The Beauty of Sustainability!
Sustainability is a new topic, but it is so essential for us and the world. The beauty of sustainability leads me back to my youth. We had not much, but the consumption already began to develop having a face. The development of exploitation already had arrived, greediness, desire to have more, and more.
People could suddenly buy everything, they were consumers, and still, there was so much to receive and develop, no end in sight. But nowadays, the earth is after decades have passed, violated, raped, exploited, exhausted by the world population who has drowned her in consumption, leaving developing countries in poverty, in a huge amount of waste, not wanting to stop, being greedy for big money.
But what does it bring us if we have a world we can’t live in. In my youth, I have been very impressed by the speeches of the native of America who loved the earth, respected life, and didn’t think about exploitation but about sustainability( a word that had a natural meaning then). They were thinking for the generations to come, leaving a sustainable, healthy world behind them for their children.
How contrary the white man?
He didn’t think of his children, only of himself! He wasn’t interested in the earth, only in earning money! He didn’t respect the animals, only himself! So we did everything to ruin the earth; we all did, not one exception!
Desiring to travel, to have beautiful clothes, food, digital products, electrical devices, cars, etc., we have not been thinking about others. Every Christmas, people donate massive money, but the whole year they are drowning the planet in waste, exploiting other countries, increasing the climate’s disaster.
Still, they feel so great, having donated to poor people in the world. The dividedness of the human mind is worrying. People really think they have done nothing, but good things, showing me they are mentally lost. So many people comfort their guilty feelings by donating money but don’t stop damaging the earth. Can you imagine? I could do more to save our beautiful planet; I already do a lot, but not enough.
When Schindler, the industrial businessman in the Third Reich, started to save Jews from death, he said at the end of Hitler’s time that he was ashamed because he could have saved more people from death if he would have sold his car or his house. We still live a life in abundance, not giving up all luxury goods, but we can do more! And that is what we do.
The New World Label!
When I have been young, our world has been relatively simple, no digital products, no computers, no smartphones. There wasn’t so much waste, but then it began to explode, all the plastic, plastic shoes, handbags, electronic products, furniture, clothing, and so much more. The use of pesticides and herbicides has exploded.
We still bought cotton, linen, wool clothes, and leather-made shoes with a leather sole. Natural materials were normal. I know my parents bought meat from the butcher who has butchered animals from a farm he knows. The baker made his bread himself, tasted fantastic, no conservatives.
There have not been so many cars on the road. A farmer who used a horse to work on his field was still quite common, and only some years later, they used machines. I know how horses were pulling beer barrels; you wouldn’t see it anymore. Everything has changed. Greenpeace has started to fight to protect the Canadian forests, cut down on the paper and furniture industry.
Clothing was still coming from Germany or Italy. Industry only needed some decades to ruin the earth, driven by greediness. But we all have helped, desiring to have more, and more, buying and throwing away. To make more profit, the industry settled in Asia, south-America, and Africa to produce cheap products from non-quality materials selling them at higher prices. Climate changed, air, earth, water pollution, oceans full of plastics, leaving the producing countries behind in an environmental disaster. Disappearing forests, making space for the palm oil industry, fossil fuels used for energy, warming up the climate, etc.
Well, people have to rethink and change their lifestyles to save the planet. A new word that has been a normal condition in my youth has been born, sustainability. I still know the beauty of the quiet nature that I enjoyed so much as a child. We didn’t have so many cars, houses, and people.
The world population has increased, tourism branches, farming, production all have increased. In the Netherlands and Germany, the traffic jam has gone through the roof, leaving the air polluted. The industry is increasing air pollution in nearly all countries in the world. It is time to stop wasting and polluting and follow a plan.
While governments have a hard time working out a plan, many people try to figure out how to live sustainably, buying organic, refurbished, recycled products—a crucial step towards saving our Earth.
Affordable Sustainable Clothes
There are so many companies nowadays that produce beautiful, sustainable clothes. Actually, there is no need for massively produced cheap clothing that is full of dangerous chemicals. We need to stop consuming such things, being guilty of destroying beautiful countries with our greediness leaving people in an ill-making environment.
