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Guidelines for Creating Sustainable Lifestyles

By Claudia Barner Ph.D.


Picture the Earth as a giant bank account. Now picture your use of Earth's resources such as water, minerals, energy and food as withdrawals from that bank account. Clearly if you continue to withdraw or take and decline to put anything back in, you will go broke soon. This is what is happening right now! Your choice to take more than you give can be considered childish. It is of course a child's "job" to take a lot. The child needs to take food, water, knowledge, shelter, clothes, enrichment and love. Where we have missed the point, however, is that we adults are still acting like children with respect to the Earth's resources.

Now we need to learn how not to take so much and to give back into the Earth's systems so we can create a sustainable future. We tell ourselves a lot of pretense stories that excuse our childish taking behavior. We tell ourselves we have done enough. We tell ourselves we don't have time. We tell ourselves we'll recycle later. We tell ourselves that we need that styrofoam container, and on and on. One of the most insidious pretenses is that we trade responsible, sustainable behavior patterns for mere convenience and tell ourselves it's okay to do that. As adults our give should at least equal our take. Some people may even choose to give more.

Animal World Mineral World Your Choice Human World Plant World wheel of action choices - creating sustainable lifestyles

As you explore the concept of equal (at least) return, how do you decide where and how to spend your energy? Your attention, time and energy are like treasures. Spend them in places that are worthy. There are many choices for give-aways. In addition to the overt ones, each choice you make to not take so much or to substitute a healthy habit for an unsustainable environmentally damaging habit is also like a gift back to the Earth.

This wheel shows the major categories of give-away choices. You could choose to do a little in each direction or concentrate in one direction.


