Five tips for greening your daily life

Solène Delinger 6:45 p.m., January 24, 2022

Do you want to feel closer to nature on a daily basis and adopt a more animal-friendly lifestyle?

Food, sleep pattern, cleaning products... Invited in "Bienfait pour vous" on Europe 1, the author Marie Laforête, vegan culinary photographer, shares her tips for "vegetating" your life. 

Promote local consumption

Adopting a plant-based lifestyle in the city is totally possible. Of course, you can't do wild pickings, but you can go to the market. There are many local producers, especially in Ile-de-France. There are many market gardens in this region. So, we can easily find small producers who work in sustainable agriculture and who are not going to use too many pesticides. There are also the AMAPs, associations for the maintenance of peasant agriculture. The principle is to create a direct link between farmers and consumers. How does it work concretely? People get together, buy in advance the production of a producer, a market gardener or a group. Then, they come to collect this production and take care of the distribution.It costs less and it also provides producers with income. 

Getting into the "slow life"

With slow life, we really respect our rhythm.

Very often, we need to slow down, especially when we live a bit of a Parisian speed life.

Slow life is also about accepting to live to the rhythm of the seasons.

For example, we can try to slow down during the winter, because we often need a lot more sleep than in the summer. 

Make your own beauty and maintenance products

You can make your own products with very simple ingredients like baking soda.

It is now found everywhere: both in organic stores and in supermarkets.

Sodium percarbonate is also very effective, especially for whitening toilet bowls and laundry.

Making your own products, on the other hand, can take time.

This activity must not add to the mental workload of women, who already do most of the domestic work.

In this case, we can turn to organic and ecological cleaning products. 

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Using flowers in the kitchen 

You can vegetate your plate with flowers.

Warning: you must not eat the flowers bought at the florist because they are very often treated with dangerous pesticides.

You can find people selling edible flowers.

You can also go pick flowers.

And of course, there, you have to respect the rules of picking.

We do not pick next to fields that have been treated.

We also do not pick near places where there is animal breeding, nor on the side of roads.

But, following the rules, it is quite possible to pick plants and flowers in the wild. 

Eat vegetarian or vegan

Plant-based food is a more sustainable food.

The FAO, the United Nations body in charge of food says it: plant-based cuisine is the future.

It will indeed use much less agricultural land.

It should be noted that 70% of agricultural land in the world is intended for livestock farming and the production of feed for livestock farming.

Plant-based food requires less water.

And it is also the food that emits the least greenhouse gases.

Eating vegan doesn't require more ingredients, we just need to change what's in our cupboards.