Helping our community
Figuring out how to stop the impacts of climate change can seem like too big of a job, but if all of do small things in our communities it can really make a difference. Little things add up, right? My family is very involved in nonprofit work and my mom founded a shelter in Houston that houses immigrant women and children who just entered the US. It’s called Casa Mateo. Shelters house a lot of people and aren’t always great at being “environmentally friendly” so I talked with their team to see if I could help out at their facility in a way that would improve their environmental impact. I learned that they would really like to build a community garden. I immediately agreed as I felt that a shelter of this size would benefit greatly from the ability to grow some of their own vegetables. They also told me that gardening and being outside can help people who have experienced a lot of trauma, so this was an easy decision.
So how does growing your some of your own food help the environment?
Takes away the need to drive to the grocery store which reduces carbon emissions from cars
No plastic containers. It takes a ton of fuel to make these things and then they are immediately thrown into the trash which ends up in landfills
No need for pesticides - which by the way can end up in our rivers and streams harming our fish and other wildlife.
After completing the garden boxes, I realized that irrigating them will use both energy and water. So we are now planning to build a rain-water collection system . This is going to help Casa Mateo reduce its irrigated water use, and thus energy consumption. Although the difference may seem small, many cutbacks like this go a long way in saving our planet. If we all do a few little things, it can make a big impact.