Sustainability - Our Green Health

Water Conservation Management is Crucial for a Sustainable Agriculture

28/07/202114/07/2021 by Tom van Oosterhout

Water conservation management is, of course, not only crucial for sustainable agriculture. Any agriculture needs proper water conservation management. However, for various reasons, with sustainable agriculture, water conservation management requires much more skills and attention. Even our kitchen gardens require water conservation management.

Today it is 37 Celsius. The sun burns all day. There is hardly any wind. When the sun no longer shines in the kitchen gardens, our irrigation system waters the plants for 10 minutes. First, the one where the herbs grow, next, the one where we try to grow tomatoes and zucchini.

Sustainable Agricultural Practices Prevent Excessive Soil Erosion

28/07/202107/07/2021 by Tom van Oosterhout

We support sustainable agricultural practices, such as ecological and biological agriculture and permaculture. Many farmers oppose sustainable agricultural practices.

They argue that sustainable agricultural practices are unable to feed the world population. Even though they are never able to back up this claim.

Fortunately, there are many ways to counter excessive soil erosion. It is no surprise that sustainable agricultural practices are at the top of the prevention and restoration list.

9 Tips on How to Recycle E-Waste Safely and Sustainable

05/07/202105/07/2021 by Hannie Mommers

E-waste, short for Electronic waste, means all your leftover electronics. With technology progressing so fast, many people have tons of old TVs, computers, cell phones, and other old stuff just lying around the house not being used.

How to recycle e-waste? As long as it is still in the cupboard drawer or a box, e-waste can do little harm. Although it is of course a pity that it is uselessly waiting for a destination.

Worse, many of these old devices end up in nature or in illegal dumping grounds. While there are plenty of good solutions for e-waste that save nature and can even provide us with money.

5 Eco-Friendly Reasons why we Should Buy Recycled Toilet Paper

05/07/202130/06/2021 by Hannie Mommers

In our quest to be an environmentally conscious consumer, we probably consider to buy recycled toilet paper, don’t we? In this article, I want to explore the pros and cons of recycled toilet paper and some alternatives.

Some might have the wrong idea of recycled toilet paper. However, I can reassure you, it’s definitely not recycled from other toilet paper but rather other paper products. There really is no yuck factor! 🙂

Recycled paper is either made from paper previously used for magazines, posters, printing paper, and the like. This is also called post-consumer content. Or it is made from cutting waste from paper manufacture.

Poverty in the World and Sustainability, a Tense Relation

26/05/202126/05/2021 by Tom van Oosterhout

Poverty in the world and sustainability are not on par. Sustainability plans are usually designed to manage the long-term environmental impacts of human activities. What we tend to forget is that these plans can have devastating effects on world poverty.

Economic growth, financial stability, and jobs are often believed to be essential to sustainability plans. These plans are usually aligned with the protection of ecosystems, biodiversity, and water resources on which the poorest of the world depend.

What is Permaculture Farming, and Why can it Save Biodiversity?

26/10/202117/05/2021 by Tom van Oosterhout

What is permaculture farming? Although permaculture is often associated with the replication of nature, design principles are at the heart of permaculture farming. It’s one of the most challenging types of farming we know.

If only because permaculture farming contrasts highly with conventional, industrial farming in which non-renewable resources are used, air, land, and water are poisoned, biodiversity is destroyed, and the soil eroded.

Sustainable and organic farming is closely related to permaculture: the continuation of all life systems is supported (the earth component), as well as community life (the people component), and a fair share for everybody (the economic component).

What are the Positive Effects of Deforestation or are the Negative Effects Worse?

05/07/202114/05/2021 by Hannie Mommers

In this article, I’ll try to be objective about the positive effects of deforestation and the negative ones. Although I must admit that I am a bit biased, my gut feeling is that at the moment the negative effects outweigh the positive ones.

“What now remains is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land being left… Moreover, it was enriched by the yearly rains…”

This could very well be a quotation from a present-day text. It is not. It’s a complaint from the Greek philosopher Plato about the slopes of Athens in Critias which he wrote in 360 BC. Deforestation has been taking place from the time when agriculture became more widely practiced 4,000 years ago.

Protect the 1.000.000 Endangered Species of the World

10/05/2021 by Tom van Oosterhout

Endangered species of the world. Hardly a day goes by or we talk about only one endangered species of the world: humans. It’s as if the pandemic totally closed us off from the rest of the world.

Biodiversity declines at an unmatched rate. Only fundamental changes can protect the 1.000.000 endangered plant and animal species of the world. Vested interests must be overturned.

We tend to forget that the survival of species, including us humans, depends on the ecosystems in which biosystems live. The most vulnerable species are threatened the most severely. This includes all of the poorest humans who live on this planet.