North:   ANIMAL WORLD EXAMPLES
  1. Spay or neuter all pet animals.
  2. If you must patronize a breeder make sure they are reputable and responsible and not perpetuating problems such as hip dysplasia.
  3. Volunteer at your local Wildlife Waystation or other haven for animal species.
  4. Join Wolf Haven, an organization that cares for abandoned wolves. (206) 264-HOWL
  5. Join Save the Whales (800) WHALE or similar organizations that care for marine mammals.
  6. Volunteer at your local ASPCA (Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).
  7. Don't let your car leak oil on the street or driveway. The oil washes into the oceans and rivers when it rains and harms aquatic life.
  8. Buy milk products that don't contain BGH (bovine growth hormone). There is a suspected link between BGH and breast cancer and testicular atrophy. The brands that I know of that are BGH-free are Alta Dena, Jersey Maid, Ben & Jerry's, and Horizon.
  9. Don't eat fast food. The meat is contaminated with hormones, antibiotics and agony.
  10. Eat cage-free eggs. No animal should live like a machine to make your omelette.
  11. Buy meat that was raised on a free range and without antibiotics or hormones. Coleman is a good producer and is available at health food stores like Wild Oats or Mrs. Gooch's.
  12. Don't buy cosmetics that are animal tested. The labels will specify this. If not, assume they are animal tested as most are. An animal should not die in misery so you can look pretty.
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South:   PLANT WORLD EXAMPLES
  1. Find out how many trees you "owe".
  2. The average person uses about 300 pounds of paper per year which corresponds to five trees! Many people use more.
  3. To balance your industrial responsibility for CO2 output, you need to plant forty-five trees over your lifetime.
  4. Call your local equivalent of TreePeople to volunteer to plant trees.
  5. Call Global Releaf (800) 873-5323 to plant trees in your name ($1 per tree). Great holiday idea. You get a beautiful certificate or request to skip the certificate.
  6. Landscape your house or apartment with plants appropriate to your area. In a desert, don't try to grow a lawn.
  7. Grow at least some of your food. Plant a tomato plant or parsley or lettuce in a pot. Nurturing the food that will in turn nurture you is a very satisfying process.
  8. Try to choose foods that are seasonal to your area rather than imported long distances.
  9. Find out where and how your coffee is grown and whether the agriculture practice is sustainable. Shade grown coffee leaves forests intact, but sun grown coffee requires the destruction of Central American cloud forests.
  10. Buy produce from a farmer's market whenever possible.
  11. Better yet, join a farmer's cooperative and participate more directly in your food growing.
  12. Use cloth napkins instead of paper ones.
  13. Use rags instead of paper towels.
  14. Bring your own bags with you to the stores.
  15. Just say No! to that extra bag.
  16. Buy toilet paper made from unbleached recycled paper. The bleaching process releases extremely toxic chemicals like dioxin (Agent Orange) into the waterways.
  17. Call your local environmentally active group and get involved.
  18. Volunteer with Rain Forest Action Network. In LA (310) 285-9539.
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West:   MINERAL WORLD EXAMPLES
  1. Buy organic produce instead of pesticide-laden produce.
  2. Start a compost pile with your kitchen scraps in your yard or garden instead of landfilling.
  3. Use natural composts and fertilizers instead of commercial chemicals to nurture your garden. Run-off from chemical fertilizers is a serious problem in our waterways and wells.
  4. Bring a reusable plastic container with you to carry your take-home food. Food servers will eventually get used to this. Don't be lazy and tell yourself convenience pretense stories.
  5. Carry your own mug instead of using Styrofoam. Styrofoam is foamed with CFC's which are now known to destroy the ozone layer and contribute to global climate change.
  6. Turn the faucet off when you brush your teeth instead of letting it run.
  7. Take shorter showers less often. Americans are about the only people in the world who bathe every day.
  8. Replace your water guzzling toilet with a low flush alternative or put a brick in the tank of your old toilet.
  9. Fix all leaks promptly.
  10. Turn off sprinkler systems when it rains.
  11. Don't water plants during the day because water evaporates more then.
  12. Buy your friends and families rainforest acres as gifts and medicine gifts instead of useless stuff.
  13. Put on a sweater instead of turning on the heater.
  14. Don't burn trash or newspapers in your fireplace. Colored paper releases toxic heavy metals into the atmosphere.
  15. Turn off extra lights.
  16. Dry laundry outside on a clothesline instead of in the dryer.
  17. Recycle single-use batteries instead of throwing them in the trash where the dangerous metal content can leach into the waterways.
  18. Better yet, buy rechargeable batteries, especially solar powered.
  19. Choose not to buy foods and goods that are overpacked.
  20. Buy items in bulk packs.
  21. Make sure you are recycling everything you can. It will take 200 million years for that aluminum can you threw away to be recycled by the earth.
  22. If you must use a dry cleaners, try to find one that is using a water-dry method instead of organic chemicals. Are you dry cleaning sacred blankets and SunDance clothes?
  23. Request that your dry-cleaned clothes not be wrapped in plastic.
  24. Replace toxic cleaning chemicals with baking soda and vinegar. Baking soda is a good inexpensive scrubber. Vinegar works fine as a coffee pot and window cleaner.
  25. Replace moth balls with cedar blocks or chips. Moth balls are extremely toxic.
  26. Use pens that are refillable.
  27. Use lighters that can be refilled.
  28. Work with local groups to get the cement replaced with flowers and trees.
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East:   HUMAN WORLD EXAMPLES
  1. The root cause of all our environmental problems (and probably many of our social problems too) is that there are too many humans on the planet. The web of life is in a precarious position as humans push other species out. Volunteer with Zero Population Growth (ZPG) in your area.
  2. Choose to have no more than two children.
  3. Adopt children.
  4. Carpool with family, neighbors and friends.
  5. Cut down on meat as a protein source. Only a few billion people could eat as much meat protein as the average American. We already have almost seven billion people on the planet.
  6. Don't use antibiotics unless you absolutely must. Many disease strains no longer respond to antibiotics, in part because of overuse.
  7. Volunteer at local schools or homeless shelters or organizations like Meals on Wheels and others that care for the elderly or handicapped.
  8. Make sure you are practicing safe sex. AIDS is becoming the number one cause of death among young people.
  9. Volunteer for AIDS Project LA (213) 993-1600 or a similar local organization.
  10. Buy clothes and materials that are manufactured by adult workers who receive a fair wage and work in decent conditions in a non-polluting factory. You must do your homework here, be persistent and ask a lot of questions. Nike, Reebok and Timberland are examples of products that are not produced under just or human conditions.
  11. Limit the amount of goods you buy. Do you really need twelve sweaters, twenty-three dresses, nine pairs of jeans and six pairs of boots?
  12. Educate your friends and family without pointing fingers or being obnoxious or judgmental. Educate yourself and don't be greedy. Enroll for an ecology class at your local college. Surf the web for current information.
  13. File this paper somewhere where you will use it eventually.
  14. Don't give up. Every little bit counts. Never feel as though you don't count. You do!
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Center:   YOUR CHOICE

IT DOESN'T REALLY MATTER SO MUCH EXACTLY WHAT YOU DO, JUST DO SOMETHING!
DO WHAT YOU CAN AND DON'T BEAT YOURSELF UP FOR WHAT YOU CAN'T DO!

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