vegetables whenever possible. Organic foods will not completely eliminate pesticides from your diet but it can greatly reduce your exposure.

The Environmental Working Group has a great list of the fruits and vegetables that have the greatest number of pesticides. It is called the Dirty Dozen. But they also have another list called The Clean Fifteen. These lists are a great place to start if you want to reduce your exposure to pesticides.
 

Filter Your Water

As a general rule, tap water is safe to drink. But that does not mean it is free of chemicals. Several studies have proven the extent of chemical contamination that is now is most of our water supply. There are many inexpensive options for filtering your water. Lifestraw and Berkey filters are two of my favorites. We produce purified water at home for less than three cents per gallon.

Use homemade cleaning products

The cleaning products we use are a common source of household toxins. There are numerous internet based sources with easy recipes to make safe, organic, and toxin free cleaning products. Sometimes it is as simple as vinegar and baking soda.

Have a no shoes policy for your home

Believe it or not, one of the greatest sources of toxins in your home is what you track in on your shoes. Leave you shoes at the door or have a specific pair of shoes you wear at home.

Dust and clean your house frequently

Clean your house frequently to reduce the amount of dust and debris that can contain a whole array of chemicals

Careful choose your personal care products

Personal care products, such as cosmetics, soaps, shampoos, and lotions, are a part of our daily routine. However, many of these products contain harmful chemicals that can be absorbed through the skin and potentially cause adverse health effects.

Things such as paragons, coal tar dyes, formaldehyde, silicones, polyethylene glycols have all been connected to hormone disruption, cancer, allergic reactions, and reproductive disorders. Some are even known carcinogens.

You can reduce your exposure by reading labels. Choose certified organic and natural products. Avoid products with added fragrances. And choose products with minimal packaging.

Wash your hands frequently

Most products we handle contain some type of chemicals, even the produce at the supermarket. Make it is habit to wash your hands frequently throughout the day.

The Precautionary Principle

One thing is for certain, you aren’t going to be able to avoid every chemical or toxin that you are exposed to on a daily basis. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution and the advent of industrial agriculture, the natural world has been blanketed with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides as well as thousands of other toxins.  Our food, food wraps, cans, carpets, furniture, electronics, shower curtains, personal care products, cleaning products, and even the water we drink all contain thousands of potentially toxic chemicals.

But since we cannot completely avoid living in a chemical coated world, there are things we can do to take precautions. It is a good idea to follow the “precautionary principle” which translates into “better safe than sorry.” What this means is that if the evidence is uncertain about the safety of a given product or compound, it is better to err on the side of caution and avoid the risks. The challenge for us as consumers is that the development of new chemical substances outpaces the research on their potential negative impacts. This is why it is better safe than sorry.

So let’s trading winding up here by answering the sustainability question of the week.

What is workplace sustainability and how can I tell if my company promotes sustainability practices?

More and more companies are committing to reducing their impact by creating an environmentally conscious workplace. Research has shown that 80% of consumers are more inclined to support companies and brands with a history of sustainability.

Workplace sustainability refers to business practices and policies that promote socially, environmentally, and economically responsible behavior as well as resource conservation.

Business transparency is often your first clue. Check out the websites for companies such as Patagonia, IBM, Seventh Generation, Adobe, Numi Organic Tea, and Biogen. These companies rely on renewable energy, are committed to waste reduction and compostable packaging. They are also committed to implementing the best methods of environmental conservation.

Environmentally conscious organizations are committed to reaching their business goals and maintaining their operations without negatively impacting the world around them.

Now to wrap up this episode I just want to say that over the past 5 years I have met four people that were diagnosed with a variety of autoimmune disorders and even heart disease. All of them were placed on multiple medications and given a poor long-term prognosis.

Their response to their personal situation varied. But mostly it included moving out of the city, eliminating highly processed foods in their diets, going all organic, cooking at home, and getting regular exercise and taking a variety of healthy dietary supplements.

The end result with each of these people was that within one to two years they were symptom free and off all medications. Now you can’t argue with that kind of a testimonial of an organic sustainable lifestyle.

I would encourage you not to live under the precarious presumption of trust. It is far better to question everything because no one is going to guard your personal health and safety better than you. Start by changing one little thing at a time and you will be surprised how much different your life will be in 5 years.

Well folks I hope you have enjoyed this episode and found it informative and encouraging to change something about how you live. And before next week be sure to check out the home page for the podcast which can be found at adventuresinsustainableliving.com

On that page you will find a free resource of 200 sustainability questions and answers completely for free. So check it out. But until next week, this is your host Patrick sighing off. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 194

A Sustainable Life May Make You Live Longer

Did you know that globally we spend about $170 billion dollars a year on dietary supplements. The cosmetic surgery market is now worth $63 billion annually. We spend nearly $3,000 per year on entertainment. On average we spend 2 to 2 1/2 hours per day on social media.

We also eat a diet that is high in calories, fat, added sugars, and low in essential nutrients. Sadly nearly 20% of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes is attributed to poor diet. The incidence of multiple chronic diseases among adults is now 27.2 percent with 51.8% now having at least one chronic disease.

What this means is that ultimately many people live shorter lives than what they could.

So join me for episode 194 A Sustainable Life May Make You Live Longer.

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E194 Living Sustainably May Make Your Life Longer.

There are certain places around the world where people tend to live long lives, many of which live to be at least 100 years old. Extensive research has been put into finding the answers to why and how this is possible. During this episode we will look at some of the factors that contribute to a long life, compare that to the average lifestyle in the developed world and then look at how that compares to living sustainably.  But first let’s get a couple of other things out of the way before we get started.

Sustainability question of the week

What is fast fashion and is the garment industry environmentally friendly?

Good new story of the week

If you have been following me for a while then you know that I’ve talked a lot about the amount of waste in our culture. The one thing that is particularly concerning is the food waste simply because of the extensive environmental impact. On a positive note there are some really good people that recognize this as a significant challenge and are starting to set up food pantries and even grocery stores where people can shop for free. One such person is Brad Paisley and his wife Kimberly.   

Brad Paisley, a well known country singer, songwriter and guitarist who has release 12 studio albums and multiple other works, has dedicated a considerable amount of his time building and maintaining a grocery store in Nashville, Tennessee where people can shop for free. Now, after five years of work, he wants to open a second location.

In 2019 Brad first broke ground on store number one. However, there were some significant unexpected challenges. The doors opened in March 2020 but ten days later Nashville was hit by several tornados which left 70,000 residents without power. Then days after the tornado disaster, the COVID-19 pandemic shut downs started.

Almost overnight Brad and his wife Kimberly changed their business model. They developed a program offering curbside pickup and home delivery services particularly for the elderly.

The Store was a success and operations began to expand. Additional services included counseling services, budgeting, cooking classes, literacy training, pet care, back to school support and even music therapy. In November 2023 they even added a toy store in time for Christmas. These stores now routinely service over 400 families.

So, hats off and a standing ovation for the charity of the Paisley family and for teaching their children the value of service to their community.

Okay, let’s move right into this weeks episode.

There are several communities around the world where the chances of living to be 100 years old are 10% greater than any other place on the planet. Numerous researchers became curious as to how that was possible. They compared numerous lifestyle characteristics between a small communities in Costa Rica, Italy, California, Japan and another in Greece.

Although researchers noted that there were many unique characteristics to the lifestyles of residents in each of these locations, they also noted some distinct commonalities.

Eating in moderation

Many people that live longer lives tend to eat in moderation. In Okinawa, the elderly people follow the ancient rule of “Hara Hachi bu”, which means eating only until the stomach is 80% full. Scientific studies have shown that this translates into 10%  fewer calories than the current recommendation for the average adult. Somehow this seems to slow aging.

Long term studies have shown that people with calorie restricted diets have markedly lower risk of age-related diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. People even look younger. No one yet understands the mechanism of why this happens but it has been proposed that calorie restriction reduces the formation of toxic free radicals which can damage our cells. The other thing that is proposed is that the small bit of stress induced by caloric restriction seems to induce a protective mechanism at the cellular level.

This of course is the exact opposite of the standard diet in the developed world where we commonly eat an excess of calories. Not only that there are numerous cultural norms that seem to push us toward consuming in excess. Take for example portion sizes that we are commonly served in restaurants and even going to the drive thru. “Would you like to supersize that?” This is one of the reasons that globally the obesity rate is now well over 50% and in some parts of the developed world it is closer to 70%.

Eating the Right Things

The other obvious correlation is that the diets of people who live longer tend to be more plant based which leads to greater heart health. On the other hand the standard diet in much of the developed world is high in calories, fat, added sugars and low in essential nutrients.

Highly processed foods now make up approximately 65% of our caloric intake. We all want meals that are fast and easy with minimal preparation time. We now even have the convenience of not having to do our own shopping. We do our supermarket shopping online and pick up our groceries curbside. Most of us likely spend more time on social media than we do shopping and preparing our own meals

Furthermore we now spend 61% of our budgets on restaurant food which is higher in fat, cholesterol, salt, refined grains, and lower in fiber. It is almost always higher in calories. Plus we already know that the long term effects of maintaining this sort of diet are high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, stroke and even cancer.

More than any, one study that I came across presented some very concerning information. The data used in this research came from 35,000 respondents, age 20 or more years. Study participants were followed on average of 8 years or more.  During that time there were 511 cardiovascular deaths and 638 deaths from cancer.

The conclusion of this study was that compared to those who dined out less than once a week, people who dined out two or more times per day were 50% more likely to die. Their risk was 18% greater for cardiovascular disease and 67% greater for cancer-related deaths.

On the flip side of this one of the best ways to be eco-friendly and sustainable in the kitchen is to cook from scratch. This is far more healthy because you can control exactly what goes into your food. You are starting with fresh ingredients. You can control your calorie consumption, eliminate chemicals and preservatives,  and save a considerable amount of money. You also eliminate all the extra packaging, processing and shipping required to produce frozen or prepackaged convenience foods.

As I have said so many times, the list of things I no longer purchase at the supermarket keeps getting longer and longer.

Regular exercise

Another interesting correlation with those that lived longer was regular exercise. At times, this is a by product of where people lived. One community that contains a high ratio of centenarians is in an incredibly mountainous region. Because of that people have no choice but to get regular exercise just from walking around the community. They were athletes just because of their environment.

However, in places such as Okinawa, Japan those that lived the longest were also physically active. This may be the result of walking everyday to tending a garden. The point is that they are getting a moderate amount of exercise every single day.

Interestingly enough, for most of human existence people had to be physically active just to carry out the basic functions of life. Hunting, gathering and cultivating food kept people active. The bottom line is that the people that live the longest are getting regular exercise. There is truly an enormous amount of literature that points to a multitude of benefits connected to regular physical activity. Furthermore, the sheer volume of research reveals that regular physical activity prevents, ameliorates or delays numerous detrimental health conditions.

For example, regular exercise reduces blood pressure, improves cardiovascular health, helps to prevent diabetes, and may even reduce your risk of cancer. It also supports brain health, reduces depression and anxiety, improves arthritic conditions, strengthens bones and muscles,  improves your sleep and helps to control your body weight. 

Compare this to our modern culture. Technology may have made our lives easier but we also get substantially less exercise. Most children these days spend most of their time indoors playing video games.  We can have most things with the flip of a switch. We no longer have to hunt or gather our food. In fact, we can now do our grocery shopping online and pick it up curbside. While gardening used to be the way people survived it is now a leisure activity. Less than 1% of our population now lives on farms.

Now compare this to a sustainable lifestyle, which in my opinion is a closer comparison to how life was in the 1800s. In most cases, if you truly try to live a simple life and manage as many of your resources as possible, you are going to have to do some work. Between raising animals for food, planting a garden, maintaining a solar array, plus maybe even hauling water and cutting firewood, it seems sometimes as if the work never ends. But the best part of all this is that you are working outside a great deal of the time.

These are all the things I do on a regular basis. From cutting and hauling firewood to carrying two 5 gallon buckets of water, I never seem to have a shortage of manual labor to do. This is why I never go to a gym. I don’t have to.

Protecting your DNA

The end result of the two habits listed above is that research has shown that proper diet and regular exercise protects our DNA. As we age, the ends of our chromosomes become shorter. This makes us more likely to become ill. It has been shown that lifestyle changes can boost the enzyme that makes our chromosomes longer. That bottom line here is that healthy habits may very well slow aging at the cellular level.

Spiritual Connection

Another observation that is equally as important as diet and exercise is the social lives and connections that people have in their community. Centenarians tend to live in communities that are  highly integrated.

Numerous research projects have shown again and again that a sense of social connection helps to reduce the effects of stress. Furthermore, the responsibility of maintaining those relationships promotes greater overall mental and physical activity. In fact, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a

psychologist at Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah, found that the quality of our relationships are as important to our health as exercise and diet.

One commonality in these communities of centenarians is spiritual connection. While religious practices vary, participation in such a community provides an improved sense of purpose and provides solace during difficult times. Both of these appear to add between one to five year to the life of believers.

However, even if you do not have such religious connections or beliefs, participation in community supported events, social support from like-minded individuals, and even spending time in nature is thought to produce the same benefits.

But our modern day communities are the exact opposite. As more and more people move their lives into urban areas, fewer and fewer people even know their next door neighbor. People are more frequently crowded into high density housing which seems to promote conflict more than it does a sense of community. We would rather spend more time on social media than have a face-to-face conversation with the neighbor. A significant percent of people are now completely detached from any sense of belonging to their family, friends, workplace, and local and national communities.

I will be the first to admit that over the years that I’ve been at the cabin there have been some significant challenges. But despite living in the middle of the forest, we have a very strong sense of community. This is one of the reasons we continue to live where we do.  Now because we are all very spread out, it may be weeks, and sometimes even months, before we will see one another. But when we do it is as if we saw each other just last week.

Despite not seeing each other on a weekly basis, if any one person in this small community ever needs anything, more than one person is willing to jump in and help. This is especially important since we all live in an area where services are non-existent or it may take hours for any sort of help to arrive. All I have to do to get almost immediate help is to call or text someone and they will be there in a short period of time. This of course adds an additional layer of security since we live somewhat isolated.

I have concluded that one of the best things about our off-grid, sustainable lifestyle is our sense of community and the small group of friends that we’ve know for years  Whoever thought that is one of the things that makes people live longer.

Conscientiousness may also help you live longer.

It has long been known that people who keep an active mind tend to live longer. Reading, learning, and mentally challenging yourself actually has positive health benefits. One 80-year study found that people who paid attention to detail, thought things through, and tried to do the right things, tend to live longer.  A different study found that kids who were persistent, organized, and disciplined tend to live 11% longer than their less conscientious counterparts. So, self discipline, organization and goal-oriented behavior are also linked to a longer life.

Compared to our technology driven culture, we now have very few challenges to over come. We can have anything we want, any time we want simply by clicking a few buttons on our laptop. Some of the most basic life skills are no longer necessary because we feel as if all we have to do is look it up on the internet

Compare this to trying to live sustainably and manage as many of your resources as possible. In my last episode on the integration of core life skills and sustainability, I talked a lot about how creativity and ingenuity will become your best friends. Having this sort of a lifestyle basically means you can never take anything for granted. You have to always think, plan ahead, be organized. These are the very things and habits that may make you live longer.

Weight management

Maintaining an appropriate body weight goes right long with all the other things we have been discussing. Numerous studies have shown that staying fit and trim will protect you from diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions that can take years off your life. So, eat more fiber and stay fit and trim.

Interestingly enough, a diet that keeps you fit and trim is the same diet you would maintain if you were attempting to eat as sustainably as possible.

The moderation principle

Now there are numerous other things that have been shown to increase your life span. All of these things have to do with developing healthy habits. It has long been known that things such as smoking and excessive consumption of alcohol is related to chronic disease and early death. But less subtle things that we often do not think about such as chronic stress, lack of social connections and lack of any close intimate relationship, no sense of purpose, chronic anger and negativity, lack of sleep and proper rest are additional things that have been shown to decrease your life expectancy.

So, I suggest that you take a close look at the average modern day lifestyle and see if you actually fit into that mold.  Despite our technological advances that are suppose to make our lives easier we are busier and more stressed than ever. We are so connected  that we are constantly distracted with  emails, voicemails, text messages, and other social media outlets that we have little time to ourselves. We go out with friends and hardly talk to them because we are so distracted with our smart phones.

Furthermore, we are constantly encouraged to consume more, buy more, eat more. We are so tied up from day-to-day that we barely have the time for a home cooked meal. We resort to restaurant food, fast food and pre-packaged foods. All of these are highly processed foods with increased calories, fat and added sugars while being low in essential nutrients. Our most common food groups are cake, cookies, muffins, breads, fried foods, pizza, burgers, chips and crackers. One study I read concluded that the most common vegetable consumed was

French fries.

