The term wellness introduces the concept that health and well-being is impacted by the fact that we as humans are social, emotional, physical, and intellectual beings. Environmental Wellness refers to our working and physical environments. When our physical and even working environments are not in balance, we struggle with our personal wellness.

Environmental wellness can be thought of as having access to clean water, shelter, access to health care, and healthy and safe food to name a few.  Many of these things are basic human rights, but when contamination to the environment builds, these rights and resources become harder to preserve.

We live in the year 2010 and global warming became a public term and concept in the last few years with Al Gores publicity of an Inconvenient Truth.  We  can feel the ramifications of  global warming and realize that it is not just a warning, but a reality.   In the last few months we have become very aware of the precious existence of our oceans and marine life, and access to safe seafood with the BP oil spill in the Gulf.   We can take the oil spill as a sign that our need for more is getting in the way of living more simply, hence our non-dependence on oil.

There is more and more awareness growing about the human impact on the environment and I  encourage you to take an interest.  These next two talks are inspiring and motivating, I hope you will listen to them.

In the talk “Let’s talk Trash”, Chris Moore points out that we use 2 million plastic bottles every 5 minutes in the US.  To listen to this talk please click here- http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/470.

Chris Jordan who depicts many photos of modern America life shares statistics that in the US we use 4 million plastic cups a day on airline flights and we use 40 million paper cups for hot beverage consumption everyday.  To listen to this talk please click here- http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_jordan_pictures_some_shocking_stats.html

In the US, we have a reputation as consumers, but this consumption is impacting our personal and environmental wellness.  We can take the messages that are threatening our environmental wellness as a sign to change behaviors or we can remain the same, but not without consequences.  Change takes time, but each of us has the ability to make an impact in what we consume and what products we choose to buy.  Gandhi’s very popular quote, ” Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

We can all choose to have more integrity and ask ourselves how do we want to change?

Here is what you can do:

• STOP drinking bottled water. Get a large bottle delivered to you work or home place instead of buying 24 packs.
• USE a refillable water bottle. Refill it with tap or filtered water.  Remember that plastic bottles contain chemicals that leach into your water if contained in plastic.
• STOP using plastic shopping bags. Do your grocery shopping with large reusable bags instead of using a dozen plastic bags each time. Most stores sell you reusable bags for under a $.
• Recycle the extra bags/ bottles etc. that somehow cling to you form somewhere
• STOP getting your coffee/ soda in plastic disposable cups. Keep your coffee mug in your car, work, etc.
• STOP getting your lunch in disposable boxes, especially at work where you can keep a lunch box/ container and ask the restaurant to pack your food in it.

“When you are living in contentment, you automatically start to have a lighter footprint, a lighter use of resources.  You don’t have to keep adding more and more to your life.  In fact, it feels really good to want what you have, to take care of it, and to be aware that everything you’re using is a representation of energy.” ~Catherine Ingram

Thank you for your kind attention.  If this information was meaningful to you please pass it on and/or encourage others to make these changes too.

www.intuitivelywell.com