My journey to Eco awareness

Many of us are  feeling overwhelmed by the amount of  visible destruction of the Earth at the moment . We see waste , deforestation, the plunder of the seas on a mass scale….but what to do about it? How can I make a difference you ask? The thing is, doing nothing will achieve nothing. Each one of us has to make just one or two changes in our lifestyle and choices and the impact will be glorious.

It starts in the home I feel. If the home has a culture of waste then that will be how you live your life as well. If broken things are discarded and not fixed, this feeds into the same thinking. If recycling is not part of the family behaviour pattern, where do you  you learn to do it and why should you care?

It took a fairly serious illness however to tip me over the edge and really take a hard look at how I was living my life . There are a few angels in this story, one being Dr Hilton Kaplan ( the Plastic Surgeon, not the other one and a personal friend) and Dr Bruce Muir of Cape Town. Each  in his own way is responsible for me being alive to write this blog . I developed a serious Thyroid disease some years ago that was initially very difficult to diagnose . Of course it would have helped had the 5 Medical “experts” I consulted bothered to take my pulse and temperature, dead give-aways for diagnosing thyroid malfunction apparently. I had to look at every aspect of my life and the total impact each facet had on my health.

Take amalgam fillings for example. Safe, yes? No, wrong. Every time one grinds one’s teeth  its thought that mercury is released and to  some sensitive individuals, can poison the system or in my case my thyroid. I had 14 amalgam fillings, today I have none. I realised that it is up to each person to take responsibility for their life and to question the so called “experts” until one is satisfied with the answer. I had to look at the food I was eating, where it was grown, what it was treated with as I had become hyper-sensitive to preservatives, colourants, flavourants. This took me down another whole path and with the help of Dr Bruce Muir, a Cape Town based Integrative Health doctor, I started to  understand the impact of the environment on my health, especially where the thyroid is concerned.

One also has to be aware of  the impact  our choice of  fabrics and materials used in the home have on our health. The paint you paint with. Is it lead-free? Your carpets that have just been freshly laid, what sort of glue was used? What fibre is the carpet made from ? The bedding you sleep under, what’s it made from? Does it increase your natural electro-magnetic flow or inhibit it? Do you have a TV or computer in your bedroom? Do you switch it off at the wall before going to sleep? Do you wake up tired? Remove the TV and computer from the room and feel the difference.

Becoming aware of the impact of  all of the above factors made me realise that I had to change my  life but also help people to change theirs. I wanted to give them options, to find Earth Friendly Products for the home that were ethically made, safe and best of all local to South Africa. I have spent the best part of five  years sourcing these products and I have personally tested each one . I wanted to support community projects and at the same time help uplift them if at all possible. I enlisted with Eco Atlas an excellent local initiative  designed to make your search for Earth Friendly services as easy as possible.

Someone once said that if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. I believe this. Its not enough to just work to enrich yourself. Its so much more rewarding if you can help other people in an ethical , Earth Friendly way at the same time.