uNLIMITED OPPORTUNITES FOR IMPACT
Opportunities for Impact
The way you consume:
- Buy from the person who grows your food.
- Try to buy things with the least amount of packaging. Buy in bulk whenever possible and bring your own containers.
- Grow your own food. Sprouts, microgreens, a vegetable garden, a greenhouse, a community garden.
- Find out about vegetables you can regrow again and again. Sweet potato, onion, garlic, romaine lettuce, celery, carrots, avocado, pineapple, herbs like basil, cilantro, rosemary.
- Bring your own bag to the store every time. Keep some at home, many in your car and a couple in your purse.
- Buy local whenever possible.
- Buy organic and eat organic.
- Avoid GMOs.
- Learn to read labels. Know what you are consuming (food, drinks, beauty products, personal hygiene, cleaning products, lawncare chemicals, etc.).
- Bring your own bottle and coffee mug everywhere you go. Encourage businesses you like to move away from disposable products.
- Avoid Styrofoam and plastic! Stop using disposable plates, utensils and packaging!
- Get informed about the local businesses near you. Support small businesses doing good in your community!
- Only buy what you love. (This simple idea can be very empowering).
Projects:
- Do something awesome in your workplace. (Recycling, water bottles, make sure events and meetings are sustainable)
- Start a project, an initiative where you live or work. Find what you are passionate about. Or join forces with an initiative that is already doing work you admire.
Learn. Get informed.
- Get informed! Go to your public library and check out a book or audiobook to listen to in your car to learn more about the environmental problems we are facing.
- Do research on the internet to learn more about food, water, soil, our environment, climate change.
- Watch a good documentary like Seeds of Change, The Corporation, Heal, or …
- Understand the relationship between what we eat, our environmental crisis and our growing health epidemics. Highly recommended is Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food.
- Find out if there is a seed library near you where you can get heirloom seeds. If not, find out how to start one.
- Whenever you learn something new, teach it to someone else. Share your knowledge! Learn about pollinators.
- Learn to read labels! Know what all of those chemicals will do to your health, to the ecosystem.
- Reduce the amount of medication you take. Invest in exercising, eating healthy and meditating and mindfulness.
- Use your creativity to promote community and connection.
- Use your creativity to bridge the generation gap.
- Create a culture of caring for the commons. Reflect in small groups about what’s important to you and how you are already contributing to the Caring Commons and how you can expand on it.
- Be an example of what is possible on social media. Always check the source before sharing. Use it as a tool for the common good.
In your yard:
- Find out what plants you can plant in your yard to help bring back the honeybees, butterflies and hummingbirds – our most important pollinators. (Plant a butterfly bush). Contact your local native plant society, the nearest university outreach department. Go over the best information!
- Plant a wildflower patch or convert your whole lawn into wildflowers or use creative landscaping!
- Let dandelions and clovers grow! They’re good for bees.
- Reframe your concept of what a beautiful lawn is! Find out what else you can do! Talk to neighbors and friends in your community to support each other.
- Plant a vegetable garden!!! If you have limited space, click here for ideas.
- If you don’t have a yard, grow your own herbs and vegetables in a pot (indoors or outdoors).
- If you can’t convert your lawn into wildflowers, let the outside edges of your lawn grow. Let the weeds take over.
- Learn about common and abundant plants growing right in your own backyard. Edible weeds like dandelions and purslane. Read books like The Wild Wisdom of Weeds: 13 Essential Plants for Human Survival by Katrina Blair. Learn about foraging.
- Keep chickens in your yard to eat the bugs and you won’t need to spray.
- Make a compost pile.
- Find out if there is compost collecting in your neighborhood. Find out how you can get it started.
- Eliminate lawn chemicals and fertilizers! They kill the bees, they cause algal blooms, they wreak havoc on the health of your family and pets.
- Start beekeeping.
Energy and Transportation:
- If you drive, get a fuel-efficient car.
- Make sure there is enough air in your tires. Have you ever ridden a bicycle with a flat tire?
- Use a fan instead of air conditioning!
- Turn your AC up a couple of degrees (78 degrees). It doesn’t need to be freezing!
- Workplaces, offices, raise the temperature on the A/C a couple of degrees, so many places keep it so cold in the summer that it’s uncomfortable. In winter lower a couple of degrees at home and at work (68 degrees).
- Protect the watershed near you. Someone always lives downstream.
- Eliminate harmful chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.
- Opt for solar or wind energy on your electrical bill if it’s available.
- Help bring solar power to your community. Consult with RMI.
- Find out about starting tool sharing, community tool initiatives.
- Retrofit your house: collect rainwater, toilets, solar energy, better windows,
Cleaning:
- We need more creative initiatives to get everything circulating.
- Use natural cleaning products.
- Find out how to use essential oils as a natural disinfectant and insect repellant.
- Learn about the products you’re putting down the drain.
- Find out how to recycle everything when you are working on a home improvement project.
- Declutter your home. Give away the things you don’t use that someone else might need (clothes, books, kitchen items). Think of it as energy. How can you get the energy circulating? Get very creative.
Miscellaneous:
- Get informed about recycling your waste. Find out if there’s a farm that accepts compost from your kitchen waste.
- Put up a clothesline and cut down drastically on using your dryer. In the winter the wet clothes will work as a humidifier. Sun and wind are the best natural disinfectants.
- Turn off lights. Unplug computer, etc. when not in use.
- Learn about nature close to your home: what’s around you? Find out about the history. The watershed, protected areas, trails, etc. We all have so much to learn! Share what you learn with others.
- Talk to older locals. Find out the history of your place. Find out who’s doing what. Connect with others passionate about creative placemaking and caring for the commons.
Lifestyle:
- Be an advocate for your own health! Change your lifestyle habits and get healthy so you can cut down on medications. Too many medications are going into our water supply!
- Cut down on beef. If you do eat it. Know where it comes from and how it’s being raised
- Start beekeeping
- Ride your bike to work.
- Carpool or take public transit.
- Get your seeds from a seed library.
- Learn about seed libraries.
- If you don’t have one near you, get together and start one!
- Become aware of the garbage around you. How much we waste with disposable everything.
- If you have a party, please please do not use disposable everything where it all gets thrown in the trash after!!!!
- Learn more about the mind/body connection. Watch movies like The Connection on FMTV or E-motion on FMTV.
- Rethink the way you consume. Get creative and fun. Exchange clothes with friends, buy second hand, recycle everything. One man’s waste is another person’s gold. Go through the trouble of finding out who may need exactly what you have.
- Create businesses or projects around and of these suggestions! Share your suggestions!
- Create more jobs and projects for people to engage in that contribute to building a Caring Commons.