All the while many of us are waiting for the discovery of some magic anti-aging elixir or superfood that will cure our ills. All the while the answer is right in front of us.

Mean while areas of the world where people are noted to have exceptional longevity live a life of moderation. The answer is not a single magic ingredient but a combination of factors. They eat moderately and maintain a diet loaded with fruits and vegetables. They get plenty of exercise. They drink coffee and tea. They build and maintain strong social connections and find time for spiritual solace whether that is church or time spent in nature.

It is often said that the average person is the sum of the five people they spend the most time with. In addition to that our cultural environment and social  norms exerts a tremendous amount of pressure on all of us that inevitably affects our personal values. This is something we have to learn to step away from. Focusing on living a simple sustainable life can help you do that and it may even help you live longer.

The longer I live the way I do the more people I meet that either have or want the same lifestyle. These are people that want to be independent, self reliant, self sufficient and free from all the rush, stress and poor life management that is often associated with modern society and culture. This just further encourages me to keep doing what I am doing.

You know I am likely just as stressed as the next person while having to deal with traffic going to and from work. However, once I get home I enjoy long-range mountain views, no neighbors, and a whole lot of peace and quiet. I often wonder what the world would be like if more people had the opportunity to enjoy the things that are an everyday part of my life.

So, let’s start closing out this episode by answering the sustainability question of the week.

What is fast fashion and is the garment industry environmentally friendly?

Fast fashion is the result of our insatiable desire to have the “latest and greatest” clothing trend.

This term refers to inexpensively produced garments that copy the latest styles. The “fast-fashion” model involves rapid design, production, distribution and marketing so that retailers are able to have a larger variety of clothing available to consumers at a lower price.

According to the United Nations Environment Program, the fashion industry a global basis is the second largest consumer of water and is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions. That is more that all international flights and maritime shipping combined. Even washing these clothes releases 500,000 tons of microfibers into the oceans every year. This is the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.

Likely you remember when I questioned if there was anything I could do that had zero impact on the planet. My conclusion was “no”. As with most things our choices do make a difference. And that includes the clothes that you purchase. So make choices that are environmentally friendly.

So to start closing our this episode I just want to emphasize that having a longer life is truly the result of multiple factors. But the things that contribute to being on this planet for many years also encompass numerous principles of sustainability.

There is no doubt that if we humans want to survive on this planet much longer, we have to change much of what we are doing. But the only thing you can truly control is how you manage your own life. In my opinion if you want to live longer then live sustainably.

Well folks that’s it for now. I truly hope you have enjoyed this episode and it has give you yet another reason to live a sustainable life. As you have so often heard me say our choice make changes. By living sustainably you can change your mental healthy, your physical health and you just may live a bit longer.

Until next week, this is your host Patrick signing off. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 193

The Integrations of Core Life Skills and Sustainability

Most people think our technology driven world is so much better than how things were in the past. If you have been around long enough to see substantial changes in our society and culture, it truly seems that even 40 years ago we were living in the dark ages.

And honestly,  many of the things I do these days would not be possible if it were not for modern technology. But the challenge is that technological advancements and all of these time-saving products and gadgets have produced a life of ease and convenience that has actually robbed us of some very important skills.

Most of us no longer have core skills that used to be considered basic everyday knowledge. Furthermore we have no concept of sustainability. What I want to examine in this episode is the integration of core life skills with sustainable living.

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E193 which is called The Integration of Core Life Skills and Sustainability.

What I want to accomplish in this episode is to compare self reliance, self sufficiency and sustainable living versus core life skills. I want to show that all of these concepts are no great mystery. It is not as difficult as most people imagine. In fact, they are all integrated. There is a lot of cross over in all of these areas. So even if you simply focus on the necessary skills needed to get by in every day life you also possess the skills to live sustainably. Its just that your focus is a bit different. 

But before we do that lets first start with the sustainability question of the week.

Do we really have toxic products in our homes? If so, what are the potential effects of those products?

If you stick around to the end I will give you the answer to that question. The answer will likely surprise you.

Good news story of the week 

Once again this week, the good news story comes our of the United Kingdom. And this time it is focused on the return of salmon after a 100 years absence. 

It has long been known that industrial activity and the creation of large obstacles on waterways, such as dams, prevent salmon from migrating upstream. One such place is the River Derwent in the English county of Derbyshire. After the removal of the dam and other obstacles, the salmon are once again able to migrated hundreds of miles upstream.

Wildlife organizations such as Wild Trout and Derbyshire Wild Trust are responsible for the removal of various obstacles in the stream. Consequently, many local residents are seeing salmon for the first time. In fact, the salmon are becoming local celebrities as many residents go out at night to see them.

Dam removal has actually become a widespread conservation practice in both Europe and North America. In the US, three dams on the Klamath River are set for demolition in the largest operation of it kind in history.

So, the round of applause this week goes to the salmon celebrities of the River Derwent in the UK.

So, let’s move on to this weeks episode on the integration of core life skills and sustainability.

As most of you know by now my primary profession is veterinary medicine. I have been self employed for 24 years now. During that time I have performed contract work for hundreds of different clinics, several universities, and multiple shelters and non-profits. Needless to say, I have seen a lot of different ways of doing the same thing. I experience a lot of different philosophies and worked with multiple different cultures.

One very important thing that I’ve learned during this time is I always have to be open minded. I have to be flexible in how I do things and  always be open to learning new things. That said, one of the things that has been consistently frustrating to me is to go into a clinic with an older practitioner that is narrow minded and unwilling to embrace anything new.

Commonly I hear the phase, “Well I’ve been doing this for forty years…….” And that is followed by some strong statement of how they are not going to change. I learned a long time ago that my response should never start with, “Well, current literature says there is a better way that produces an improved outcome.” Then I just get stone walled.

So what I don’t want to do in this episode is to sound like that type of person. I don’t want to come across as lamenting the loss of the sunny slopes of long ago or reminiscing about how things used to be. While I do believe that our advanced technology has made our lives easier, we have traded one challenge for another.

For example, I distinctly remember a time when no one had a phone. I was very young at the time and helping my grandfather on the farm. If he needed help with something he would drive to another local farm then have to wander around to find the farmer. Then we would drive back to the farm to accomplish whatever we needed.

I remember when I graduated from veterinary school and got my first job. Because I was on call a lot I was given a cell phone. That cell phone had a battery pack the size of a large brick and was anything but convenient.

These days we have smart phones that are essentially  hand-held computers that fit in our pockets. We have text messaging, voicemail, email, and all sorts of social media. All this connectivity has made our lives easier and much more convenient.

If you don’t know how to do something you have instant access to information online. If you don’t want to do the task yourself it has now become easy to find someone who can help. And because of modern technology I can now sit at the cabin, bounce a signal off a satellite that is 20,000 miles out in space, and work from my home in the middle of the forest. How fantastic is that!!!!

But here is the downside. How many of us know how to purify our own drinking water or start a fire in an emergency situation? How many of us know basic first aid and CPR. How many of us know how to can and preserve our own food, make home made bread or jelly? How many of us know how to raise chickens, plant a garden, or even cook from scratch like grandma used to do?

Hopefully you see my point. I am not lamenting over how things used to be or regretting many of the changes due to technology. I am simply referring to our loss of basic life skills. In today’s world of advanced technology we’ve lost numerous core life skills,  basic knowledge of sustainable living and most people have absolutely no sense of survival skills. Our lives have been improved by modern technology but ultimately we have been robbed of something very valuable. We are now a society that is no longer self sufficient, no longer self reliant, and no longer sustainable. Furthermore, these types of skills are no longer even taught at home.

Annette’s son Erik is turning 20 years old this year and has been living on his own for a couple of years now. A good portion of his childhood was spent growing up at the cabin. And believe me when I say it was a struggle at times. There was anger, frustration, crying and a lot of resistance to help with the chores necessary for the three of us to live there. But there was one thing I kept telling him over and over again. If you can learn to live like this you will be prepared to live anywhere you want. Cultivating the creativity and determination to live off the grid will prepare you for far more things in life than you can imagine.

Now that he has been out on his own for several years he frequently comes back to us says that people in the world don’t know how to do anything anymore. He has turned out to be very independent and self reliant. So, I think we did at least one thing correctly. 

But as I said before, I think the underlying challenge is that basically there are far too many people who do not know how to take care of themselves. There are far fewer people that possess any concept whatsoever of  the most basic survival skills. And this is because we depend so heavily on technology. We think such skills are no longer needed or even necessary.

But there is a good side to this. There is tremendous cross over between basic life skills and sustainable living skills. Consequently, in many respects if you want to live more sustainably all you really have to do is focus on learning some of the more basic life skills.

But there is a lot of talk these days about self-reliance, self-sufficiency, sustainability, and even core life skills. So let’s take a moment to define what each of these really mean because they are all related but not exactly the same.

The philosopher John Stuart Mill is credited with first using the term self reliance in an 1883 letter where he described this as an essential quality of “a free man.” The basis of self reliance is depending on yourself for things without relying on others. This is of course what we try to achieve when we first leave our parents behind and move out on our own. But you may also prove your self reliance by cooking your own meals, taking the bus by yourself or hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Self reliant people tend to be creative and innovative. They tend to be coordinators, organizers and make decisions easily. Such people can provide for their own needs independently for extended periods of time.

Self sufficiency on the other hand tends to focus on meeting your own needs without relying on any external sources. For example, providing sufficient resources such as power, water, shelter, and food without any outside assistance.

A good way to look at this is that self-reliance emphasizes individual skills and resourcefulness. It is about developing personal skills and abilities to take care of yourself. It is about relying on your own power and initiative. Self sufficiency leans more toward independence from external systems and providing for yourself in a comprehensive manner. It is about achieving a high degree of independence and autonomy.

For example, at the cabin I am highly self reliant. I have done virtually all the construction work, learned how to design and install solar electric systems, build a greenhouse, and I even learned how to run heavy equipment so I could do road repairs. Rarely have I relied on anyone else to help me do these things. I have had to be self reliant because I did not have a choice.

On the other hand, we are 100% self sufficient when it comes to our water supply and electricity. We have systems in place to supply these needs for ourselves without relying on external sources. We supply 100% of our own wood to heat the cabins. We are self sufficient in that respect. But we of course have to purchase propane.

We raise chicken and turkeys and have the greenhouse. We do a considerable amount of home food preservation. We acquire large amounts of organic meat from a Colorado ranch. We make about 90% of our own bread products and spice mixes. We also keep a large store of basic dry goods. So in this sense, we are about 50% self sufficient when it comes to our food supply. But, we have enough supplies on hand that we could be completely self sufficient for about a year. Our focus is to be able to live at the cabin for an extended period of time without any reliance on the outside world in the unlikely event that we ever had to do such a thing.

As you can see there is a lot of cross over between self reliance and self sufficiency. But with the self sufficiency mindset the intention is completely different. However, you are never going to be self sufficient without possessing the needed skills to be self reliant. You can actually be a very self reliant person without ever being self sufficient.

By now I hope you get the point. So, let’s transition into talking about core life skills and then I would like to show how that helps us develop sustainable living skills.

In a very academic sense, core life skills refer to a set of essential abilities that enable all of us to adapt and deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. These are the types of skills we all need to successfully manage our personal, social, and professional lives. Honing such skills enables all of us to grow into productive members of our community and society as a whole.

According to the World Health Organization, there are 10 core life skills:

What you should note about these skills is that they focus on personal development and adaptability. Such skills are developed through education, training, and life experiences.

On the other hand, sustainable living skills focus on developing an environmentally friendly lifestyle, minimalism, and even social responsibility. Good examples of sustainable living skills are resource conservation, utilization of renewable energy and other sustainable technologies, waste reduction and recycling, sustainable consumption, reduction of your personal environmental footprint, growing your own food, learning to cook from basic ingredients.  Again, these skills are developed through education, training, and especially through the practical application of these skills in your daily life.

In a broad sense, core life skills focus on individual development and adaptability while sustainable living skills focus on a more collective responsibility concerning our environmental impact. Core life skills tend to be more general whereas sustainable living skills are very specific. Core life skills are essential for personal and professional success. Sustainable living skills are crucial for protecting the planet for future generations.

A great example of the cross over between core life skills and sustainable living is saving money. Managing your money could certainly be considered a important life skill. But the many ways you can save money are also environmentally friendly. For example:

-Set a budget: This means living within your means and being conservative about what you spend. This also means avoiding any impulse buying and over consumption. Setting a budget means you also go easy on the environment.

-Downsizing your home will save you a substantial amount of money. Living in a smaller home also greatly reduces your environmental impact. You use less water, burn less fossil fuels, have fewer personal possession, and use far less electricity.

-Cook meals at home. The average person spends more that 50% of their monthly budget on restaurant food, take out, and food delivery services. This produces a tremendous amount of waste and has a significant impact on the environment. You can avoid all of that by cooking at home.

-Buying second hand products; Far too many things end up in our landfills for no reason. Instead of buying something new consider shopping at a thrift store, or garage and estate sales.

-DIY; People spend far too much money paying other people to complete various home projects that you could like do yourself. I have saved tens of thousands of dollars by learning to do things myself. And chances are, that has significantly less environmental impact than hiring someone else.

-Use public transportation is far less expensive than operating a personal vehicle. This not only saves you money but also significantly reduces your ecological footprint.

-Using energy efficient appliances: This is also a great way to reduce the carbon footprint of your home.

The whole point here is that so many people still think that living sustainably is some big mystery. But the bottom line is that there is a lot of cross over with core life skills and sustainable living. I think the challenge is that due to our technology based society we are no longer taught some basic life skills. Consequently, living sustainable seems difficult concept.

When it comes to living off the grid I can tell you for certain that critical thinking, ingenuity, and creativity have become my best friends. But as a general rule,  the same could be said about most things in life. Core life skills also require critical thinking, problem solving and adaptability. Developing sustainable living skills further enhances your core life skills. The benefit of integrating core life skills and sustainable living is that it can provide a comprehensive and holistic approach to both personal and professional development.

If you take a minute to look at important life skills you will quickly realize that each of those skills can be incorporated into a sustainable lifestyle. For example:

Doing laundry: Having clean clothes is an important part of personal care and being self reliant.  The sustainability part of that equation is using environmentally friendly detergents, doing laundry only when you have a full load, and even hanging clothes out to dry in order to save electricity.

Food preparation: Cooking meals at home is not only healthier but also much more sustainable. Eating out, eating fast food, consuming pre-packaged foods or other highly processed foods are less healthy, costs more money and produces a lot more waste.

-Shopping for groceries on a budget: This goes along with food preparation. So many people think that eating healthy is more expensive. That is simply not true. If you learn to cook using basic kitchen staples you can still produce a huge variety of meals and save yourself a considerable amount of money.

Purchase perishable foods only in the amount you think you will consume in less than one week. This is the best way to prevent food waste. Purchase only fruits and vegetables that are in season. Doing both of these things will save you a lot of money and is also easier on the environment.

-Minimalism: I strongly recommend adopting a minimalistic attitude toward life. This means purchasing only what you need. Everything you own should have a specific purpose. This minimizing clutter, saves you a tremendous amount of money and also means you utilize fewer resources.

Summary

So, I hope you are starting to get the picture here. Living sustainably is not all that difficult. There is no big mystery. Sustainable living can easily be integrated in the things we should be doing anyway. It is perhaps just a little bit of a different mindset.

In summary:

-Core life skills refer to a set of essential abilities that enable all of us to adapt and deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. These are the types of skills we all need to successfully manage our personal, social, and professional lives.

-Self reliance: Self reliant people tend to be creative and innovative. They tend to be coordinators, organizers and make decisions easily. Such people can provide for their own needs independently for extended periods of time.

-Self sufficiency: Self sufficiency on the other hand tends to focus on meeting your own needs without relying on any external sources. For example,  providing sufficient resources such as power, water, shelter, and food without any outside assistance.

-Sustainable living: focusing on minimizing your environmental impact and maximizing the use of local resources while focusing on the conservation of the environment. 

So, think of it this way. Core life skills are the things that enable us to take care of ourselves day-to-day. Developing your core life skills makes you a self reliant person. That self reliance can then be used to make yourself as self sufficient as possible in the context of where and how you live. You can then incorporate sustainable practices which minimize your use of resources and reduces your environmental impact as much as possible. And this would turn you into a modern day sustainable living expert. People would start asking you how you do what you do?

Now what I want to do is to answer the sustainability question of the week.

Do we really have toxic products in our homes? If so, what are the effects of those products?

Since 1950, approximately 70,000 new synthetic chemical have been invented and are now dispersed in the environment. On average there are about 150 chemicals found in our homes that are directly connected to specific health problems. 