We are the ones to be blamed, not the people in these countries trying to make an income to care for their families. We keep such a system alive. If we would all be content with what we have, we wouldn’t need to exploit other people, countries, and the planet.
Even buying second-hand would decrease the burden on the planet. There is still lovely clothing in second-hand shops, sometimes not even used. I know several fashion companies making sustainable clothes, shoes, handbags looking gorgeous, modern, fashionable.
Peter Hahn, a German luxury fashion company that sells many designer clothing, these days also supporting designers producing sustainable fashion. More companies are adding to this trend, and I welcome them all! You can check out my fashion shop, where I made several pages with sustainable clothing, promoting several designers. Maybe you try them out and see how they look and feel.
Organic Natural Beauty Products
Another hot topic is organic natural beauty products made from natural ingredients without hazardous chemicals that burden and poisoning our bodies and the environment. That is not good! The body doesn’t recognize these chemicals and can’t detox, storing them in tissues, and organs, damaging our cells.
There are so many beauty products that are organic and natural. Using them is the better option, and you have shampoos, face oil, face creams, makeups, deodorant, toothpaste, etc.
You can make them yourself using natural ingredients you can buy online. I pursue you not to use chemical bombs, making you ill. I wrote several articles on organic cosmetics you can read here.
Organic Natural Skincare – Ageless Skin | Your World in (yourworldinbalance.com)
6 Tips for Beautiful Glowing Skin | Your World in Balance
The Use of Natural Organic Cosmetics- The Healthy Way (yourworldinbalance.com)
If you want to buy organic products, you find them everywhere on the internet, and they are affordable. Sustainable products are not expensive anymore. Of course, you can spend more money on them, but there are already cheaper brands also quality products.
Why is Sustainable Living Important?
We should not live in caves again, wearing a leather cloth, but ingesting the information and internalizing sustainability trying to choose healthy food, cosmetics, fashion, furniture, cars, electronic devices, etc.
If we don’t stop overproducing and wasting, we will finally drown our planet. It is not a supermarket where we can buy and consume what we want.
Our Earth has a delicate balance that must be maintained. We need to change our behavior towards consumption. I feel that we are not enjoying the beauty of our planet and God’s creation, but that we are just in the mode of wanting more, consuming, owning without noticing that we finally destroy our own environment. And the future of our children.
There are many possibilities to change our behavior, buy refurbished electrical devices, and travel in a sustainable way using the train, bicycle, or your feet. I have only to walk half an hour to the city center, anyway, the best I, but also you, can do; walking and cycling, increasing our condition and helping our immune system stay strong.
It is so important to be happy and content with what we have. Due to Covid 19, I see more people, even families with children walking in the forest, a great development, hoping that people will be more aware of nature, our treasure.
In my youth, we did a picnic altogether, and it was socializing and very energizing. We played games together, talking to each other, or we went to a dancing event. We can do so much without consuming, just being in the presence, enjoying ourselves and others. Living in Ireland, I loved to visit a pub in Dublin, meeting other people, and socializing. The Irish people are fantastic open socializing people, knowing to live.
Covid 19 has opened up a chance to us, stopping and rethinking, changing our course.
Final Thought
Let us create a sustainable world, without a flood of consumer goods, without all the chemicals that make us ill, without pesticides and herbicides, helping the insects reincrease population, and helping other animals depending on insects as a food supply. Preserving healthy earth for the next generations, teaching the children to respect the world they are living in! Saving the planet, the world we live in is a project we can only accomplish together.
What do you think about sustainability? I would love to read your comments on this topic!
All the best,
Sylvie
10 Comments
Jamie L.
Great article. It sure does bring awareness to this chronic problem. We are taught to treat our body like a temple and we need to do that to our earthly home also. It’s all about balance. Everyone needs to do their part. I love your suggestions about buying refurbished. I’ve done that many times over the last few years. Especially with electronics you pay a fraction of the cost and they are just as good as new. I plan on sharing your page to many to spread awareness and have many people working towards this common beautiful goal. Thanks for such an eyeopening article. Stay Healthy!
