A lot of people think that natural life, green lifestyle is just again made-up by marketers to make more money. No it is a fact, natural lifestyle exists and it can be free, affordable or even expensive. In other words, according to your budgets you can always make a change.

Green Transition is for everyone, and this what we are about to discover together in this blog.

Every little or big change remains a change and will have an impact on the environment, at least your close environment.

Let’s take it reasonably; the easiest way to make effective changes is by acting on what you control. Even small changes when applied widely they will have a significant impact on the environment. Your lifestyle is the first thing you can green since you control it, you choose it and you live it, this is what we will review here today.

Every point will be detailed through the year under the Green Lifestyle category.

HOME

First a very important point is to understand how you consume. For this task you have to find a good Carbone footprint calculator in order to make an exhaustive evaluation of your footprint. It will give you an image of your footprint and help you make priorities. Read my post on the different evaluators you can find Evaluate yourself.

Once you have make your priorities you can start making some changes by modifying products you use or by modifying the way you use things. For example, practice recycling allows you to reduce your amount of trashes, this is a  good way to participate by producing less garbages, less pollution.

Some activities have a direct impact on the environment: make sure you have chosen a green way to wash your dishes; there are techniques that help make water savings.

You’re about to attack housework, cleaning your floor is also a great way to make a change: in every super market you can find greener cleaning products but you can also make your own. Read my post on the greener ways to clean your floors or how to clean your indoor air.

You have to understand that you probable have an alternative for every cleaning product you use, for example, there are “magic potions” as I call them, some products that can revolutionized the way you clean your home. Read our Zoom series on the Green Attitude part, where I present every usage you can do of Baking soda (more than 20 different usage of baking soda), white vinegar etc. But you can also follow our products’ reviews that give an evaluation of various eco-products I have tested for you.

In addition of replacing the products you use, change the way you clean your house, green lifestyle goes even further: you have to work on your habits. There is no Green Transition without modifying your habits in order to reduce your impact on the environment. There are many ways find advices on what could be an environmental friendly behavior. In order to gather for you all the requested information and to centralize what I have been discovering, you can easily and freely download my eco-guides (every month I study a process and create a downloadable guide easy to read and practice).

Speaking about behavior, we must underline the MUST of green behavior: You have to make energy savings (except if you are already under solar energy), you have to push yourself to adopt green energy consumption and of course a more water savings’ behavior.

GARDEN / BALCONY

The garden is important; because it is your soil, so if you are a flowers’ lover and use fertilizer, just change the products. In Greece in every florist you have the choice between chemical and organic products. Sometime, you can even find these products in your house like a nail in a flower pot helps provide the iron needed. You can also find on the internet solutions, like the Greek company Biosporos (around 5 -6€ the fertilizer bottle). Read our Interview with Biosporos.

Another good practice that is quite profitable for you is composting. Composting consists in recycling all organic trashes you produce every month in order to produce your own, clean hummus. All you need to give some energy to you plants and flowers. It allows you to reduce significantly you garbage volume and in addition you produce something useful.

In parallel, you can also in your garden adopt better habits: water your plants at the end of the day and not during the day, this way they will drink all the water you give. Day light makes water evaporates which means useless cost and use of water. A special guide for green gardening is under construction, you will be soon informed.

GENERAL REMARKS

There are finally some general remarks that we need to pay attention to: each of these points will be in-depth analyzed and detail in further articles (you want to write on some of the subjects, send me your post on guestposts@missblue.org)

• Buy the greener clothes you can, it yet a market that has a lot of work and especially in Greece where the offer is very limited, a few stylists have made the great jump towards organic clothing like Mumu Organic.
• Make sure you know what you buy, if you can’t provide yourself organic health product for example you can at least choose correctly your cosmetics.
• You can change in addition what food you buy, try the organic market of your neighborhood, they have wonderful fruits and vegetables.

This article will be in continuous revision, along with what I’ll discover and test in order to be always up-to-date.

If you have any question, anything you are not sure about or want some help, contact me by email (I answer very quickly) camilledelcour@missblue.org