Many of these chemicals have been directly connected to allergies, psychological disorders,  birth defects, endocrine disruption, various types of cancer, and reproductive disorders. Just another reason to live sustainably.

Well folks in closing I hope this episode has proved there is no big mystery to living sustainably. Core life skills added to self reliance added to self sufficiency added to sustainable living would turn you turn you into a well adjusted, stable, creative, ingenious individual that could survive almost anything. But in the end it is simply a choice. Our choices make changes. Given the right choices you can change your life and be a part of changing our world.

Until next week this is your host Patrick signing off. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

E192

Is Conscious Consumerism Just a Lie?

Scientists and other experts with ExxonMobile knew about the long-term detrimental affects of burning fossil fuels back in the 1970s. Their predictions of climate change were astonishingly accuracy. Yet we were led to believe there was nothing to worry about.

As we continue to see on-going changes in our world directly related to human behavior, we are now told that we should be more conscious about what we eat, what we wear, what and how much we drive, and to even learn to be a minimalist. Such things fall under this big umbrella of conscious consumerism.

But some experts say that conscious consumerism is just another lie to distract us from what really needs to be done to produce meaningful change. So, join me for E191 where I examine whether or not conscious consumerism is just a lie. 

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E 191 Is Conscious Consumerism Just a Lie.

If you listened to last weeks episode you know that I discussed 12 tips on how to become a conscious consumer. I truly believe that these are worthwhile things to pursue and implement in your life. Yet there are those that are strongly opposed to the concept of conscious consumerism. They propose that it is just a distraction from what is truly needed to produce long-term, meaningful systemic change. These outspoken opponents believe that the small things we do, such as buying local, eating organic, and recycling are just not going to save the world. The argument is that true systemic change is what is needed.

So what I want to do in this episode is to closely examine that argument.

Sustainability question of the week.

What is the greatest source of toxins in our homes?

Good news story of the week.

Once again, the good news story of the week comes out of the UK. This is because there are some amazing re-wilding efforts taking place in the UK. They are truly setting an example for the rest of us. 

This weeks story has to do with a pair of beaver that were reintroduced into the northern part of the country last year. Last year a pair of beaver were reintroduced into a 25 acre habitat on the Wallington Estate in Northumberland. Since that time, they have truly been busy little beavers. Building dams, mudflats and ponds, digging channels that reroute water in numerous directions all across the landscape. The result of all of this industrious transformation is a now thriving ecosystem that is seeing the return of kingfisher, herons, and even bats.

This industrious pair now have a baby beaver. Beaver reintroduction was started in 2021 by the National Trust, which hopes that this show of success will result in the reintroduction of other species as well.

This is a perfect example of what can happen if we just leave nature to do what it does best, develop into a thriving ecosystem. So this weeks round of applause goes to the UK and the beaver that are transforming the landscape.

Those that oppose this movement of conscious consumerism say that cutting out red meat, avoiding the use of single use plastics, recycling, having fewer children, and eating more vegetables, as well as many other things that are the foundation of sustainability,  are all meaningless acts that accomplish nothing more than propping up our moral conscious.

For example, in 2017 we spent $9.32 billion on green cleaning products. The argument is that even if one third of that money was spent on lobbying efforts to ban the production of toxic chemical, we might have made some progress by now. Opponents to the conscious consumer movement simply say all the little things we do is simple a gesture, well-meaning actions that say we care about the environment. However, it makes no difference whatsoever. In order to do all the things that we should be doing means that we will have to shun societal norms.

Further arguments say that society is simply weighted against us and that is why conscious consumerism is bound to fail. Look at the following examples:

-Bottled water consumption has continued to rise. It costs 2,000 time more than tap water. It is an indisputable fact that the millions of water bottles that never get recycled take hundreds of years to degrade.

-The vast majority of our food is packaged in plastic that cannot be recycled.

-Only 2% of the clothing in the US in actually made in the US. Clothing is designed to only last a couple of years at most.

-Pesticide free food costs more

-We are working so much that we have little time to prepare home-cooked, meals, fix our things that break, much less do our own sewing and mending.

-Palm oil, the production of which is the world’s leading cause of deforestation, is in half the products we buy

-Consumption is the backbone of the American economy. In fact, household consumption makes up 70% of our GDP. In fact, the systems, the institutions, the entire marketing industry which is good at convincing us of all the things we need, everything is geared toward maximizing consumption.

What all of this means is that individual conscious consumerism is bound to fail. Additional arguments I found is that sustainability is an issue of privilege and is a movement geared toward the elite simply because the average person needs a fair amount of disposable income in order to afford ethical and sustainable consumption options. All the sustainable choices that we make means nothing at all because what is truly needed is systemic change. The thought is that if we give consumers transparency and information that they will make the right choice. However, that is not how consumerism is set up.

The big argument here against conscious consumerism is that it places our focus on something that is meaningless. Instead of worrying about one obscure chemical in restaurant food perhaps we should petition the government to overhaul the approval process for the 80,000 chemical found in all of our products. Instead of buying organic maybe we should maybe we should donate and volunteer for organizations that work to try to keep agricultural run off out of our water supply.

So, considering all that I’ve pointed out here, the question hanging in the balance is whether or not conscious consumerism a lie?

It is true that the system is stacked against us. If you look at the history of the rise of consumerism you will see that as our society and culture advances and we have more expendable income, we tend to consume even more. Truly, marketing and advertising has been the longest standing most successful experiment in social engineering ever conducted.

But we know by now that our culture of consumption has resulted in global environmental degradation, wide spread pollution, water contamination, extensive deforestation, water shortages, climate change, as well as many other things. We also know by now that this trend cannot continue. But it is also true that we need the involvement of big business and big government to fight against and reverse climate change, to transition to a green economy and renewable energy, to speed up environmental restoration, and the restructure much of our society and make appropriate systemic changes so that our economy is not based on constant consumption.

But if we all took the attitude that our individual choices make no difference and we continued in our life of over consumption, nothing will ever change. Big business and big government will be more than happy to support our over consumption. Environmental degradation and deforestation will continue. Climate change will worsen and over time our planet will not support human life.

More often than not, system change begins with individual change. Consider the efforts of Gretta Thunberg. One person managed to gained the attention of the entire global community.

Many decades ago it was the ingenuity of a single clever farmer in Iceland that eventually started the movement that resulted in Iceland now being run nearly 100% off of renewable energy.

Consider the efforts of individuals that started non-profits geared toward environmental restoration. These types of organizations have been responsible for extensive re-wilding and environment restoration projects. In many cases rare species are now thriving, large areas of land are now restored to its natural state,  many native species are now being re-introduced. The world is starting to show signs of recovery.

Look at what happened during the pandemic. Due to the lack of human activity, in less than one year the air quality around urban areas worldwide drastically improved, water started to settle and clear and fish species started to return, animals species not seen in certain areas in decades began to rebound. This is a drastic example of what is possible if we just change how we live.

A couple of years ago I decided to sit down and examine and pick apart my entire lifestyle. My goal was to determine the what, how and where of my own personal environmental impact. What I discovered is that I scored high marks when it came to living on renewable energy, using very little water, producing a considerable amount of my own food. I scored very low marks when it came to the burning of fossil fuels, primarily gasoline. This was all because we live rather isolated. It is 20 miles just to get to the supermarket. I work mostly in the Denver area. Just to get to the edge of town is nearly 40 miles.

Once I realized this, I made significant changes. I limited my commuting by limiting which part of Denver I was willing to work in. Then I made attempts to group my work days together and find a creative way to stay in town at least one night when I worked back to back days. The end result is that I reduced my commuting by 50%.

What is everyone reduced their driving by 50%? That would have a significant environmental impact. At this point in time, the cost of an electric vehicle is beyond financial reach for the average consumer. But, until that changes the average consume r can certainly reduce their commuting substantially. That may have an even greater environmental impact than driving an EV.

Over the last year I have also reduced my consumption of beef by at least 50%. And that was easy to do. What if everyone did that?

To say that you have to have a considerable amount of expendable income in order to live a sustainable life is simply not true. The very foundation of sustainability is actually geared toward cost savings. In one of my previous episodes called The True Cost of Sustainability I talked extensively about how it is much cheaper to live sustainably. And having made the choice to live the way I do is the very reason I have been debt free for 7 years now.

What if everyone made the choice to buy it once buy it for life. This approach alone would not only change our economy but would dramatically reduce our use of resources. Take cookware for example. Yes I paid a little more up front for my cast iron and stainless steel cookware. But that cookware has lasted me over 20 years at this point and will likely last me for the rest of my life. If everyone made that choice, the cookware industry would almost disappear.

What if we all made that choice for everything we purchased. After all, it is our consumer choices that drive the marketplace. There is no denying the fact that our choices do make changes.

Another good example are all the convenience foods that we eat. Fewer and fewer people actually eat home cooked meals. The average person spends more than half of their food budget on take out, restaurant food, home deliveries, fast food, or pre-prepared, highly processed foods that require little or no preparation time. Not only that, if you take the time to read the labels on all the convenience foods you consume you quickly realize that you need a graduate degree in organic chemistry just to get a basic understanding of all the ingredients. That means that most of the food we consume is nothing more than an industrial experiment.

A perfect example is supermarket bread. I read the label on one loaf of bread and there were 47 ingredients. When I make bread at home it has flour, salt, yeast, water, and any herbs I decide to include in the mix. Additionally, on a regular basis I try to find yet another common food item that I can make at home so that I can avoid purchasing a commercial product. Consequently, the list of things I no longer purchase at the supermarket keeps getting longer and longer.

I think the bottom line is that conscious consumerism is not necessarily a lie. Our consumer choices do in fact drive the marketplace. The problem is that we live in a market-driven consumer economy where someone is constantly inventing needs that we never knew we had. We are constantly offered the latest and greatest gadget. The products we purchase are intentionally designed to have a limited lifespan so that we will have to buy yet another thing. It’s called planned obsolescence.

That said, you can make the choice to not participate in such an economy. That is exactly what I do. I purchase only the things I need. Every thing I own has a particular function. We produce a significant amount of our own food and live 100% off grid.

I often joke that our economy would not work if everyone lived the way I do. That said, it is true that there will have to be a significant shift in the nature of our economy if we are to truly live sustainably on a national and global level. But in my opinion, we don’t have a choice.

Consider this one example. Economic devastation is highly likely under even the mildest climate change scenarios. As rain fall patterns and growing zones shift it is going to disrupt agricultural production. As sea levels continue to rise, sooner or later densely population coastal areas are going to become unlivable.

Truly in order to drastically reduce our CO2 emissions in order to slow down and even reverses climate change is going to require significant government intervention. The government could put a per ton carbon tax on emissions to force the greatest offenders to finally take responsibility for their environmental abuse. But such a thing would be wildly unpopular. While consumer choices and grassroots activism is a good thing. But for significant change to happen in certain key areas is going to require government intervention.

While such actions may seem implausible to some, all you have to do is look at some of the most sustainable countries on the planet that have a decades long history of sustainable policy making. So, it is possible.

That said, the opponents of the conscious consumerism movement say that all the little things we do make no significant difference. But it is all the little things that we do that got us in the situation we are presently in. Even if strong government intervention is need to make some of the bigger changes, individuals still need to change their own behavior. In order to change all the little things that we do, we need a starting point. A good place to start is to become a conscious consumer. So, conscious consumerism is not a lie. It is possibly the very foundation of making a cultural shift to something that is far more sustainable.

So, let’s round off this episode by answering the sustainability question of the week.

What is the greatest source of toxins in our homes?

Nearly 70% of the toxic contamination in our homes are the things we tract in on our shoes. Think of all the environmental contamination you come in contact with by simply putting gasoline in your car. Think about all the chemicals you put on your lawn or for that matter all the chemicals that everyone else uses on their lawn. All of these things end up in our homes.

This best way to avoid this is to implement a no shoes policy. Since I work in the medical industry anyway, I have specific pairs of shoes that I use for work. I have other shoes that are only for home.

Well, that’s about it for this week folks. I hope you have enjoyed this episode. Don’t forget to visit my podcast home page at adventuresinsustainableliving.com. You can get instant access to a free report called 200 sustainability questions and answers. 

Until next week folks, always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 191

Twelve Tips to Becoming a Conscious Consumer

Despite the fact that we live in the age of information the average person is still confused about how to start living sustainably. This is somewhat understandable because there is so much information available. Furthermore, it is not helpful that much of the time we are given conflicting views on what to do and the potential value of any action at all. 

There is of course a long list of ways to start living a more sustainable life. All you have to do is pick one thing and focus on that until it is a part of your daily life. But if I were to sum things up into one simple concept it would be “become a conscious consumer.” So join me for episode 191 where I am going to discuss how to become a conscious consumer.

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E191 Twelve Tips to Becoming a Conscious Consumer.

What I want to focus on in this episode are 12 specific tips on how to become a conscious consumer. This is actually a very easy process and is something you can start today. Yet even this topic can become a rabbit hole of misinformation. The best part is that the foundation of being a conscious consumer is simply making informed decisions about every single thing you do.

But before we do that let’s first get a couple of things out of the way.

Sustainability question of the week

Of all the products we have in our homes, is the government responsible for testing these products for consumer safety?

Stick around to the end and you will get the answer to that question.

Good news story of the week.

This week good news story is about yet another re-wilding project in the UK. The United Kingdom has a national trust called Stepping Stones. Volunteers working with this organization are re-wilding extensive areas that were formally used to producing hay and other marketable grasses.

The problem is that the UK has lost nearly 97% of its natural meadows over the last 100 years. This of course has resulted in extensive habitat loss. Stepping Stones is working with landowners and local councils to restore many of these meadows to produce valuable wildlife corridors. And they are already seeing some success. The rare bilberry bumblebee is making a comeback.

So, once again we see the value of environmental restoration. So, the week’s round of applause goes to Stepping Stones, all of its volunteers, and the bilberry bumblebee.

So, let’s move on to this weeks episode.

I will admit that there is a lot of conflicting information about living sustainably. One article points out that plastic has become the bane of our existence and should be eliminated from the planet. Another article strongly insists that one person’s choices and actions make no significant difference whatsoever.

So, let’s start by looking at a great example of something you can do to become a conscious consumer.

A few years ago there was a video of a sea turtle with a plastic straw lodged in it’s nose. That video went viral of course and is often cited as the one thing that shifted the public’s perception of the use of plastic straws.

So, let’s just take a moment and consider this one thing: the drinking straw. The drinking straw has actually been a harmless staple since ancient civilization. Only in the last 60 years has the plastic straw become synonymous with environment harm.

Just looking at the plastic straw it appears to be benign. Besides what’s the harm in such a small thing when you throw it away. However the problem is that plastic straws are a particularly harmful type of single-use plastic. The shape of the straw itself draws the attention of predators such as birds, turtles, and aquatic life. When consumed they can cause choking and obstruction. In the U.S alone we throw away 500 million straws per day. Globally, 8.3 billion straws end up on the beaches every year. 

But you will hear people say that plastic straws are not the source of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They are not the source of our pollution problem because they only comprised less than 1% of plastic pollution.  So, what’s the big deal. Is there any true significance or effectiveness in banning the use of plastic straws?

The truth is that plastic straws are only a tiny part of a much bigger issue. In fact, it is less than 1 percent of the bigger issue. The potential problem of banning plastic straws is that it confers a “moral license.” This means that if we decide to never use plastic straws again then customers and companies feel as if they have done their part and stop there. 

The crucial challenge is to make sure that banning single use plastic straws is just the first step. It is an easy place to start as long as it is part of a fundamental shift away from single use plastic products. Plastic straws may not be considered a significant part of the pollution problem. But, they are a symptom of a much bigger cultural issue.

Deciding not to use plastic straws is a good example of being a conscious consumer. One you educate yourself about the harmfulness of this particular single use plastic you make the choice to not use it. This brings me to my first point.

1) Educate yourself

You have likely heard me say before that we live in the age of information. We have nearly instant access to hundreds, if not thousands of years of information in a matter of seconds. So take the time to educate yourself. This means putting forth the effort to make informed decisions that take into account your health, your community and the planet.

A fantastic place to start is with environmental awareness. After all it is the natural world that provides us with what we need to live and breath. There are plenty of online resources ranging from articles, books, videos, documentaries, online courses.

Educating yourself about our natural world will go a long way toward making you appreciate the harm that we are doing to our planet. Once you have an understanding of that, then take the next step.

2) Understand your values

The next logical step is to reflect on the things that matter most to you. Ask yourself some crucial questions such as:

-What is most important to me in life?

-What do I stand for?

-What kind of person do I want to be?

-Do I want to be more self reliant?

-Where do I stand on living sustainably?

-Do I care about social justice?

