Local: good practices to decrease your impact on the environment a stone's throw from home

Discussing a lifestyle attentive toeco -sustainability, sooner or later you could come across someone who will tell you that he does not think exist daily practices that can be traveled by anyone, who are truly useful and effective for the environment and that it is too complicated to really follow and letter everything we should do to give an contribution sensible to the fight against climate change.

In my opinion, nothing more wrong. Why be attentive to the environment and pay attention to your consumption methods must it be a complicated thing?
One of the best practices to contrast the climatic emergency in everyday life, and which can be good or bad adopted by Tuttə and almost in any area, is act in the room.
The first advantage is clearly the reduction of pollution and emissions related to transport, both of ourselves and of the products we buy. We are used to a world where we can have everything, even if it comes to the other side of the world, and immediately or at least in a short time. Often we do not stop to consider which and how many resources are used to transport our orders, and if it was really necessary to resort to this method of purchase. Buy local It is also equivalent to the use of less packaging and packaging materials for our purchases and therefore less waste of material.
The room is also useful to decrease the consumption and purchase of goods produced by the giant multinational companies or by the organized large -scale distribution, which sometimes unfortunately lacks transparency when it comes to specifying how, where and by whom their products are processed e how respected the eco -sustainability guidelines have been. Buying from a source close to us, on the contrary, can allow us to obtain more information on the production chain and, consequently, to make more aware choices.
If we disagree the consumption of products from this type of sources, on the other hand we will encourage that of the goods made by the community to which we belong, whether of the neighborhood, the citizen or their country. Buying and consuming producers close to us, and not from companies established on the other side of the world, becomes not only a way to support the local economy, but more directly a way to support the neighbor.

In essence, local acting is much easier than it seems and can be an excellent practice to be adopted to try to decrease our impact on the environment, without necessarily considering methods that are not made for us or to which we could never Adapt due to our geographical position, health or economic arrangement issues, all elements that, when it comes to attention to the environment, can be decisive in our daily choices.

 

• Local: Food

The first point on which you can act in terms of local is the What We eat and above all Where We eat it.
In 2005, during the World Environment Day, the term locavore was coined to indicate a person whose diet is composed for the most part by products made no longer far from an area delimited by a radius of 100 miles.
Although the purpose is noble, and such a lifestyle can be interesting to try, there is not necessarily needed to place this type of limits to try to decrease the impact that our eating habits have on the environment.
When it comes to expense, it is always preferable to choose products that do not come from countries too far away, if possible. If we cannot go to the neighborhood or village market, where local producers often sell their fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy products, at the supermarket we can still try to remain around, favoring products from the surroundings or our country, without forgetting about seasonality.
These products will certainly have undertaken less long trips, so our purchase will weigh less in terms of consumption related to transport. In addition, we have the opportunity to find more information on the food produced in our country: we can inform us about the production chain and ascertain compliance with laws and guidelines adopted in the production process of what we are purchasing.
Even when we talk about restaurants We can direct our choices on the place: on the other hand we live in a nation that enjoys a certain fame for top quality dishes and food products. So why prefer the pizza of the multinational fast food chain, when can we eat one in our local restaurant?
Although some famous franchises are increasingly trying to find raw materials related to the territory even when it comes to fast food, it is easier for local restaurants to favor closer producers and therefore their dishes have a lower impact not only on transport of the ingredients, but also on the production of the same.

In typical Italian restaurants or Italian taverns of any city, the quality of the ingredients is one of the factors to which the restaurateurs are more attentive and this is why local products and the closer territory are preferred such as, for example, typical vegetables of the place, a times collected directly by peasants, instead of coming to the other side of the world, or meat found by close family production, instead of intensive farms.

 

• Local: purchases

Benefits related to the room, similar to those on the food topic, are found when we decide to make our everyday purchases. If we need a set of new kitchen knives, we will hardly go to the closest craftsman able to make them as it happened a long time ago (even if it would not be a choice to be disdained), but we can still adopt precautions for more local choices and less heavy for the environment.
First of all, it would be better to always prefer a mode of Purchase of person, in the shop, where possible. This is because, as already mentioned, shipments require not only consumption in terms of packaging but also of CO2 emissions related to transport.
These consumption are accentuated when the methods of receiving packages are super fast or super cheap, modes often adopted by some of the e-commerce giants that we all know, whose purpose, being to maximize one's profits, is to move as many more Orders possible, in the least possible time and at the lowest price: these platforms are undoubtedly comfortable, but it is important to ask when it is the right time to use them and when we can do without them. Do you really need that particular juicer by tomorrow's lunchtime or can you wait for your next day free to go to buy it in the shop under the house?
Obviously not all the brands or e-commerce platforms neglect eco-sustainability when it comes to shipping of their products, the important thing is to inquire before the purchase on what the guidelines adopted on the eco-sustainability are.
If we want to make more aware and less impact purchases on the planet, finally, it is not always necessary to search for brands that praise the green at all costs and raw materials with exotic names that seem to purify the polluted air only to pronounce the name. Generally, you can prefer the local choice to the so -called "green" one for any type of purchase. For example, instead of in the Fast Fashion clothing store that has just launched its line made with recycled materials, you can take a tour of the neighborhood and give an eye to the shops that produce locally or to the users' used markets (which Even if it is not local, in the end, used it always goes well anyway). In this way, any product bought will certainly have an impact in terms of reduced transport and from our point of view we can always have more control over how what we buy is made.

 

• Local: Transport and travel

The last area in which good local practices are good for the environment is certainly that of transport and in general of our movements. It would be nice to think of being able to satisfy all our needs within a delimited area that could be our neighborhood, with our trusted baker, the supermarket under the house and the hardware around the corner. In this way, even geographically remaining in the room, the movements would always be feasible on foot or by bike and our impact on air pollution, and smog more generally, would be reduced to a minimum.
Obviously, thinking like this is not always possible: Tuttə have different needs and our movements go much further than a ray of a few kilometers.
If we need to move further away and we cannot do it on foot or by bike, it is always advisable to use local public transport, thus avoiding the monster of city traffic, which in Italy represents the main source of air pollution. Those who live in a big city probably have much more ease in using them, than those who, like me, come from a very small country country, where the means are few and sporadic, and the roads are not designed for those traveling by bike : In these cases, taking the car is an obligatory choice even just to reach the nearest supermarket. In these cases you can always evaluate the actual need for each transfer, perhaps sharing some step and organize more commissions in one exit every time you decide to travel by car.
Although in our lifestyle we can try to make local choices on multiple slopes, sometimes we all feel the need to get out of our neighborhood, city or country when after some time they are felt tight. In this case, in addition to seeking for our travels the least impactful solutions possible, such as carpooling or train travel, can be chosen very little.
If we do not feel the need to explore the other side of the world, however, are the destinations we choose for our holidays that can be closer to us, perhaps it could be the opportunity to discover the small villages just outside the province of to which they recently spoke to you or explore exactly that region of the country where you never stated before.

In essence, when we cannot always be Green, Eco, Zero Waste and other beautiful words that still have their importance, in every action we can try to be lighter for the planet by making choices that are simply a little more local.

Arianna Primavera