Jamie
Sylvie
Hi Jamie, Thank you very much for your thoughtful comment! You are so right; refurbished is so much cheaper, and they are great products. My apple iPhone is a refurbished item, and it works fantastic. Our washing machine is refurbished, the same here, it works great. It should become a lifestyle, using the products that are already made, and redo them. I buy second-hand clothing, and if you see how beautiful they are, they are often used only once. Please share this article; I am trying to reach as many people as I can. Thank you very much! And stay healthy too!
Christine
I think that many people want change but most won’t when they realize that they themselves must make the change. Few people have the courage to change, and it takes courage, I suppose. I am not afraid of change, and I have already changed much of my way of life to have a more compassionate, cruelty-free, and also sustainable life. I went vegan years ago, I buy many of my clothes in a second hand store that has a lot of high quality clothes of excellent brands (I once found Versace pants there, which is something I would not have been able to afford if I had bought this brand new). I planted many fruit trees and some vegetables on my land with the goal to make my land mostly self-sufficient, in order to buy only the bare essentiels in stores, such as rice, pasta, and so on.
Change is daunting to many people, and even though covid is giving us the chance to re-evaluate things, many still want to continue with the old destructive ways. Instead of living a healthier lifestyle (because God forbid, that is so “limiting” …) they want to solve covid with vaccines. And then the next pandemic will come along, because as long as people do not change this destructive society, more pandemics will come.
I feel that we still have a long way to go …
Sylvie
Hi Christine, Thank you very much for your thoughtful comment! Yes, you are so right! I agree with you. People will not want to change so quickly. It is a destructive society, for sure. I admire that you have found your sustainable lifestyle. That is a quality of life. I have seen so many great items in second-hand shops, and I think that is a great way to live sustainably. They have very often beautiful high-quality clothes.
I am already worried about people massively travel when covid is under control. They want for sure to live their destructive lifestyle again. People don’t learn; they repeat mistakes because they want comfort.
Corneila
Times have really changed and you are right sustainability used to have a very natural meaning to it, I think greed plays a very big role as people will always want more and they will create more. If we can keep the earth green we can perhaps help in the effort to create a sustainable world,
Changing our buying behavior will help, I always try to buy the “green” cleaning materials my way of trying to save the planet.
I think that Covid-19 is the planet’s way of “fighting” back, people appriciate fresh air and walking along the beach much more now than a year ago. There are lots of videos out there of wild animals roaming in the cities. How weird is that?
Thank you for sharing, Sylvie.
Sylvie
Hi Cornelia, Thank you very much for your comment! You are very right, and I want to encourage you to keep going. Buying green cleaning stuff is already a good point. I do vinegar and bicarbonate, which work perfectly together. We need to get back to nature, learn to respect and love it. I haven’t seen such videos. What I have to look up for? That sounds strange! 🙂
Hannie
Hi Sylvie, I can only but agree with your remarks. What I like is the expression: “we don’t need some people doing everything right – we need all people to do a bit of good”. If, for instance, all meat-eaters would skip one day of eating meat, so much is already gained. Yet, I hear meat-eaters always say “oh, I can’t miss my meat”.
Well, instead of looking at others, I can better see what else I can do. When we were planning of leaving the Netherlands we got rid of a lot of goods. And we spent a year with our necessities in a car. One car, how much can you store in that? Not that much. 🙂 But we did fine, so we don’t need as much as we always think.
Now we live again in a house and unfortunately it is custom in Spain to sell a house with everything in it. So again we have too much stuff!! The mountain of possessions grows easily. 🙂
So I am trying to minimize again, giving away what we don’t need.
Thanks for the inspiration.