Then identify your core values because this is what will guide your behavior. Common core values such as honesty, integrity, compassion, respect, an attitude of constant learning will increase your self awareness, increase your self esteem, and improve your decision making. This in turn makes you aware of the value of protecting our natural world. Then you are far more motivated to make decisions in line with protecting our environment.

The bottom line is that knowing what matters the most to you will help you make choices that align with your personal values.

3) Question everything

We are constantly exposed to a flood of information. Much of that information is geared toward manipulating our behavior especially our consumer behavior. Quite often it is difficult to know what to believe. This is why we have to question everything.

Questioning everything is a fundamental principle that helps us to:

For example, in science, questioning everything is essential for the discovery of new knowledge and the advancement of scientific understanding. In medicine, questioning everything is critical for patient safety. In everyday life, questioning everything can help us to avoid making mistakes and to make informed decisions. By questioning our own assumptions and the information we receive, we can avoid falling prey to misinformation and we can make better choices.

From a sustainability perspective, ask questions about everything concerning the products you buy. For example, the materials used, the values of the companies that produce these product, the their impact on the environment and society as a whole.

4) Needs versus Wants

The next step is to be honest with yourself about what you truly need versus what you want. Our constant exposure to advertising convinces us that buying more and owning more things is the key to happiness. Yet it is this very type of consumptive behavior that results in tremendous strain on our natural resources.

Needs simply refers to the essentials that are necessary for survival, comfort, and well-being, whereas wants are discretionary items that enhance our life but are not essential for survival. For example food, water, shelter, clothing, and personal care are essential. Dining out, hobbies, travel, luxury items and gadgets are wants.

The truth is that most of us can live well on far less that what we do. The best way to avoid impulse buying is that when you are considering a purchase, wait at least two weeks before making a decision. This allows you time to evaluate whether you really need it. This also allows time to consider alternatives such as second hand products or even rental options if it is a piece of equipment.

5) Make Informed Choices

Research and learn as much as possible to stay informed about the products and services you use. Learn about the essential ingredients, the production process and the environmental impact of the products you consume.

Most of all consider products made from sustainable materials, products with minimal packaging, products produced by companies with fair labor practices. Another important consideration is the product’s end of life and whether it is recyclable.

Making informed choices goes right along with educating yourself.  If you educated yourself then you can support sustainable brands and avoid products that are wasteful and harmful to the environment.

6) Read Labels

What goes right along with making informed choices is reading the labels on the products that you buy and stay informed about the ingredients.

7) Buy it once. Buy it for life

Adopt the attitude of buy it once, buy it for life.

We all enjoy finding good deals on the products that we purchase. However, one of the hallmarks of less expensive products is that they do not last. Then of course they have to be replaced. It is far better to do some research and find quality products that are going to last for years.

For example, I have had the same cast iron cookware for over 15 years. With proper care it will last me for the rest of my life. I may have paid more money up front for the outdoor equipment I have but it some of it has lasted me over 20 years. The backpack that I use everyday was a moderately expensive purchase. But it comes with a lifetime guarantee. It is gets damaged the company will repair it for free. If they cannot fix it they will replace is.

Buy it once. Buy it for life.

8) Always avoid single use plastics

Plastics are such a common part of our lives that we tend to forget that these items produce a significant environmental impact. In 2021, single use plastics were the source of 139 million metric tons of waste. Even if single use plastics are recyclable, 95% of them never get recycled.

All of this waste could be avoided by following a few simple tips:

-Carry reusable bags

-Use stainless steel or glass containers such as drinking cups and food storage containers.

-Purchase products with minimal packaging.

-Use mesh produce bags

-Purchase fresh fruits and vegetables without packaging.

-Avoid disposable razors

-Refuse disposable eating utensils

-Avoid single use straws. If you use straws frequently, purchase stainless steel straws and carry them with you.

9) Reduce your plastic waste in other ways

This is best done by starting with one thing at a time. In addition to the items mentioned above, make a commitment to never use a plastic bag again. It is estimated that 5 trillion plastic bags are thrown away each year.

Next, start in your kitchen. Make a pledge to never buy a plastic storage container again. As your plastic storage containers wear out replace them with glass or metal.

Bathroom and cleaning products are going to be little more difficult. That said, making your own cleaning products is super easy, sustainable, and the end product is much less toxic than the alternatives at the supermarket.

Making your own soap is much easier than most people think. Yes there is a learning curve. But we make large batches and then do not need to make any more for months. Homemade laundry detergent is another super easy thing to make. Recipes for most of these things can be easily found online.

10) Ditch the bottled water

I want to make a special point about bottled water because this is by far one of the most wasteful habits we have. We have been convinced by clever marketing that bottle water is safer and better for us. The reality is than 40% of bottle water is simply bottle tap water. And recent studies have shown that 95% of bottle water is loaded with micro-plastics.

And you may not think much about throwing away one single plastic water bottle but it makes a difference when you realize that in the US alone we throw away 60 million plastic bottle per day. Globally, 1.3 billion plastic bottles are thrown away daily. That is the equivalent of 1 million per minute. If you are worried about your tap water, invest in a high quality filter. That is what we do at the cabin and we produce purified drinking water for less than three cents per gallon.

11) Develop a minimalist mindset

Every single one of us can live on 50% less than what we do. The challenge is that we have so many choices available to us and we are tempted by clever advertising. Consequently,  we end up purchasing more than what we need.

The best example ever is the increased average size of our homes. In the 1960s the average size of our homes was around 1200 square feet. In 2024, the average size of new homes is now over 6000 square feet. Those homes of course have to be filled with stuff. Not to mention the tremendous amount of money required to maintain such a home.

There are two cabins on the homestead property we still have less than 1000 square feet. But the property is easy to maintain and cost me very little. Yet, we have all that we need to live a modern lifestyle.

Besides, minimalist life choices allows you to focus on quality instead of quantity. Trust me when I say you will end up with more spare time, more money, and more personal freedom in the long run if you just simply learn to live on less. 

12) Remember, every choice counts

You have to be mindful of the fact that every single thing we do has some sort of impact on the environment. From what you eat, to what you buy, to the services you use, what you drive and even your online behavior has some sort of an impact on the planet. If as a society we all started making more conscious choices, we can create a more sustainable future.

Summary

Now just to quickly sum things up here, you have to realize that similar to living sustainable, being a conscious consumer is a choice, it is a process. It requires being mindful of everything you do. About 6 months after starting this podcast I truly started wondering if there was any one thing that I could do that had no impact whatsoever on the planet or on the environment. I eventually decided that the answer was a hard no. Everything we do, every choice we make has an impact. We just have to learn to make better choices. But we can do that by educating ourselves, developing an understanding of our personal values, questioning everything, determining our needs versus our wants, making informed choices, reading labels, purchasing products that last, avoiding single use plastics, reducing other types of plastic waste, ditching the bottled water, and learning to live on less. And finally embracing the idea that every choice counts.

When I first started living off the grid everyone around me thought I was crazy. Twenty seven years later the urgent messages we hear almost daily concerning the climate and the environment are simply an echo of all the reasons I started this lifestyle in the first place. Using minimal resources, living sustainably, and being as self reliant as possible are the foundation of many things that I do. Certainly you have heard me say before that I never expect anyone to live the way I do. However, you can make a significant difference by becoming a conscious and responsible consumer. By doing so you will take an important contribution to a more sustainable and equitable world.

Now I want to close this episode by answering the sustainability question of the week.

Is the government responsible for testing the chemical components of all the products in our homes?

Unfortunately, the sheer volume of new chemicals being produced and marketed make government testing and monitoring impossible. No health or hazard information is available for greater than 80% of those chemicals much of which are in the products that we use everyday.

Yet another reason to become a conscious consumer.

Well folks I hope you have enjoyed this episode. If so be sure to join me again next week. Also, check out my podcast home page which can be found at adventuresinsustainableliving.com

There is a free resource there called 200 sustainability questions and answers. And it is completely free. Until next week, always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 189

Dispelling the Myth of Zero Waste

Someone once said to me that the only problem with going plastic free is going plastic free. But the same could be said for having a sustainable lifestyle. It is a process, a choice, a journey instead of an end all be all.

But I also think it is the same with going zero waste. We constantly hear talk about a sustainable circular economy but is it all just a dream?  Is going zero waste even achievable for an individual much less an entire society and culture?

What I want to examine in this episode is whether or not this is an achievable goal or is zero waste just a myth. So join me for episode 189 Dispelling the Myth of Zero Waste.

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E189 which is called Dispelling the Myth of Zero Waste.

What I want to accomplish in this episode is to first define the concept of zero waste. Then I want to discussed a couple of real world examples of how we change our habits and ways of thinking and look a community that has focused their efforts toward  zero waste. And finally I want to give you 12 tips on how to reduce your waste.

Sustainability question of the week

Do we really have toxic products in our homes?

Good news story of the week

Zero-Emissions Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Ship successfully Tested in Japan.

A number of Japanese firms successfully conducted a demonstration of the first every zero-emissions ship above 20 gross tons.

This ship sailed 30 kilometers and was powered entirely by hydrogen fuel cells. This is part of Japans’ strategy to reach zero emissions by 2050. Since a significant part of Japan’s emissions come from coastal shipping, the country’s government was seeking an alternative fuel.

Hydrogen is produced by using an electrical current to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The pure hydrogen can then be used as a sustainably substitute for engine fuels such as diesel and kerosene.

Japan is also looking to develop hydrogen fuel for other projects but that is expected to require additional technological development.

So, this weeks round of applause goes to Japan for their advancement toward a zero emissions future.

But to start out this conversation I want to ask several questions.

-Is living a 100% sustainable lifestyle even possible?

-Is it even possible to never use a single product that contains plastic?

-Is it possible to never produce a single piece of waste?

Now whether you realize it or not, the foundations of this conversation started long before many of us were old enough to be the least bit concerned about how the world works. When we are young someone else always provides us with what we need. We are never concerned about where it comes from, who produces it, how much it costs. Furthermore, we have absolutely no concept of the environmental impact of the things we consume.

When you grow up in the land of plenty, when you are raised in a take, make, dispose society, you never give a thought to wasting food or taking advantage of single use plastic items. It is simply how you live and most of us never give a thought to doing anything different. It is instilled, accepted behavior. And therein lies the problem.

And because of this, most people are unwilling to believe that they could run their entire life off of renewable energy, they could cut their driving in half and they could eliminate their food waste. Consequently, when someone proposes going zero waste, most people immediately doubt the ability to live such a life. But if that is how you think then you are not alone.

The average person views the concept of zero waste as an impossible task. While there are experts that believe zero waste is theoretically possible, there are others that believe it is impractical and unrealistic. There are also an increasing number of producers and consumers alike that are on board with the concept of zero waste, but critics still condemn the philosophy as unworkable.

But here is how I think about it. Just the other day I was talking with my closest neighbor, who is about 2 miles away. Him and his wife have been living 100% off grid for about 3 years now. We were discussing the best ways to make our lives work and achieve some level of comfort while being off grid. I made the comment that living off the grid is very achievable but in many ways you just have to think about things a little differently that most people. And the same is true about going zero waste. You just have to think about things very differently.

Living a 100% sustainable lifestyle is probably more aspirational than it is achievable. The same could be said for having a lifestyle where you never use a single product that contains plastic. The same is also true for going zero waste. Such a standard may be aspirational but it also embraces a circular economy and redefines how we view waste. The concept of zero waste means eliminating waste wherever we can and finding new ways to process the waste we do produce.

So perhaps we need to redefine the question.  Instead of asking whether or not zero waste is possible maybe we need to ask whether or not we are willing to address our wasteful habits. This gets more to the root of the problem that got us in our present predicament. This approach tackles not only the waste that we create but also the sources that generate the waste in the first place.

So let’s look at a couple of clear examples.

What happens every time you drink a glass of apple juice? That juice comes from apples that were first peeled and processed into pulp. The left over pulp and peels are by products that are typically  considered waste. You then buy the juice in a container that is difficult to recycle. When it is empty you throw it away and it goes to the landfill. Then the next week you do the same thing.

What could happen is that pulp could be composted to produce high quality organic fertilizer. Or it could be processed into high quality animal feed. The juice could be packaged into glass or aluminum containers that could be recycled endlessly. As a consumer you could refuse to purchase juice unless it comes in a container that can be recycled. But it doesn’t stop there. The same could be said of the orange juice we drink also daily. The same could be said for multiple other products.

Now we could scale this concept up on an industrial level that is much more progressive. Products produced in modular designs that allowed for easy upgrades and repairs instead of complete replacement. This could happen with every single product from vehicles, to home appliances, to construction tools, to our smart phones.

So, here’s the key. This economic model keeps resources in the loop for increasingly longer periods of time. Experts widely agree that new industries and markets would be developed that make full use of the resources that were previously considered waste. Perfect examples are shoe companies that are making products from recycled water bottles and clothes manufacturers using sustainable natural resources.

The point is that this type of system not only challenges our current way of thinking but also gives clear and practical guidance on how we should approach waste reduction and prevention on both the producer and consumer sides of the market.  In other words we do not have to sacrifice the economy to build a more sustainable global community.

Now let’s just take a look at what one city has done to work toward zero waste. In 1995 the City of Fort Collins, Colorado, in the United States estimated that there was $6.5 million USD worth of materials that were getting thrown away every year. The city council developed a comprehensive plan to provide incentives to get away from our throw away society and push the community toward values such as thriftiness and efficiency.

One of the first codes developed was a Pay-as-You-Throw program. This municipal code required trash haulers to charge residential customers based on the volume of waste generated. Additionally, they were required to provide curbside recycling at no extra charge. Under this system households were provided a way to save money by reducing the amount of trash they produce. Over the next 18 years, the city improved those incentives several times. In 1999 the city council set a goal to divert 50% of all discarded resources from landfills by 2010.

In 2013 the city council revamped their strategic plan again. This included an extensive outreach program that included meetings with six city boards and commissions, five community conservation groups, 250 residents and businesses, input from a group that represented a cross section of interests in the community, as well as tours of existing reuse, recycle, composting and landfill facilities in the City of Fort Collins.

The result of this outreach was that it became clear that there had been a significant cultural shift in the community. The idea of recycling was embraced by both residents and businesses. Instead of questioning whether or not to recycle it was a discussion of how to recycle.

By 2012, the city calculated that the level of waste diversion was at 42% for all residential and commercially generated waste. If the city included industrial waste, such as concrete, asphalt, wood waste from demolition projects, organics from breweries, and biosolids, the total community diversion rate was closer to 58%.

But their target of course is zero waste. The City Council focused on four priorities that needed to be implemented in order to reach their goal.

Cultural change: Providing new rules and more incentives that would be promoted through social media, advertising, and creative use of technology in order to reinforce and expand the changes that had already occurred.

Reduce and Reuse: Providing support for residents and businesses to live and operate efficiently and more sustainably. In doing so, this created more than 400 jobs and also helped people in need to have easier access to quality food.

Keep Compostable Organics out of the landfills: Large amounts of food was being donating to people in need instead of going to the landfill. More food was grown and produced locally.

Reduction of Industrial waste: Commercial composting facilities were developed. A new recycling plant was have to be developed to reduce construction and demolition waste. Reuse warehouse would need to be built to support the collection of a wide range of reusable products.

As you can see, the City of Fort Collins made it a priority to reduce waste by providing incentives so that being sustainable became an easy choice. The first three things that they focused on could easily be applied to us an individuals: a cultural change, reduce and reuse, and composting organics.

Statistically, every single one of us generates 4.9 pounds of waste everyday. That is about 146  pounds of waste every month. Going from that to zero waste may seem intimidating but there are countless ways to reduce the waste that you produce. The point is that you cannot focus on perfection. You may never reach a point where you are 100% waste free. But imagine what the world would be like if there were millions of people trying to go waste free.

Here are some tips on how to reduce the waste that you produce.

-Buying in bulk is one of the most environmentally friendly things you can do. Most staple goods such as beans, flour, sugar, rice, cornmeal, pasta, cereals, etc can easily be purchased in bulk quantities. This will also save you a considerable amount of money.

-Ditch the single use plastics. Plastics are cheap, versatile, durable and long-lasting. This is why they are so popular. But these products have now become the bane of our existence. Purchase reusable stainless steel mugs and coffee cups, reusable cutlery, and even plates to take with you wherever you go. I have had the same ones for 20 years or more.

-Never buy bottled water again. Nearly 45% of bottle water is the same as tap water. Clever marketing tricks consumers into thinking they are purchasing a superior product when nothing could be further from the truth. If you are worried about your drinking water invest in a good quality filter and a reusable water bottle. At the cabin we take raw stream water and run it through a gravity fed filtration system and produce purified water for less than 3 cents per gallon.

