Sustainability & You
Sustainability: avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance.
This seems to be a very straightforward definition of what the word means. But when you hear the words sustainable or sustainability, there are so many large, abstract concepts of what this actually means in context.
Sustainability doesn’t always make sense and it can be overwhelming thinking of its possible meanings. As a restaurant family, devoted community members, and advocates of the beautiful land and water we enjoy in the Pacific Northwest, sustainability is a topic that hits home.
We all know that it’s important to take care of the environment. We all know that we need to take care of it. But the question is how do we do it?
There are hundreds of organizations devoted to the cause of sustainability like Net Impact, Rocky Mountain Institute, World Wide Fund for Nature, and these are just three, and at the local level Skagit PUD. All of these organizations work to sustain the world on a large and local scale. They’re saving forests and cleaning up the ocean, finding ways to reduce waste that is harmful to the natural world around us and conserve water.
The concept of sustainability itself is large but we can break it down into small habits that we can all do. We don’t all have the resources available like larger organizations. However, there are things around our homes and communities that we’re able to do. For a good reference of what we can do on a smaller scale that will still have an impact on the website YouSustain.com there is a list of 38 small habits we can adopt that will make an impact.
Some of these habits include:
- Recycle everything that can be recycled
- Don’t let your car idle unnecessarily
- Turn off electronics you’re not using
- Bring reusable bags to the grocery store
- Take shorter showers
This is a short version of some of the items on the list. And some of these habits you may already be doing, they all seem pretty small like they’re not going to do much but using these habits continuously, it makes a greater impact over time. While the concept of sustainability seems large and overwhelming, looking at smaller steps that you can take will make it more approachable.
And it’s just one more reason why we are participating the the Blended Burger Project by the James Beard Foundation. Read more about Blended Burgers here.