sustainable living

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Sustainable Living: Get curious about your food!

Whether your concerned about using less energy, saving the trees or conserving water, sustainable living can help you to support these causes. Learning about the natural world around you can help you towards a more sustainable lifestyle. It is all about pairing back to basics and understanding that a simple life with less can have huge benefits on the environment and your mental health.

One way to take action is to learn about the foods you consume on a weekly basic. Think about what goes into your shopping basket. Do you know how many items are grown or produced locally? Can you tell the difference between organic produce and mass produced goods? Do you buy more food than you actually need and end up throwing out a lot of food at the end of a week?

Most of us do so don’t worry, we can take small steps to cut down on food waste and make our home more sustainable.

13 Steps Towards a Sustainable Living

  1. Grind the fruit and vegetable peels into delicious juices
  2. Repurpose jars and containers
  3. Spend time outdoors, learning about the wild produce around you
  4. Start composting at home
  5. Make homemade cleaning products (did you know that the acid in Lemons is antibacterial?)
  6. Limit the use of hot water
  7. Plant a tree with a friend
  8. Cut down on your meat intake
  9. Prepare home cooked meals with local ingredients
  10. Create a shopping list and try to stick to it
  11. Look for fairtrade symbols and certifications on products
  12. Choose ethical brands
  13. Research ingredients

There are plenty of ways that we can begin to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle. Our foraging tours will teach you about the wild plants and delicious herbs plucked straight from nature. Investing in life long learning is the perfect excuse to get outdoors, learn something new and give back to the community around you. If you are interested in developing your wild plant knowledge then you can download our Foragers Planner Pack and Herb Planner Pack to start recording your activities.

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Reconnecting with our food for Sustainable Living

With all of this talk of Climate change it is easy for media outlets and studies to play the blame game. However as we are all to blame isn’t it better if we begin to tackle the issues resulting in all of environmental destruction we see around us together.

We can’t go back in time to change our farming processes, our over reliance on the meat industry, our greed for fossil fuels and our refusal to see the signs from natural disasters around us but we can work towards a new value system.

I hate that sustainable living has become a buzz word today. We are all capable of getting back to nature and that is called living. Taking a walk in the woodlands, breathing in the fresh air, getting to know the plants around us and how our ancestors used those plants to feed themselves in the past is a sustainable way forward. If we reach into our childhood curiosity we can find creative solutions and abandon our over reliance on convenient produce that is contributing to the damages that we see in the environment today.

Foraging is one way that we can reconnect with the land. Taking all of it’s principles and building a brighter future.

A special UN and IPCC report on the impact of land management practices on our ever changing climate is significant. Food production, consumption and waste are three key areas that we must tackle to prevent further degradation of our landscapes. A collective approach is always best and we can by simply learning about the foods we eat and valuing where that food comes from. Here are five food choices that will help us to step away from materialism and towards sustainable living.

  1. Admire and Value Nature

It is easy to forget to stop and smell the roses. Many of us spend our days rushing from here to there or cramming into a train to get from A to B.

2. Enjoy your local farmers market

Visiting a local farmers market is always a treat. Not only does a market offer fresh produce and seasonal foods, it is a place that values community. Hang around, have a coffee, talk to the vendors and get some tips.

3. Love Fruit

Fruit is easy to ignore when you reach the supermarket because it is usually positionned right beside rows of carb deliciousness and shelves of nuts that call for our attention but never underestimate the juiciness of a Spanish orange. Organic fruit or freshly picked fruit is packed full of flavor and goodness.

4. Know where your food is coming from

Taking time to learn about where our food comes from may be the biggest way that we can contribute to the environment today. Picking is hard work. It is physically demanding and the hours are long if you plan on taking it up full time for the harvest season. Fruit picking is also one of the most rewarding ways to spend an afternoon and to witness and understand the intensive labor it takes to get your fruits to the market stalls.

5. Go Foraging with Friends

Last but certainly not least forage with friends. Joining a local or international foraging tour will open your eyes, give you plenty of food for thought and give you a taste of the last around you.

This is not an exhaustive list but rather some easy tips to start thinking about your daily food habits in a mindful way. We hope this gives you some food for thought and look forward to living closer with nature in a sustainable world.

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