-Avoid produce that is wrapped in plastic. Again buy things in bulk.  You can even invest in reusable mesh produce bags instead of using plastic bags. That said, at times it may be difficult to avoid produce wrapped in plastic. But that brings us to the next tip.

-Support your local farmer. The food is far more sustainable, locally grown, and you are putting money back into your local economy.

-Plan your meals. This is the best way to streamline your time at the supermarket, reduce your grocery bills and reduce your food waste. Take some time on the weekends to cook larger meals with left overs that can be consumed during the week.

One of my favorite tricks is to make a large batch of burritos, empanadas, soup or chili then freeze them in small quantities. This becomes my convenience food on those busy days. With a little bit of planning you can easily save yourself from the question that we all dread after a long busy work day, “Whats for dinner?”

-Eat more veggies. There is no doubt that a plant based diet is much more environmentally friendly. But that does not mean you have to go vegan or vegetarian. But you can easily go meatless at least once a week. Or, eat meat that is more environmentally friendly.

Compost your food scraps. Greater than 50% of what goes into landfills is organic material that can be composted. You can compost even if you live in an apartment or flat by using a worm bin.

Use beeswax wraps instead of plastic. Beeswax wraps are made from cloth, oil, resin and beeswax and are essentially the eco-friendly cousin of plastic wrap. They can be purchased in a variety of sizes and shapes and are relatively easy to make.

Make your own cleaning products. The household cleaning products we use everyday are some of the most environmentally toxic chemicals found on the planet. You can avoid this my making your own products. It is as simple as mixing baking soda with lemon juice and vinegar. Furthermore, there are numerous recipes online for various types of homemade products.

Embrace the ugly. When most of us go to the supermarket we expect perfection. But you can save yourself a considerable amount of money by purchasing items that are marked down because they are blemished or dented.

For example, I once purchased 10 pounds of bananas that were marked down by 75%. I then spent a couple of days making homemade, dehydrated, banana chips that lasted me a year and a half.

Go paperless. Modern technology makes this a simple process. Switching to digital documents will save on paper and ink. And while your at it, get yourself off those junk mail lists.

Summary

Now to start closing things out for this episode, I want to emphasize that we may never reach zero waste. We may also never reach the point of being 100% sustainable. We may never have a perfect circular economy. But, imagine a world where humanity managed to reduce waste production by 75%. Imagine a world where the question was never whether or not to recycle but how. Imagine a community that reinforced sustainable behavior. I realize that we may never reach a point of perfection. But think of it in terms of zero waste or darn close. Now that is achievable.

So start thinking in terms of refill, reduce, reuse, recycle, reclaim, reform, reinvent, reimagine, rethink, respect, rinse and repeat. Now that is a formula for a complete culture shift.

Sustainability question of the week.

Do we really have toxic products in our homes?

On average there are about 150 chemicals found in our homes that are directly connected to specific health problems. Since 1950, approximately 70,000 new synthetic chemicals have been invented and are now dispersed in the environment.  And this is why our entire planet is now contaminated. And you can do your part to improve this by eliminated the toxins from your home.

Well folks, thats about it for this week. I hope you have enjoyed this episode and will join be again next week. And don’t forget to visit my podcast homepage which can be found at adventuresinsustainableliving.com

Until next week, always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

 Episode 188

Not in My Backyard: A Critical Review of Environmental Racism

Surveys of community needs from around the world show that almost everyone wants the same thing. We all want a safe place to live and even raise a family. We want a healthy, natural environment, access to education, healthy food, housing, clean water, and fair use of land and local resources.

How would you feel if you lived in a community where such things did not exist? You lived in the midst of heavy air pollution, environmental contamination, and lack of basic services.

And yet these situations are more frequent than most of us recognize. The underlying cause is environmental racism. So join me for episode 188 where we are going to discuss a critical review of environmental racism, what that is, why it exist, and what we can do about it.

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E188 which is called……….

Sustainability question of the week

Does it really make a difference what I eat?

Good news story of the week

There is now a portable factory that uses the power of the sun to produce zero emissions plastics. And this device is small enough that it can taken almost anywhere in the world.

This new start up company, founded by Karl von Kries, is called Light Manufacturing. The technology is known as Solar Rotational Molding. Raw plastic is placed in a mold and blasted with sun light from 30 special mirrors.

Karl got this idea while working with another company and seeing their astronomical utilities bills. After some investigation he actually set up a company to simply prove the idea would not work. But, it did. There were some challenges after the initial start-up. But by 2014 they were producing high quality plastics and secured several critical patents.

Von Kries sees one of the best ways to use this technology is providing rural areas in poor countries with critical plumping equipment such as pipes and rainwater catchment tanks.

So the round of applause this week goes to Karl von Kries for his new invention of solar rotational molding. One more step toward a sustainable future.

Now let’s move on to this weeks episode on environmental racism. 

As most of you know in some of my podcast episodes I will discuss targeted social issues regardless of the sensitive nature of some of these topics.  The reason I want to bring up environmental racism is because so many people are unaware of this issue. Yet if we are to set ourselves on a path to build a sustainable future that is equal, just, and fair for everyone, then we must include even the most marginalized populations in our society.  Often times it is this segment of our society that suffers the most due to the transgressions of more privileged people from developed countries. 

There have been numerous surveys of communities around the world that reveal a rather unsurprising trend.  Nearly 87% of people say that quality of environment in their community as a whole was a top priority. Yet even for those of us that live in the developed world, we fail to recognize that there are many communities that as a whole have a poor quality of life due to what is called environmental racism. 

You would think in our modern culture that such things would not be an issue. Yet in the US and the European Union approximately 50% of the people of color say racism is an everyday part of their life.

Because of my personal experience and background I am acutely aware of the affects of racism and how it can be deeply rooted in a culture. I grew up in a time of federally mandated desegregation, race riots, and civil rights protests. I personally saw and felt the effects of blatant public segregation and the tremendous cultural movement set on a path to change that.

Due to these kinds of experiences I forget there are people in the world that are completely oblivious that such attitudes still exist today. Just recently I was having a conversation with someone that was completely appalled that I had actually experienced racism.

While most of us these days are acutely aware of the concepts of cultural diversity and inclusion there is a much more subtle form of racism that tends to slip under the radar. And that is environmental racism. While many of us may find overt racism to be appalling, this form of racism is often hidden from sight but far more damaging. There are numerous communities in the US, as well as around the world, where a safe community just does not exist.

A couple of years ago I was dealing with a client that was angry with their neighbor. The dispute centered around their dog, a property line and a new fence. As these clients were sharing the story that epitomized the example of a bad neighbor. They called that neighbor a NIMBYist. Later in the conversation I had to ask them to explain what they were talking about.

NIMBY is a term that originated in the US. It is an acronym for “not in my backyard.” It is used to describe actions taken by a person or a group of people that oppose development in their area because they believe it would be detrimental. Examples of such development would be factories, incinerators, cell phone towers and even urban development in rural areas.

Sometimes this is a good thing. Sometimes it is not. I do remember reading an article some time ago about numerous communities in the US that have protested and blocked solar farms from being installed near their communities. But the effects of this attitude of “not in my backyard” extends far beyond privileged communities.

We start to see a completely different story when you move beyond class and property and consider social exclusion and racism. When you consider the overt concepts of racism most people are fairly sensitive about it these days.

However environmental racism is often more subtle and hidden from view. It is something that occurs when marginalized communities, as well as those of people of color, experience a disproportionate impact of environmental hazards, pollution, and ecological degradation. On an international basis this is seen when the environmental burdens of mining, oil extraction, and industrial agriculture are placed on indigenous people and poorer nations that are largely inhabited by people of color.

To make matters worse, environmental regulations do not equally benefit all of society. Specifically, people of color such as African Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Asians and Latinos are disproportionately harmed by industrial and agricultural toxins in their jobs. In the US in particular, some communities are continuously polluted while the government pays little to no attention at all.

Even environmental protection laws often fail. This is because the focus of most regulations is to protect and benefit humans, not the environment that humans live in. The regulations typically assume human superiority over nature and natural processes.

Eventually, these discriminatory practices were brought to light. Policies, regulations and laws burdening the environment in marginalized communities were brought to the forefront starting with the environmental justice movement that had its roots in the civil rights movement. Environmental justice gained national attention in 1982 when a Black community in North Carolina was designated as a site for waste disposal that was known to contain carcinogenic compounds.

Around that same time line, civil rights leader Benjamin Chavis coined the term “environmental racism” which placed emphasis on the reality that environmental hazards disproportionately affect communities of color.

Why does this problem exist?

The next obvious question is why does this problem exist. Well, it is a combination of a number of political, social, and economic factors.

-Discriminatory practices

The Federal Housing Administration from 1934 to the 1960s sponsored redlining. This is the practice of drawing redlines on a map the designate hazardous neighborhoods. Land use decisions based on this practice allowed industry to build facilities in or near these neighborhoods. Over time this forced individuals and families to live in areas with fewer resources and more environmental hazards.

-Lack of representation

Historically people of color simply were not included in decision-making processes involving the environment. Consequently, they had little control over discriminatory environmental practices.

-Lack of accountability

While environmental regulations help limit damage, enforcement is often an afterthought. Communities often have prolonged exposure to environmental hazards without their knowledge because no one is ever held accountable.

-Profits over people

Quite often companies will build dangerous facilities in impoverished areas with fewer regulations to make more money. Placing corporate interests before those of the communities results in environmental racism.

-It is less expensive for corporations to pollute communities of color

When a corporation violates an environmental law, they get fined. Research clearly shows that those fines are lower if it involves a community of color, especially Black communities and poor communities.

These lower fines lead to more pollution. Eventually this lower the land value so more corporations move in which creates a vicious cycle.

-Political factors

Marginalized communities are often ignored because they are underrepresented in any sort of decision making process. This results in less enforcement of environmental regulations and thus perpetuates environmental racism.

Lack of diversity perpetuates the problem

Many would argue that a lack of diversity in climate conservation organizations, as well as in the government sector, means that communities of color are not at the forefront of the organization.   

Typically, larger environmental organization capture the most funding. These organizations across the board are typically white.

-Environmental racism is expensive

Energy and utility bills are also an indicator of environmental racism. Research conducted by the University of California, Berkeley’s Energy Institute found that Black renters paid $273 more per year for energy cost compared to white.

Residents of Detroit and other cities near the Great Lakes, which are predominantly Black, pay a lot more for their water compared to residents of Phoenix which pumps its water from 300 miles away.

Examples of Environmental Racism

Between Baton Rouge, Louisiana and New Orleans, Louisiana is an area of land 85 miles long known as Cancer Alley. The majority Black community of 45,000 residents are typically poor and illiterate. The residents here face enormous health risks due to over 50 toxic chemicals circulating in the air as a result of over 150 chemical plants in the area.

Across the river from Manhattan is the Bronx. There is a small community called Mott Haven that is also known as Asthma Alley. It has some of the worst air pollution in the United States. Residents have to contend with the exhaust from hundreds of trucks, emissions from 4 nearby highways, a parcel depot, sewage works, and air pollution from the nearby printing presses for the Wall Street Journal. Asthma affects 17% of children ages 13 and under. They need hospitalization at 5 times the national average and 21 times higher that other NYC neighborhoods.

Pahokee, FL

This city is home to primarily Black and Latino residents. It is also home to a large sugar cane industry. The industry has the practice of burning the fields before harvest which aerosolizes large amounts of hazardous debris that the residents refer to as “black snow.” This debris increases the risk of lung cancer, asthma and cardiovascular disease. The decision to place the sugar cane fields in this area was economic.

Standing Rock, ND

In 2016 a 1,200 mile pipeline was built to transport crude oil. The initial proposal was for the pipeline to cross the Missouri River north of Bismarck, which is primarily a white community. The Army Corp of Engineers rejected this plan due to possible threats to the state capital’s water supply. Instead they approved a route that went underneath the water supply for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. That decision is still in court.

Cheraw, SC

Up until the 1970s Burlington Industries regularly disposed of PCBs in a creek behind the manufacturing plant. The predominantly Black community still feels the affects of that even today.

Uniontown, AL

In 2008 more than a billion tons of hazardous coal ash spilled into the Emory River in Kingston, TN. People who assisted in the clean up later developed leukemia, lung cancer, and brain cancer. Two years later the Tennessee Valley Authority moved four million cubic yards of coal ash into Uniontown. This is predominantly a low-income, Black community.

And then there Flint, Michigan. The home of lead laced drinking water.

Warren County, NC. The home of PCB contamination.

Houston, Texas, specifically Harrisburg and Manchester which are predominantly Latino communities. There are 21 toxic release facilities in the area that annually release over 484,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment.

But these practices don’t stay within the confines of the U.S. In parts of western Malaysia 50% of the waste found at dump sites come from other countries. Other countries such as Indonesia Vietnam, India, Thailand and Taiwan are also subject to similar waste dumping practices all under the guise of “recycling.” So marginalized communities abroad are also affected by the wasteful practices of developed countries.

Impact of Environmental Racism

The key point here is that the impact of environmental racism on marginalized communities is profound and wide ranging due to a combination of factors.

-Contaminated water, air pollution, long-standing soil contamination and toxic waste lead to a full array of detrimental health affects. Exposure to arsenic, asbestos, benzene, mercury, dioxin, causes  developmental disorders, miscarriages, birth defects, respiratory diseases and cancer.

-Constant exposure to environmental toxins is going to affect physical health. Research has clearly shown a significant relationship between physical health and psychological well-being especially among low-income Black communities that are situated near toxic waste sites.

-Environmental racism is one of the leading causes of death in communities of color

This is directly related to air pollution and extreme heat. As average temperatures continue to rise, the “urban heat island affect” is worse in the inner city. This is the result of more concrete and asphalt, as well as fewer trees, green spaces and parks. These are the same areas that were segregated decades ago by the practice of redlining.

-Minority communities existed in many areas prior to the development of industry, waste disposal and chemical plants. For example, in the late 70s and early 80s in the Houston area, 75% of the cities incinerators were in Black neighborhoods even though they made up only 25% of the population. This goes back to the path of least resistance.

-There are also social and economic impacts. Those living in or near areas impacted by such pollution have limited economic opportunities. Businesses are hesitant to invest in environmental hazardous communities. This limits economic development and perpetuates the cycle of poverty.

Solutions to this problem

There is no doubt that if we are going to build a sustainable future that is equal and just for everyone, we have to include even the most marginalized communities in our society. Addressing the inequities created by environmental racism is part of the equation. Some of the key steps in addressing this issue are things such as:

-Raising awareness through education. Educators should be sharing with their students about the affects of environmental racism.

-Various organizations can provide support for affected communities and advocate for policy changes. There are several organizations that are already working to spotlight many of these environmental inequities including the following:

Climate Justice Alliance which works to fight extractive industries that harm the environment and communities.

Deep South Center for Environmental Justice which advocates and promotes environmental justice policies

Movement Generation focuses on ecological and sustainability challenges in communities of color. 

Support Legislation. This is crucial in addressing environmental racism.

Promote Organizational Diversity. Diverse and inclusive teams of people are going to listen to all voices. This promotes a work place culture that drives corporate values and civic engagement that results in change.

Volunteer for Grassroots organizations conducting research, supporting community outreach programs and even providing legal assistance.

Obviously actions are needed on multiple levels: individual, community, organizational and governmental, in order to solve an urgent problem that affects millions of people around the world. Addressing this problem means standing for environmental justice in order to bring about a fairer society.

Numerous studies have revealed one glaring disparity. Low-income, minority, and communities of people of color are disproportionately exposed to ash, soot, toxic dust, fumes, soil and water contamination and other pollutants due to hazardous facilities locate in or near their homes and communities. In 1983 a General Accounting Office study found that 75% of hazardous waste sites in eight different states were built near low-income communities of color. 

This is an obvious example of systemic racism that exists largely because of policies and practices that have historically favored the health and well-being of white communities. And it is important to recognize that the answer to such issues in our society are rooted in the environmental justice movement.

I distinctly remember when I was much younger, working construction and living paycheck to paycheck, how I would dream of someday having my own home. I wanted my own place and my own space so that I could feel some sense of personal security. Years later I have managed to achieve that. But, how lucky am I to have done so.

Likely many of you have achieved the same sort of thing or your version of it. But we tend to forget there are thousands to millions of people around the world that will never know that feeling.  That is the very reason I feel the need at time to speak up about certain issues. In this case, environmental racism.

Everyone should have the right to clean water, clean air, and healthy communities. And finally this is now being recognized as a global problem. A recent United Nations report stated, “There can be no meaningful solution to the global climate and ecological crisis without addressing systemic racism.” And this because the global north likes to sends its trash to the global south.