Sylvie
Hoi Hannie, Thank you very much for your comment! I was surprised that you sell in Spain everything you possess with your house. I always think if we are living somewhere else, we are going to rent. There are so many beautiful furnished houses and apartments; there is no need to buy anything. In Ireland, I rented a furnished apartment, which is quite convenient, and when I leave, I always have everything I need in my car, which is not so much, but still, the car is packed. 🙂
I still eat some meat, but most of my diet consists of vegetables, fruits, seeds, healthy fats, and nuts. It works the best for me. I tried to consume a vegan diet, but it didn’t go well with the autoimmune disorder I have, Hashimoto disease. The way you lived for a year, driving around and having everything you need in your car, I would love this too. I have a vision! 🙂
Andrew
The short-sightedness of some of humanity is astounding! Let’s abuse, destroy, and poison our home for short-term profit! Great idea? No, it’s not! Where are our children and grandchildren going to live, and what sort of world will it be? A world far different from the one we grew up in, I bet!
I remember reading about the wisdom of one of the North American Indian tribes a while ago. Their basis for making big decisions was that the outcomes of anything they did had to be of benefit for the next seven generations. This is wisdom……. Unfortunately, the greedy settlers wanted to kill them all and remove their way of life from history. Luckily, some of their traditions and wisdom still survive today.
Apparently, according to a video I watched from Gregg Braden at Gaia.com, all of the technology we need for a sustainable world already exists. However, it is we, as individuals that are lacking the understanding and the willpower to bring it all into being. Much of the problem is because a few people in positions of immense power, use their influence to lobby governments, organizations, and spread propaganda through Main Stream Media, with the aim of maintaining the current systems of using fossil fuels, sickness as opposed to wellness, and intensive destructive food manufacturing practices instead of working in balance with Mother Nature.
We are human’s and we have desires. We seek to continually expand and learn and grow ourselves. It is just part of our essential nature. And because of this, I for one, am grateful to be living in an age where so many things are available to us that have never been available to previous generations. The ability to travel, to have information available at the click of a button, and to live in warm houses are luxuries that appeal to me. So I never want to give up the development of new technologies that can help us expand our potential and experience as humans.
However, what I would like to see is the power taken away from the greedy destructive one percent at the top of the pyramid who wish to own, control, and dominate the rest of us for their individual gains. These people are the ones profiting from inferior unsustainable manufacturing and production methods at the expense of all other life on earth. Globalization has been a disaster for the majority of people and other life on the planet and as such, manufacturing needs to be restored within local economies to become more sustainable.
We are fortunate in one respect: The ultimate power lies with the consumer. And as you say, choosing sustainable, non-polluting products over cheap and nasty alternatives is a choice we can all make….. However, how do we convince someone who has very little money to buy something more expensive because it is better for all of us? Education is the answer…..
Thanks for sharing.
Sylvie
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment, Andrew!
Yes, I know we have everything already to live a sustainable life. But the greediness of the 1% mega-rich people tries to prevent us from using it. Nobody should live in caves again, but that is not necessary to live a sustainable life. I am sad that people worldwide don’t notice that we as consumers have the power to stop these people from controlling and manipulating us.
I love the idea of sustainable local communities where people can self-support their living by selling their organic produce.
In Germany, people leave plastic in the supermarket, so that they have to deal with it. I do my groceries at the organic market or in farmer’s shops, or the organic butcher. Our shopping behavior has to change; then, we can force the industry to stop destroying production. There are luckily already many people who try to live a sustainable life. And you know it is not that expensive anymore. I find groceries done at the supermarket more expensive than on the organic market because the prices for vegetables and fruits have become quite high. Buying organic meat and bread or cheese is not cheap. Why not starting to produce our own cheese or baking our own bread using a mill at home? This is all possible, and it tastes so good. But many people have no time to do that.
I read it too about the American natives that they have preserved their environment for the next seven generations. Amazing people! So much wisdom!
We can’t trust mainstream media. Did you hear about the Davos clique, the mega-rich top in this world? They try to take our freedom and to control us globally. As you said, it is essential to educate people and to stop this madness. I will watch Gregg Braden too. Thank you very much for sharing. 🙂