What Are the Environmental Benefits of Growing Your Own Food?
Each year when Earth Day and Arbor Day come around, going green in our everyday lives suddenly becomes the hot topic, especially in Charlotte, NC, where we're constantly surrounded by beautiful nature. One impactful and fun way that you can reduce your carbon footprint is by growing your own food. As a pest control company in Charlotte, we are proud to provide healthy and safe alternatives for treating pests and bugs without using harmful chemicals on your plants so that growing your own vegetable garden can be done worry-free. Check out these environmental benefits of growing your own food right from your own backyard and how you can “Go Green” by avoiding conventional methods of consuming food!
Reducing Carbon Emissions and Waste
Growing your own food allows you to stop relying solely on traditional methods of purchasing your produce from a grocery store. When you buy foods from these shops, you should take into consideration the sad, but true, fact that these foods travel an average of 1,500+ miles before ever being consumed. Not only does this impact the freshness and flavor of the food, but more importantly, this emits dangerous amounts of carbon emissions and waste associated with air freight and other transportation methods into the atmosphere.
By growing your own food, you are helping to reduce the high amounts of burning fossil fuels that fill our environment as a direct result of importing foods from commercial farmers. You also are reducing waste from food packaging materials such as man-made plastics and cardboard, that also travel hundreds and thousands of miles.
Avoid Carcinogenic Pesticides and Fertilizers
By growing your own food, you’ll get peace of mind knowing what you are eating and what has gone into producing that item. Not only does commercial farming emit harmful chemicals into the air as mentioned above, but it also pours harmful chemicals into our soil and water. Conventional farming utilizes an extreme amount of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers to grow their commercialized crops, filling our earth and the foods that we are consuming with harmful chemicals, some that have even been proven to cause cancer and other diseases.
By growing your own garden, you are the one to decide what goes on your plants and into your soil, allowing you to reduce the amount of harmful chemicals polluting our environment and waterways. Organically growing your own food is sustainable and nourishes your soil by using safe and natural fertilizers and products.
Other Benefits
Growing your own food, especially for the first time, opens up a great learning opportunity. In order to help your crops flourish, you have the chance to learn about the weather and other environmental factors that may not have been relevant for you to be aware of before. This can also be a fun, family task to take on to make an environmental impact together and to teach your children the importance of going green.
Show Your Environment Some Love
This Earth Day, take a step towards “Going Green” in your home and give growing some of your own food a try. Keep our air, water, and soil clean by helping to reduce the demands put on our land every day by commercial agriculture. Make a positive impact on our environment today!