Perhaps the solution to this problem is largely systemic but that should not prevent us from learning about environmental hazards in our own communities and doing something about it.

So the next time you start feeling like a NIMBY and start to say “not in my backyard” maybe you should first question where else is it going to go. Maybe you should first look at your own behavior that may be contributing to the underlying problem. After all there is a whole array of toxic products that we use in our homes everyday that come from the very industries responsible for such widespread pollution in impoverished communities. At the least, every one of us could make the effort to completely detox our homes and refuse to use the very products that cause the problem.

At the very foundation of sustainability is the choices that we make. Our choices do make changes. And our choices can help to bring about some environmental justice.

Martin Luther King, Jr once said, “Without justice there can be no peace.” So, let’s work on dishing out some justice and bringing about a peaceful and sustainable future.

Sustainability question of the week.

Does it really make a difference what I eat?

Yes it does!. Of all the things we do as humans our agricultural activities produce some of the greatest impact on the planet. The environmental impact of food production varies greatly depending on the type of food you consume.

Meat, especially beef, has far more impact relative to a plant based diet. You don’t have to be vegan or vegetarian in order to eat sustainably. But you can certainly cut down on your meat consumption or eat meat that has less of an environmental impact such as pork, chicken, and turkey.

One of the easiest sustainable choices to make is to pay attention to what you eat.

Well folks that’s about it for now.  I hope you have enjoyed this episode. Be sure to join me next week. Remember you can also find me at adventuresinsustainableliving.com

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast 

Episode 187

How to Eat Healthy on a Budget

Inflation is taking a toll on just about everyone. But one of the most common areas where we feel the pinch is in the price of food. Food prices have consistently risen over the last 5 years and are expected to go up by several percentage points in 2024. 

Not only that, if you want to eat healthy and organic, you are going to pay even more at the checkout. To top it off, junk food is manufactured in bulk and full of preservatives to make it shelf stable. Consequently, and on a per-calorie basis, it is typically less expensive than something that is packed with nutrients. 

So how do we reach for something that is sustainable and strike a balance between budget and eating healthy? 

So join me for E187 How to Eat Healthy on a Budget.

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E187 which is called How to Eat Healthy on a Budget.

Sustainability Question of the Week

Can you truly power your home using only renewable energy?

Good News Story of the Week

I love stories of the first thing ever. And that is the focus of the good news story of the week. 

In the US just 0.3% of licensed medical practitioners are Native American. In 2020 the first ever medical school on a Native American reservation started its inaugural class. That class is now graduating. 

There were 46 graduating students from Oklahoma State University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Cherokee Nation. Fifteen of those members were from tribes all around the country. 

The purpose of the college was to address the shortage of tribal physicians in the US. Part of what makes this so unique is that the $40 million needed to build and staff the facilities was paid for entirely by the Cherokee nation. The Hippocratic oath is written on the walls in both Cherokee and English. 

Graduates of the college will focus their practice on  holistic medicine. Native elders even participate in the medical curriculum to teach about traditional healing practices. 

So, hats off and round of applause this week goes to the Oklahoma State University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Cherokee Nation

So, let’s get going on this weeks episode. 

The rising cost of food makes it more difficult than ever to eat healthy. It does not help when junk food and other highly processed items are typically cheaper. These types of foods are manufactured in bulk and full of preservatives. This makes highly processed foods shelf stable for months which means they can be stored for long periods of time. Yet these are the very reasons why these foods are the less desirable option when it come to good health. 

Despite the health implications of eating highly processed foods and junk food we are willing to pay for the convenience. Whether we are buying pre-cut vegetables and fruits instead of whole ones,  opting for fast food instead of cooking at home, purchasing  pre-made salads and snack packs instead of making them by hand we are consistently overpaying. 

The convenience that we desire comes at a price because we want to save the time and effort. While convenience is valuable in certain situations, in an economy of rising food costs maybe we should reconsider. Food delivery, restaurant food, and grocery shopping are all the top ten for budget killers. 

That said, eating on a budget doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice good basic nutrition. It is possible to enjoy healthy, nutritious foods without breaking your budget. Admittedly, eating healthy when you have a tight budget can be challenging. But a diet with plenty of vegetables, fruit, and lean protein is not only important for good health but typically costs less. 

Typically fresh fruits and vegetables, or other minimally processed foods are packed with nutrients. But there is one challenge. Fresh foods, that being those without preservatives, are not shelf stable for a long period of time. This just means you have to purchase them in smaller quantities more frequently. 

One of my best examples of this is homemade bread. The last time I was in the supermarket and picked up a loaf of bread and read the label, there were 46 ingredients. My homemade bread only has seven: water, flour, sourdough starter, yeast, salt, and any other spices I choose to add. But of course you have to consume it within a reasonable amount of time or freeze it. 

Now you must know that I am not a purist. I do purchase some bread products at the supermarket. The most common product I purchase are buns for sandwiches. Once while I was on a trip with the travel trailer I purchased hamburger buns. When I returned home I put the travel trailer in storage for almost 9 months. When I went to use it again, I found the buns I had previously purchased and they were completely intact, no mold.  

The first question I asked is “What is wrong with this picture?”  

Now the things to consider about living a sustainable life is that sustainability is often geared toward practical tips that are not only healthier but also less costly. What I want to do in this episode is give you some practical tips on how to eat healthy and stay within your budget. 

Cook at Home

As simple as it may seem one of the best things you can do to save money is to cook at home. In our modern culture, people now spend 40% of their monthly food budget on restaurant food, take out and fast food. This is truly some of the worst food you can eat. Not only do you pay a hefty price, you pay for it a second time because it affects your health. 

Not only is it less expensive to cook at home you also have complete control over the ingredients of your food and you can eat fresh meals everyday. 

As a time saver, cook a couple of larger meals on the weekend and eat left overs during the week. 

If you are not much of a cook, there are numerous sites that offer recipes accompanied by videos that show you how to do it all. I use recipes sites on a regular basis just to find new things to cook. 

Shop at Home First

One of the best ways to save money is to shop at home first. Go though your cabinets, refrigerator and freezer  to get a good idea of what you already have on hand before you go to the supermarket.  This will also be helpful when it comes to planning your meals in order to avoid waste.

Plan Your Recipes

A little forethought and planning goes a long way toward saving some money. For example, search online for meals that freeze well. This allows you too cook once and be able to freeze the left overs for those busy days. 

You can stretch your budget even further by taking advantage of recipes with common ingredients. For example, cook a whole chicken and use it in several recipes. Have a simple chicken dish one night, stir fry the next night and fajitas the night after. Then you can boil the carcass to make a broth for soup. Then you have four dishes made out of the same chicken. 

I will often make beans a rice then use these simple ingredients mixed in with breakfast, as a side for lunch and then use them to make burritos. 

Make Your Own Recipe Book

Right along with planning your recipes put some effort into creating your own recipe book. There are numerous sites on the internet where you can scroll through recipes and find lots of interesting meals. I have a notebook app in my iPad where I store all my recipes. I think I now have over 300 recipes that I’ve collected over several years. 

Shop with a List and Stick to It

Once you have planned your recipes and are headed to the supermarket be sure to have a list of what you need. Once there, stick to your list. Shopping with a list makes things faster and easier. 

Most people do not realize that supermarkets are often set up very strategically in order to tempt people with impulse purchases or to purchase the most expensive products.

As a general rule, shop the perimeter, or outside edges of the store first. This tends to be the area where bulk products are kept. Most of the highly processed foods tend to be grouped in the middle of the store. Additionally, the most expensive products are generally stocked at eye level. So, be sure to look at items on the bottom shelf. 

Another tip is to make a shopping list as you go. Whenever you are running low on something put it on your list. 

Stick to the Basics

Another way to easily stretch your budget is to stick to the basics. In other words, cook with basic ingredients such as whole grains, legumes, pasta, lentils, potatoes, onions, garlic, flour, corn meal, masa, chicken and beef stock, and a variety of spices. Many of these basic ingredients are not only healthier but they have little or no processing involved so they cost less. 

These ingredients are also very shelf stable so it is easy to stock up on the basics and have extra supplies at home. 

Avoid Buying Highly Processed Foods

This goes right along with sticking to the basics. If you are accustomed to purchasing these products you probably don’t notice just how expensive they are. Cookies, crackers, and prepackaged foods are not only much less healthy, they are expensive and take a higher toll on the environment. 

By skipping these foods you can spend more of your budget on highly nutritious whole foods. 

Buy in Bulk

When you purchase individual servings of any product, part of your price is in the packaging. Buying in bulk helps you to avoid that expense. Nutritious staple foods are healthy, cost less, are shelf stable and often come in bulk packages. 

Purchase Frozen and Canned

Frozen and canned options for many of your favorite fruits and vegetables are often less expensive. The best part is that they are shelf stable. This is also a great way to enjoy your favorites when they are not in season. Additionally, many frozen alternatives now come in resealable packages to make it easier to use what you need and store the remainder. 

Now it you want to go this route, choose fruits that are canned in water or in light syrup to avoid the excess sugar. But of course, the best option is to can you own fruits and vegetables when they are in season. But if that is not possible a commercial product is not a bad choice just be particular about what you purchase.  

Buy store brands

Name brand products are always going to be more expensive. Most major supermarkets have their own store brands, often referred to as generic. Purchasing store brands can save you as much as 20% to 30% at the time of check out.  

A word of caution here. There are times when store brands, especially when shopping at a discount store, are very low quality, full of lots of preservatives and do not taste very good. This is something you may have to experiment with. I have found this to be true with a number of products. In which case, I simple purchase higher quality name brand products. 

Choose recipes that freeze well

This is something that I do all the time. Soups, stews, and chilis will keep for weeks to months in the freezer. We often make a huge batch of burritos and then freeze them. We will make a big batch of chili and freeze that. Other things that we make at home such as English muffins, bread, bagels, and other bread products freeze very well. Such things become our convenience food on days when we are super busy.  

Choose Easy Recipes During the Week

Get on the internet and search for one pot recipes, three or five ingredient recipes, or 30 minute recipes. All are super easy to find and will save you time during the week. This way you are not tempted to get fast food on your way home. Save the more complicated recipes for weekend days. That is when you should be making big batches of things and freezing them. 

Save Money with Coupons

Coupons are a great way to cut money off of your grocery bill especially if you are shopping with a list. There are over one billion coupons offered every year. You can most likely find a coupon for just about anything you need especially if you search online. 

Another trick you can use to save even more money is coupon stacking. This is when you have multiple coupons for a single product. If a store has a product on sale already you can stack a manufacturer coupon on top of that. But, something worth noting, digital coupons typically do not count for additional savings. 

Join a Warehouse Club

Joining a warehouse club such as CostCo or Sam’s Club can save you a significant amount of money especially if you buy in bulk. If you do this frequently, the cost of the yearly membership is well worth it. 

Stock Up During Sales

Along with the warehouse club, stocking up when things go on sale is another way to cut costs especially if you have favorite products or staple goods that you use frequently. Just make sure things will not reach their expiration date before they get consumed. 

Try Gardening

One of the cheapest ways to produce some of your own food is to have a small garden. If you are limited on space you can do things such as grow fresh herbs on your window seal, have a container garden on your balcony, have a small hydroponics set up which takes up very little space. 

Other easy tips and recommendations

-Don’t go to the supermarket when you are hungry. Otherwise you will tend to buy more than you need and do impulse buying. 

-Only buy in-season produce. It will cost you less. Also when you do buy produce, purchase fruits that are in various stages of ripeness. This way you can them as they ripen during the week. This is especially true to things such as bananas. 

-Buy a mix of fresh, frozen, and shelf stable items. Eat the fresh food first before it spoils. Stock your freezer and pantry and eat the shelf stable items later. 

-Do some of your shopping outside the supermarket. Go to the local farmers market. 

-Check out the sales flyers either at the store entrance or on the internet. 

-Rice, pasta, and whole grains are budget friendly items that are shelf stable. 

-To lower your cost of meat buy the family pack and freeze the rest. Choose lean meat such as turkey and chicken which will cost you less. You can lower your meat cost even more if you buy vegetables and legumes that are high in protein. For example, lentils, chickpeas, and quinoa have almost as much protein as beef. 

-If you love yogurt buy the family size instead of single servings. Better yet, make you own yogurt. It is super easy. 

-Ditch the ready made snack packs and fresh fruits packs. Buy things in bulk and make your own snack packs. One of my favorite things to do is buy large bags of nuts and large bags of semi-sweet chocolate chips at the local warehouse store and make my own snack mix. I also buy bulk ingredients and make my own granola, which is super expensive if you buy a commercial product. 

-Drink water instead of soda. Several health problems have been directly linked to the over consumption of sweetened drinks. One of those is an increased risk of dementia. Additionally, soda just adds empty calories to your diet and increased your likelihood of weight gain. So, drink water instead of soda. It is better for your healthy and is much less expensive. 

-Don’t forget about the eggs. These are a great, inexpensive way to add protein to your diet and avoid the high price of meat. 

-Plan for two meatless days per week. In case you haven’t noticed, meat these days is really expensive. There are number of alternatives, such as chickpeas, lentils, and quinoa, that have a protein content similar to meat and cost a whole lot less. 

Pack Your Lunch

My last time here is very simple. Pack you lunch. As the cost of food goes up so does the cost of restaurant food. I see people all the time that purchase take out food twice daily. Any more, people are starting to consider take out and fast food as a luxury. 

If you have already become accustomed to cooking at home, then having left overs to take for lunch the next day should be an easy transition. 

According to the consumer expenditure data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of September 2023, the average American spends $5,700 annually on groceries. That is no big surprise since between 2019 and 2024 food prices have risen at least 25%.

The bottom line is that by following these simple tips you can eat well without trashing your monthly budget. There are a wide variety of nutritious foods that can be used to prepare delicious meals without spending a lot of money. 

About a year ago I started wondering why I was spending so much money on food. After looking at my bank account I discovered I was spending on average somewhere between $500 to $700 per month at the supermarket. This was the result of me buying whatever I wanted and truly not paying attention. Once I started shopping smarter I was able to reduce my monthly grocery bill to around $200. 

Cooking at home is one of the best ways to save money on food. Cooking from basic ingredients is likely the second best thing you can do. I keep a small stock pile of basic ingredients at home then use a whole variety of spices to make different dishes. Once I started paying a lot more attention to what I was doing I reduced my average grocery bill by nearly $400 per month. So, I know it is possible. By incorporating more inexpensive, nutrient rich foods into your daily routine it is entirely possible to eat healthy on a budget. 

Can we truly power our homes by using only renewable energy? 

Absolutely you can. I have been doing it for 9 years now. Renewable energy provides a reliable source of energy sufficient enough to power any home. 

Most people do not realize that energy from renewable sources is now less expensive than grid power. Yes it does require and upfront investment but once the solar electric systems is paid for you now have free electricity for years to come. 

Most people choose to tie into the grid as a back up. By doing so you avoid the cost of a battery bank. But if you want to be certain you have electricity 24/7 regardless of whether the grid is working, you will have to have battery back up to power your home when the sun is not shining.

But, bottom line, it is more than possible to power your entire home on renewable energy. More and more people are choosing to do that very thing. I highly recommend it. 

Now I would like to close out this episode with a quote from Leo Tolstoy. “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” 

I think this emphasizes a very important topic in sustainability, that being our individual action. Yes there are significant and rapid changes in our world. Yes there is widespread pollution, forever chemicals, and micro plastics in every corner of the planet. It is easy to view this as something that will never be resolved by individual action. 

But before we can expect big government, big business, local and community leaders to change what they are doing we first have to change what we are doing as individuals. We cannot expect to live in a sustainable community if we are not first willing to do everything we can to change our own daily habits. So, choose one thing at a time. Change in one small way every month. Five years from now you will be amazed at your personal progress toward living a sustainable life. 

Well, that’s about it for this week folks. Don’t forget to visit my redesigned homepage for the podcast. Go to adventuresinsustainableliving.com and you can get instant access to a free resource called 200 Sustainability Questions and Answers. And of course don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast. 

Until next week this is your host Patrick signing off. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future. 

How would you feel if your neighbor came to your mailbox everyday and opened your mail? How would you feel if someone was always looking over your shoulder to monitor everything you did on the internet? I think most people would say "NO!" And they would say no because such things are an invasion of our privacy.

We now live in a very connected world. More and more we depend on the internet for personal services, business purposes, data storage, communication and entertainment. But what most people do not realize is that there is very little privacy in the online world and most of what you do is monitored by someone.

Between hackers, scammers, big tech and big brother, someone is always collecting data on your personal online habits. That data is used to generate an online profile of who you are, what you do, where you go and maybe even if you can be trusted. Additionally that data is sold and shared and used to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year all without your permission.

