Noble Juices

Your whole world doesn't have to change when you decide to live green. And let's be honest, just like the larger society, none of us can truly drop everything and go completely green. Well, maybe some people (like No Impact Man) can drop everything, but most of us need our cars and can't install a gray water system immediately.

But it's not hard to make small life changes that can completely affect the entire world. For instance, I love a good juice - fresh, 100% juice. Awesome. Why not try Noble Juices? The packaging is fantastically wonderful for the environment (well, compared to other plastics), and the juice is fantastically wonderful for my palate. Downside? It is a little expensive for less juice, but drinking a lot of fruit juice isn't good for you. Stay with me for a second: Juice is VERY good for you, but because all pulp and other fibers are usually strained out, juice is also straight sugar. You should really only be drinking 6-8 oz of juice a day (now, when it comes to actual FRUIT, eat the hell out of it!). So, because you probably shouldn't be drinking a BUNCH of juice, buying Noble Juice turns out to be very cost effective. If drank correctly, one bottle will last most of the week.

Other easy choices to make in the grocery store, I've talked about before. Get the reusable grocery bags - I just found out last weekend that they even have reusable bags for the cold items - with a nice liner on the inside. And stop buying produce from the grocery store, please. I cannot even begin to express how much of a impact you make not only on the environment but also on your local economy when you buy from local farmers. (And buy in season - watermelons don't grow in December, enjoy them when they are in their peak, not when they are coming from Georgia). And a good rule of thumb, stick to the perimeter of the grocery store - not only are the healthiest things there, but also the items with the least amount of packaging. And usually they put the natural foods section near the perimeter - you can allow yourself to enter the middle for that stuff :)

START RECYCLING, START A GARDEN, START WALKING PLACES.

I've said so many of these things, I considered deleting everything I've just written. But I'm realizing as I am typing this that the point of my message today is not what exactly you should be doing, it's that you should just BE doing. You are smart enough to know to fix certain habits you may have, and you are certainly smart enough to find Google on your web browser when you aren't exactly sure.

What's your excuse now? The way I see it, if you aren't living green in some way, shape, or form, you are admitting that you cannot think for yourself. You are letting corporate America, and the corporate WORLD, for that matter, make your choices for you. They WANT you to buy the clothes made in China, even though you know you can buy perfectly awesome hemp clothes at a local boutique (yes, even in Roanoke). They WANT you to buy the chips whose bag is only filled 1/3 of the way when you could've either made your own (hello sweet potato chips!) or gotten Sunchips (by the way, they really do compost within weeks).

We act like we don't know - we act like it just HAS to be this way. It doesn't. No buildings came crashing down when I started using reusable bags. Planes didn't fall out of the sky when I started running in my neighborhood as opposed to driving 10 miles to the gym. No kittens died when I set up a recycling center in my backyard.

And look, there's nothing wrong with consumption. If we want any kind of economic sustainability, we do have to buy things. But we have become a society of overconsumption. Check out your closet sometime, do an inventory. Do you really wear all of that stuff? No? Go to Goodwill or the local rescue mission with your overstock. They'll give/sell your clothes to people whose closet looks nothing like yours. In fact, I challenge you to take a small bag (i.e., the size of a grocery bag) of clothes every month to the local rescue mission for a year. I take a laundry basket full of clean clothes to the local Goodwill every 3 months. You'd think you would run out. You don't. And if you get close to the point where you need to stop, then stop. But then also stop buying more. Stick with what you have. Reduce and reuse.

And why drive that huge flipping SUV?! I'll keep my rant to a minimum on this one, but please get a smaller car, your pocketbook is screaming at you each time you go to the gas station (and fill up a vehicle that gives you 18 mpg if you're lucky), and the ozone is shaking it's finger at you.

In England, even their box trucks are small. You rarely see massive cars - a Honda Civic looks like an Escalade. And in London, the apartments are tiny. Their society may have it's environmental flaws, but they have stayed away from overconsumption in the sense that Hummers and gigantic houses are not a status symbol.

So think for yourself the next time you head out of the house - in fact, think for yourself when you're in your house. Tiny decisions make large footprints on our Earth. Let those decisions be your own.