Maybe you think this is a paranoid way of thinking. But this episode is an interview with privacy expert Glenn Meder. It will open the door for you to a very different world in which there is absolutely no privacy. However, Glenn is going to give us some great tips on how to opt out of this privacy invasion simply because what we do, who we communication with and where we go really should be our personal business.

I hope you will join me for this eye-opening episode 190 How to Maintain Your Internet Privacy and Freedom.

Summary

This podcast episode features an interview with Glenn Meder, a privacy expert and the founder of the Privacy Academy. The discussion revolves around the importance of internet privacy and freedom, and how various entities such as governments, businesses, and big tech companies are infringing upon these rights through data collection, surveillance, and censorship. Glenn explains the potential dangers of centralized data systems, digital IDs, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and social credit systems, which could lead to increased control and manipulation of individuals. He emphasizes the need to protect privacy and sovereignty by opting out of these systems and using tools and habits that prevent data collection. The episode promotes an upcoming webinar hosted by Glenn, where he will provide practical steps for maintaining online privacy and freedom.
Chapters

Introduction and Guest Background

The host, Patrick, introduces the episode's topic of internet privacy and freedom, and welcomes the guest, Glenn Meder, a privacy expert and the founder of the Privacy Academy. Glenn is described as someone who actively speaks out against issues like central bank digital currencies, social credit systems, digital IDs, and vaccine passports, with the goal of empowering people to exit the surveillance state and reclaim their freedoms.

The Importance of Privacy

Glenn and Patrick discuss the importance of privacy and how it has been the default state for humans throughout history. They highlight the contrast between the past, where conversations were inherently private, and the present, where technology has enabled widespread data collection and surveillance. Glenn emphasizes that privacy should be the default, and that individuals have the right to live their lives without intrusion or judgment.

Data Collection and Surveillance

The discussion delves into the various entities that collect data and engage in surveillance, including governments, businesses, and big tech companies like Google. Glenn provides examples of how these entities gather and use personal data, such as Google's ability to influence elections through search results and targeted advertising. He also discusses the concept of "surveillance capitalism," where companies profit from selling user data.

Digital IDs, CBDCs, and Social Credit Systems
Glenn explains the potential dangers of digital IDs, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and social credit systems. He describes how these systems could lead to increased control and manipulation of individuals, with CBDCs enabling programmable money and social credit systems rating individuals based on their behaviors and beliefs. Glenn warns that these systems could result in a loss of freedom and sovereignty, with the government and corporations having the power to penalize or reward individuals based on their actions.

Opting Out and Protecting Privacy

Despite the concerning developments, Glenn emphasizes that individuals can opt out of these systems and protect their privacy. He suggests using tools and developing habits that prevent data collection, such as using privacy-focused browsers like Brave. Glenn also mentions an upcoming webinar he is hosting on July 11th, where he will provide more information and practical steps for maintaining online privacy and freedom.

Action Items

Download and use the Brave browser as the default browser, and set Brave search as the default search engine to avoid data collection by Google Chrome and Google.com
Attend Glenn Meder's webinar on July 11th at 11 AM Central Time to learn more about opting out of the surveillance state and protecting online privacy and freedom
Develop habits and use tools to prevent data collection by entities like hackers, scammers, big tech, and governments
Be aware of the potential dangers of centralized data systems, digital IDs, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and social credit systems, and take steps to protect personal sovereignty and freedom

All right, folks, welcome back to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast, and this is your host, Patrick, and this is episode 185, which is called How to Protect Your Internet Privacy and Freedom.

Now I do have a very, very special guest today, and we're going to introduce him here in just a minute. And now, as you know, the big focus of my podcast and blog is Off -Grid Living and Sustainable Living, but this episode is going to, at first, seem as if it's a major divergence from what I typically discuss.

But as you know, I produce episodes that sometimes focus on targeted social issues, and this is going to be one of those times. And I think the underlying foundation of everything I do is to give people the knowledge and skills to be self -sufficient, to live sustainably, and to create and maintain a lifestyle that is in line with your personal values.

And a big part of that is having the right and the freedom to live the way you want. But as you will see in this episode, and as my guest is going to introduce this topic, there is a significant behind -the -scenes effort to take away that personal freedom and our right to privacy, and in my opinion, to limit the type of lifestyle we can produce for ourselves.

So that being said, I have a very knowledgeable privacy expert today and a freedom fighter on the show, someone who speaks out continuously about our freedoms. And he has been writing about privacy and freedom for the last 10 years.

He is the founder of the Privacy Academy, and his name is Glenn Meder. Glenn actively speaks out against various topics such as central bank digital currency, social credit systems, digital IDs, and vaccine passports.

And Glenn's goal is to empower as many people as possible to exit this surveillance state and reclaim our given freedoms. So with that being said, I want to welcome Glenn Meder of the Privacy Academy.

Good morning, Glenn. Good morning, how are you? Thank you for having me on. Oh, you're quite welcome. Since the beginning of our interaction over the last couple of months, that's culminated in this episode, I have to say, I've learned some very interesting things. I'm really excited to have you on the show, because I think you're gonna provide some very valuable, impactful information. So I'm happy with that. So- I hope so, yep. Well, you know, I kind of think, You know, I think the internet's been available to the public for what, 30 years, maybe.

Yeah. I mean, the start of it was 50 years ago, emails about 50 years old now, which is amazing. I mean, people don't think about email is like really even started before the internet, uh, but it was, it's one of the oldest protocols out there.

And that's one of the reasons that email is, I don't know, I think there's like 4 .5 billion people using email right now. So that's something we don't think about. But yeah, I mean, it's been around for quite a while now already.

So before that, you know, it was really just telephone communications, meaning land lines or fax machines, postal service, or, you know, face -to -face conversations. So in essence, we had all the privacy we wanted at that point in time.

And, you know, it's, as you know, it's illegal for someone to go to your mailbox and open your mail, but yet our privacy is invaded every single day. You know, would you agree with that? And I think, uh, it's an interesting point to start with, because if you look at all of human history, up until very recently, we do have privacy.

I mean, if we talk to somebody, we talk to them face -to -face and those conversations are private. They've always been private. Privacy has been the default that the human, that humans have always lived with, is we have a certain measure of privacy.

And privacy, when we go to that level, is very simple. You know, okay, close the bathroom door for privacy, close the curtains at night for privacy, talk to people face -to -face and those conversations are private.

And there's no way that someone could listen on those for thousands of years, you know. But now, now we live in this new time, that technology is everywhere. And most people have no idea how insidious it is and how deceptive the companies are and the governments are in spying on us.

And it's, it's something that we don't really have an instinctual awareness of. You know, we're still instinctually just think about, okay, let's close the curtains at night or whatever. But what about that webcam on my computer?

I turn off the computer, is that webcam still on? I mean, I think it's off, but is it really off? I mean, is my AdWords known and showed us. 12 years ago, that the NSA had the ability to turn on cameras and mics without our knowledge without the little light coming on by the camera 12 years ago, they were, they were doing that.

They were doing that for probably 10 years or more even before that, but we knew about it 12 years ago. So, but then there's all of these other interactions with our phones and with our emails and with our communications and everything.

I mean, there's just so many ways that we open ourselves up to privacy in fractions now. And yeah, so I think, and one of the one of the deceitful things that they try to do is, oh, well, don't, you know, the only people that worry about privacy are the people that are doing things wrong.

Well, we've got to kind of change the narrative on that is it's privacy has always been the default, it should be the default. Our lives are our lives. What I say to my spouse is my business, what I say to anyone is my business.

So I think, I think that's gotta be the starting point. You know, I remember a time many years ago when I did not even have an email account. And, you know, and as you and Eric, well now I have this little homestead literally out in the middle of the forest and I'm off grid and the only connection I have to the grid when I'm at home is my satellite internet and I plug it in when I want it and I just unplug it when I don't.

But you know, you have to admit, and this is how I, I think most people view the technology today is that it produces a huge convenience, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can get online and you can order something that's on your doorstep tomorrow.

You don't even have to leave home anymore. You don't even have to walk into the supermarket anymore. Because you can get on order things, deliver to your vehicle, and off you go. But that convenience has come at a tremendous price.

And you know even when I, and I'm not nearly on the level that you are, but when you know I tend to be a very private person that has to do with a little bit to do with how I live the way I do, but when I talk about personal privacy issues, the very first thing people say to me is, well I don't have anything to hide, so why should I be worried?

So why should we worry about this issue? Yeah, yeah, and that is, you know, like I was saying, that is the default that we've been programmed to believe is I'm not doing anything wrong, so why should I worry about privacy?

But like I said, it should be the default. Privacy should be the default. We have rights to live our lives as we see fit, without any intrusion, without any privacy. We're innocent until proven guilty.

That means that they can't spy on us. The government or anyone shouldn't be able to spy on us without justifiable means that they have to go to the court and get a subpoena for all of that stuff. So there's a legal process that, okay, if I am suspected of a very blatant, whatever illegal stuff, okay, well, maybe there's a justification there, but that shouldn't be just across the board.

They should not be spying on us across the board, and they are. And, you know, the governments around the world are moving. I think, I don't know really your audience all that well, but I think you would agree with me that the governments around the world are moving to tyranny.

There is definitely a clear path, or they have definitely been moving in that way. They want to crush freedom of speech. I mean, that is not a conspiracy theory. That is a stated goal of basically all governments around the world now is they want to get rid of misinformation and disinformation, which is their code word for crushing freedom of speech.

They're working with government or they're working with big tech, the colluding with big tech to steal our data. So there is a lot of this going on. And really, the danger is, one of the things I always say is, information is power, which everyone's always heard.

But what it comes down to is when they have... information about you, they have power over you. And that is a very real thing they do. And, and we can look at some very clear examples of this, let's say, let's take a look at Google.

So there's a scientist out there, his name is Dr. Robert Epstein. And he has done countless studies on Google's power to impact elections. And I'll just give you a quick, quick insight into this. So basically, Google is very good at being our gatekeeper for information.

And so, you know, if people want to Google something, Google is so good at it, they that people typically just, I think 50% of the time, they choose the top two results that Google gives us 90% of the time they choose the first something on the first page, which is the first 10 items.

So That shows you that Google has tremendous power as that gateway for information. So what Robert Epstein did, Dr. Epstein did, is he tested how high -ranked items impact people's views on things. And we know that high -ranked things are good for business.

I mean, that's the whole SEO thing. That's the whole thing about Google Ads. Everything is if somebody searches for something and it pops up, they're going to click on it. So what he did is he did a search, he did a test to basically say, how does this affect elections?

And so he did some very detailed tests of, if you search for a candidate, what are the first few things that show up? And they can control people's opinions about those candidates by those top things that show up.

And he was actually able to show that just by controlling what comes up first in a search, it can change people's views by up to 48 .5%. And this is even on people with pretty strong opinions about their political candidate, and it can change their opinion about that.

And what he tested is only like a one -time thing, not a constant barrage of this. So he showed that Google has tremendous power over elections, and he proved this globally. He did this study in India.

He did it on local elections, national elections, and Google's power to control information is amazing. So so I just talked to you about that one thing, which is how those what comes up first in the search.

There's other tools they have to and another one is auto suggest where you start typing something in and then it shows you some what it thinks you're typing in. Right. Right. And what you think is okay, well, that's what most people are typing in.

But that's not what it is. Those are, that's Google trying to push you in certain directions. That alone, they've studied that and they see that has tremendous impact on elections also. But the biggest tool that Google has and we saw this with COVID was censorship.

They can censor results and and censor people's viewpoints or other or whatever viewpoints they want to censor. And, you know, the people that are being censored or the people that are on the side of being censored.

are aware of it to some degree. The people that are not on that side have no idea that the censorship is going on. If you look at the COVID thing, people that believed in, believed the government, believed all of the stuff, they had no idea that there was censorship going on, on the other side.

And you talk to people and it's like, what are you talking about? I don't know, there's any censorship going on. There was tons of censorship going on. And so, so anyway, that's just to show you the power that Google has.

And so they do have real power. I guess that's my point is this, this is real power that they have. So when I, when someone brings up the topic of censorship to me, and maybe this is a little old school, but you know, I always think of, you know, I don't really, honestly, I've not watched network television in probably 20 years, not longer.

And I don't really pay attention to the news media. But the only reason I do is to get some general idea of what's going on in the world, because I like to travel, of course. When I think of censorship, you know, my girlfriend's son, I was who's now 20, and he was 15 or 16.

I was telling him, I said, if you think about it, you search news media of all of the newsworthy things that go on in the world, who decides what you hear? Because someone does. Yeah. And I think, and again, you know, I just look at only news media, and maybe that's kind of an old school view.

But in a sense, that is censorship. And much along the same lines of what you're talking about, although it never really occurred to me that Google was censoring information, or at least directing it to what people People see because you're right and I do the same thing.

I search something and I Look at things that are on the first page. I do that all the time Yep So yeah, and oh, I'm sorry. Go. No, go ahead. Go ahead Well, I'm just gonna say, you know You I was gonna answer your question who is censoring it.

I mean one of the things that we know is When Elon Musk took over Twitter and he took the public it was a public company He took it private so he was able to see everything that's going on in there What he found was a whole team of FBI agents working in the company actively censoring people and He made this he he made this very clear he released a lot of documents to not Matt Taibbi who's an independent journalist who then released the the Twitter files and Actively censoring people,

I mean totally illegal, but you know, they don't care they're out of control. The government is out of control. They're absolutely doing this with Facebook, with Google, with YouTube. So, you know, in part, it is the government, the CIA, all of these people that are doing censorship, but there's also these companies are full of activist people, you know, with, with very radical views.

And they, they don't want, you know, these are the kids that grew up and they want safe spaces and they don't, you know, the colleges give them these safe spaces where they don't have to hear what they don't want to hear.

And if, if you can, if you say something they don't want to hear, that's considered like verbal violence and you know, ridiculous stuff like that. These are the people that are in charge of these companies.

Now, these are the people that are working at these companies. So yeah, it's, so who's doing the censorship? I would say it's, it's, it's governments that, that are turning tyrannical. And it is also these people, these activists, people that want their views out there and they want to silence all other views.

And it is, it is a very, it is a serious problem. I would say freedom of speech is the fundamental thing that we have to have. We have to have freedom of speech. And that's one of the tenants that we live by, but it's also privacy.

We need to be able to speak to each other without fear of someone looking over our shoulder, without fear, without fear of somebody listening to us or judging us or marking us for some kind of, you know, punitive action in some future date or putting us on a list somewhere or whatever.

We have to be able to Uh, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we have to feel totally confident that we can do that. And so you can, so one of the things that I do with privacy academy is I do get political because a lot of it is political, a lot of it is government oriented.

I think the government is really the big thing we have to worry about, but there's good news too. There are things that we can do to stop this flow of data from us to them. And so that's, you know, I don't want to bring things down without also, you know, given the good side of, you know, there are things that you can do to stop the flow of data that they are trying to get from you.

You know, interestingly enough, are you familiar with the TED platform? Yep. I subscribe to their platform because they always have It seems to me you know objective views people just offering different opinions and so forth and it's a lot of fun stuff You know, that's what I do instead of Network news, but anyway, I stumbled across the interview with Edward Snowden the other day I was a 30 minute interview and is really quite interesting and The inter the person interviewing him posed the same question to him,

you know commonly people say I Don't have not doing anything wrong. So I don't have to even worry about so why should I worry about this and his point was You know, you're giving up your rights Because you think you're not going to need them But you never know how someone is going to collect all this data on you and at some point in time in the future construe where you went what you were doing and who you're with in some off -handed way to perhaps Accuse you of something that you weren't really doing in the first place Yeah,

so and he was it was a very interesting interview. It was it was 30 minutes long, but But anyway one one question. I think some people are Confused we're talking about internet privacy, but I think there is a fundamental difference between internet privacy and internet Security, but I think people are going to be confused about that So what's in it?

What is the difference there? Yeah, it's a it's a very good point. There is a difference between internet privacy and internet security. So for example, Google actually makes very secure products, so like Google Pixel and all of those things there are some some security features that they put in there I mean if you have a Google account, you can lock it down with a With a YubiKey or something like that So they do make it secure,

but it's absolutely not private. So Gmail, for example, Gmail, all the employees, or I don't know about all of them, but many employees at Gmail can look through your inbox. They, not only that, but they let hundreds of other developers scan your inboxes at Gmail.

So you have no privacy at all with Google. Another example of security is online passwords. So if you have a password manager, which is a very important tool that people should use, that is really important for locking down security.

And you have to have to practice really good password management skills. You have to have good habits. You like, for example, every site that you go to, you need to have a long, complex, unique password.

And there are different ways that you can do that. You can... you can write it down on a piece of paper. If you can keep that piece of paper secure, a lot of people just use the built -in password manager that comes with their browser, but that's definitely not something that we recommend.

It is convenient to do that, but those built -in browser password managers are not nearly as secure as they need to be. What most people do is they say, well, you know, they kind of come up with maybe an algorithm that they use that they can remember, but it changes a little bit.

So their password changes a little bit for each site that they're on, but that, you know, computers, hackers are so, they can figure out these algorithms so easily. It's just like using the same password on every site.

So obviously the worst thing you could do is use the same password on every site. But if you had like an algorithm, let's say you had like, you had a word like blue, blue j, and then I'm gonna put the first three letters of the site I'm on in front of blue j, then I'm gonna put a five, and then I'm gonna write blue j, and then I'm gonna say the, the second and the fifth letter from the site is what's behind the blue j.

So that would be my password. So that's an algorithm. And so people do those kinds of things where it's like, okay, I'm kind of using the same password, but it changes for every site that I go on. But those are very easy for hackers to guess now because I'm kind of going off on a tangent here, I think.

But if you go, if you look at what hackers do, what they do is they breach websites. So you'll hear, okay, target was breached. AT &T was breached. A lot of the different, Sony, Marriott, all of these sites get breached.

But it's not, when a hacker hacks into target to breach the database, it's not targets information they're after. It's the customer's database. It's the customer database they're after. So they're after your information.

And so when they steal that database, then they then go onto the dark web, sell that database to other hacker groups. Other hacker groups buy them up because they want every database they can because they want to pull it all together and match your information from this site and that site and that site.

And they want to pull it together so they have a bigger picture of you. And the reason they do that is because the whole is worth more than the parts. Because if they can see the, Okay, what password are you using on each site?

And then they can see the pattern that you use for your passwords. Is it strong? Is it unique? Is it complex? Do you know what you're doing with passwords? Or are you doing like the same password on every site?

Are you doing an algorithm which is very easy for computers to figure out? Those are the type of things that they learn from these data breaches, and they can pull it all together, and they then use your information against you.

And so anyway, that's the difference between privacy and security, I think. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. You know, what I think about, you know, when we just started discussing this webinar, you know, I've done a little bit of reading, and like I said before, I'm not on nearly the level that you are, and yet some of the basic information that I find is really rather concerning.

So the government is constantly collecting data on us, businesses are constantly collecting data on us, big tech, you know, giant e -commerce sites such as Amazon, for example, and social media platforms.

And then there's GPS in our phones, GPS in our vehicles, so people are physically tracked, and they're virtually tracked. So I look at that, and I think all of this massive amounts of data can be collected on any one person to essentially create a virtual avatar of who you are, what you do, where you go, and maybe even whether or not you can be trusted.

And then that information can turn around and potentially be used against you and some knows how. So that's kind of my impression of the big picture. Yeah, so let's start on the commercial side first.

So let's say you go into Walgreens, they always want your phone number, right? So you're even if you're paying with cash, they want your phone number, right? Why do they want your phone number? Because if you sign up for the rewards program, which what you get maybe a couple bucks a month, or something, I mean, it's just like ridiculous, right?

But but what are they doing with that? What they're doing with that is they're keeping track of every single thing you purchase. And they're selling that data to Google and, and, and who knows who who evolves and they are tying it to you specifically.

If you look at Albertson's grocery store, Albertson's grocery store makes almost a billion dollars a year just by selling your data. that's, that's incredible, you know. So there's the whole surveillance capitalism side of things.

But then there's the more dangerous side, which is the government, what is happening with the government, because what you just said with, you know, they're trying to centralize data. That's exactly right.

Centralization is very bad. So when you're talking about government, centralization of power is always very bad. A centralization of information is very bad. And this is why governments are pushing this digital ID.

And they are pushing it. Every country is pushing this digital ID, and they're pushing it hard. And it started with the whole vaccine passport thing. Okay, let's get you. Let's get you having a vaccine passport, you need this vaccine passport to get into any venues or whatever, because we need to see that you're vaccinated, all that stuff.

There are real reason for that is they want you to, they want a centralized database for you. And so they want to have when the government has centralized data about you, again, it can be used against you.

The central bank digital currency, which is what they're creating is a different, they're redoing money, it's not money, it's currency. And it's, and they're redoing the whole financial structure. I mean, this is a real ground, ground up, from the ground up, they're building this thing to replace what we have now.

And it is all about total surveillance. So the first thing about central bank digital currency is they will know every single thing that you do, every single payment that you make, then they will know who you pay, who you donate to all of that stuff.

But it is also so programmable. And this is what most people don't understand about CBDCs. They just think, okay, central bank digital currency, well, Visa's digital, right? Mastercard is digital. So what's the difference?

It's just digital. No, this is totally different, because this is programmable money. And that is very important, because what they're moving towards is a social, social credit system, like what they have in China.

And I'll just, I'll just go on this tangent here for a minute here. So in China, we they have the social credit system, which is, they're giving is based off of the financial system, where we have that is in the in the US and in the West, where people get financial scores based on you know, paying off debts and all that stuff.

But the social credit score takes it a lot further, every single thing that you do is in that social credit score. It includes financial, but it also includes your behaviors. Are you playing in this what they do in China?

Are you playing more than 12 hours of video games a month? Are you properly are you visiting your parents at least once a month? Are you? Do people say good things about you in your neighborhood or whatever?

And there's, there's all of these different things that they rate you on, but then they also take it off for, okay, did you not pick up after your dog? Because it's on camera, we can, the camera can see it now.

Did you jaywalk? Did you? Are you playing more than 12 hours a month of video games, whatever? Are you buying alcohol, an excessive, an excessive amount of alcohol? But then you get into the really bad things like, okay, you posted something against the government on social media, or you're an investigative journalist, investigating corruption in the government.

Those things are really bad. They can, they can really affect your score negatively. If your score goes, so anyway, you get this social credit score. And if your score goes low enough, then you'll start getting daily, weekly or daily visits from the government to, to kind of harass you and to show you how to get your score up and you have to do this.

You can in China, they have these digital billboards in the community that either highlight people with good scores or shame people with low scores. So if you're in, if you're in China and your, your social credit score goes low enough, you're not going to be able to buy a plane ticket.

If it goes lower, you're not going to be able to buy a train ticket, a bus ticket, and then you're not going to be able to and rent a hotel, all that stuff. And they have a stated goal of if you are a good citizen, then you are as free as a bird.

If you are a bad citizen, then you can't move an inch. And so that's one of the ways they do it. But it's geographic isolation, it's social isolation, and it's financial isolation. So they prevent you from getting a good job.

Socially, they prevent you from getting your kids into a good school if you're what they call a bad citizen, which is gonna pit husband against wife, and all of that stuff. Now, in the US and in the West, they're not gonna be able to do that.

They're not gonna be able to say, okay, well, you have to be a good citizen, and we're gonna tell you whether you're a good citizen or not. But what they're doing is they're basing it on... ideological things like carbon credit score.

And so they're going to give us a carbon credit score that we have to abide by to save the planet and all that stuff. And so if you look on Google Flights right now, each flight has a carbon credit score next to it.

There's a reason for that. That's not just to make us aware that is part of the system that they already have built, but they haven't implemented yet. The reason they're pushing us towards electric cars is because they have control over this electric car.

So if our carbon score goes, if we use too much carbon this month, then maybe next month our electric car will only charge 50 percent full. It won't charge 100 percent full. Maybe it will have a limited range on it or something like that.

Those are controllable cars. That's why they do it. But it will also be social things like hate crimes. If you do a hate crime like posting on social media, something against trans people or something like that, you don't think that Leah Thomas should be swimming against women.

That would be hate crime and that would go against your score. But the point I was getting at is the central bank digital currency will be programmable, meaning that they will be able to penalize us instantaneously or reward us instantaneously and basically train us like a dog.

That's really where it's going to. I think people hear this and they say, well, I would never put up with that. But look at what we put up with in COVID, where there was absolutely two tier society. If you were Vax, you could go to the grocery store, you could go to in some in some.

places, this was worse than others. But in Canada, for example, if you were unvaxed, you couldn't get on trains, you couldn't travel around the country. In certain like California, you couldn't go to venues, you couldn't go to Ticketmaster, couldn't go to some concerts, all of these things that is putting this the pieces in place.

And I think that was a psychological preparation for us being divided. And almost a caste system. And that's, that's one of the things that happens with the social credit system is, you're going to, you're going to be divided.

And that's what they do is, is it but it's all about really control. And really, in a way, it's about enslaving humanity is what it is. So anyway, I don't want to get I don't want to seem too dark with this.

But I think it's important to be aware of what is happening. This is a global movement. It is happening in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, all throughout Europe. They're trying to do it in the US. 190 countries around the world are doing central bank digital currencies right now.

They're trying to push digital IDs. They're trying to push, you know, censorship and crushing freedom of speech. All of these things are coming together in a way that we need to protect ourselves from.

And so that's my mission is to talk about freedom, liberty, and our need to be private. And, you know, just stop playing their games. We can opt out of their system. We can do things. We can use tools that stop spying on us.

So I know that was a long rant, so sorry about that. No, but you bring up a lot of good points. And, you know, I guess how I live, for example, is very different than how most people live. But I do because I want to because I have a very independent lifestyle.

But I'm still at the same time very well connected digitally. And you are even during the course of this podcast episode teaching me some things that I obviously need to be aware of. But that also, you know, just kind of maybe something's up a little bit.

You know, we've touched on a lot of things, digital IDs, surveillance data collection from the government, central bank digital currencies, big tech such as Google constantly collecting data on us. And all of this stuff being aggregated and dumped into this social.

What is it? You call it a social credit? Social credit system. social credit system, okay, to make us behave better, I guess. And to control us, yeah. But you've also said something very important. We can opt out of that.

And I think, as you have shared with me earlier, that you have an upcoming webinar that will give people some further information. So let's talk about that for a minute. When is that going to happen, and how can people attend this webinar, and where can they go to find further information?

Yeah, so that is going to be on January 11th, 11 a .m. Central Time. And the link, you know, we'll send you out the link so you can include it with the podcast. No, you said... I don't mean to interrupt you said January 11th, but oh, sorry, July, July 11th.

Okay. Okay, go ahead. Sorry, July 11 at 11am in the morning Central Time. And yeah, we'll provide you with the link. And really what we want to do is it isn't it's an education class on some thing key things that you can do to opt out of, of the surveillance state.

And so, so it is a very valuable lesson. I think this is really the issue of our time, all of the stuff that they are building is based on the foundation of surveillance. That's the basis that they build all of the stuff on and so we can take that away from them.

And I think it's essential that we do so. Because, you know, if we go back if if I can go back to the first question that you asked me of why is privacy so important. Based on what I just said what I've said today.

Sorry, I'm getting a phone call here I got to turn this off. Okay, sorry about that. So if I can go back to what we will the question that you first asked me today is why should people care about privacy.

I've given some background into the answer that I have for you, but it goes back to what I said earlier, information is power. And when they have information about you they have power over you. That is real power that they have over us.

And if you are giving them that information and you're allowing them to take that your information, you're giving them power over you. And I think it's important that we keep our sovereignty and keep our power ourselves.

And an interesting point about that, you know, this, you know, the, the, the, the data that you have that they have about you being used against you, if you look at the threats online, there are three threats.

So, so there's hackers and scammers, which is one threat, there's big tag, and there's big brother. And all three of those threats are doing the same thing. They're hackers and scammers go out and they do these data breaches and they try to compile a profile on us.

And then they try to use that data against us. Big tech creates these shiny object things that we use like Chrome browser, google .com, Android operating system, Apple has their own, Microsoft has their own, they're trying to gain that data so they can use it against us.

Government is trying to create be digital IDs, centralize the data. They're trying to do the central bank digital currencies, which will give them total information, total surveillance about our financial activities.

They all want our data and they're all, they all want to use that data against us. So that's why it's important to understand this and then to take the steps to stop giving that data to them. So yeah, that's really what we want to talk about on July 11th.

But just looking even in my very basic research, if you really want to take that sort of a position, it seems like it's a process, meaning there's multiple steps that you're going to have to take. Absolutely.

So what is, if someone were to do one thing today, what would you recommend that they do? One thing, that's good. Okay, so to answer your question, you're right. It is not just one thing. I mean, there's a lot of things to, there's a lot of things that you have to do.

But let's, let's just say one thing. So one thing I would say is, whatever browser you're using, change it to the Brave browser. So, so most people are using the Chrome browser, which is Google, or they're using Safari or Edge or even Firefox.

But what we want to do is we want to change it to the Brave browser. So just go to brave .com and download that, make that your default browser. And also when you make it your default browser, just go into the search engine and make sure that Brave, because Brave makes a browser, but they also make a search engine.

So once you download the browser, go and the settings and just check the search engine and just make sure that the search engine is set for brave. And if you do that, you've just killed two birds with one stone because you have gotten away from Google Chrome, which is a Trojan horse that is specifically designed to steal your data.

That's the intended purpose of it. And you're getting away from Google .com as your search engine, which is also a Trojan horse, which is designed to spy on you and get your data. And it records every search you've ever done.

So you want to get away from Google .com. So by getting the brave browser and the using brave search, you've killed two birds with one stone. So what you've done here is actually give people one little tool.

It's actually a very significant tool. So as a first step. So as I always like, you know, when I talk about, you know, of course, I focus on sustainable living and self -sufficient living and, you know, I always tell people this is a, this is a process.

It is a lifestyle choice and it sounds like maintaining your digital privacy and your, your internet freedom. It's a process. So what you've talked about is you changing your browser and that's just one tool.

So, and I would think that during the course of your upcoming webinar, you're going to talk about multiple other tools. Yeah, that's, that's exactly right. We'll, we'll, we'll cover five things that you can do right now to, to opt out of the system.

But what you're saying is exactly right. It comes down to tools. There's, there's tools, but there's also habits. There's also ways that you need to look at things and it is a process. You're exactly right.

It is not just like flipping a switch and okay, now I'm private. It is there, there is stuff to learn. There is, there is quite a bit to learn. So yeah, but we try to make it fun. We try to make it easy.

And that is coming up to be clear. July 11th. Yep. 11 AM, you said 11 AM central time. Yep. And you're going to send me a link to the page where folks can go and sign up and get some information about the webinar.

Yep, absolutely. Oh, and I can also put that in the recorded audio and also of course in the transcript where people can go to my website and download that transcript. So anyway, Glenn, we've talked about a lot, a lot of things here.

Is there any couple of last comments you want to make just in summary to, I don't know, perhaps. encourage people to attend the webinar. Yeah, I mean, I, I hope the, uh, the podcast today kind of opened your eyes.

It is a new world. I mean, it's not like it was when we were young and, but, but, you know, we still think that way. We still think that we're living kind of privately, but we are not. I mean, they are actively spying on us and we just have to up our game, really.

And we've got to start thinking about things differently. We've got to just realize this new world that we're in. There are ways that we can protect ourselves, but we have to do it from a place of being aware of what's going on and have having the knowledge to, to protect ourselves, but also understand that there's some bad guys out there and there's, there's hackers and scammers and there's big tech and there's big brother and none of them are your friend

There's different ways to protect yourself from each but i hope you do come i hope you come to the webinar and learn what you can so anyway once again um that is July 11th 11 a .m central time and this is Glenn Meder is a privacy expert who has provided us with a tremendous amount of valuable information folks and again the link to the upcoming webinar will be in the transcript of this episode as well as the audio so i think uh folks it's probably pretty important that you join this webinar at least for some further information

S0 for now we're going to sign off on this podcast episode and say goodbye to glenn for now thank you very much glenn and uh i will talk to you very soon

Well folks i hope that you are still with me i know that this podcast has been rather lengthy but i also think that glenn provided some very valuable information here and i totally agree with glenn that we truly live in a completely different world these days and as we do more and more things online and more and more business through the internet we really have to do to take some extra steps to protect our privacy and as glenn pointed out there's hackers and scammers and big tech and big brother all collecting information on you about your personal behavior and your personal habits online and if you want to really take some first steps to protect your privacy and freedom on the internet i would encourage you to attend Glen's upcoming webinar and that is going to be on July 11th 11 a .m.

Central Standard Time in the United States and you can register for that webinar at privacyacademy .com forward slash homesteading. Again the upcoming webinar is July 11th 11 a .m. Central Standard Time and you can register at privacy academy .com forward slash homesteading.

So I hope you'll attend that webinar. I know that I'm going to because a lot of things that were brought up here today were learning issues even for me. So for all of us I think it is important to maintain that little bit of privacy because we do live in a completely different world these days.

So, folks, this is Patrick and I'm going to sign off for now and I hope to see you on July 11th and have a great day.