Eating for the Planet

I just visited my sister and saw a June 2009 edition of Sunday Inquirer Magazine, a freebie when you buy the Sunday edition of Philippines Daily Inquirer, a leading newspaper here in the Philippines. The whole magazine was devoted to environment. Two articles catch my attention Green Home and Eating for the Planet.

After reading these two articles, I had to think whether I am doing what were mentioned in these articles. I did some reality check and found that though, I doing great with Green Home, I failed miserably with the other one.

The Green Home article advises us to have a not too big and well ventilated house to reduce carbon emission. I have a small house and it is well ventilated because I have windows everywhere, my two bedrooms, my kitchen, my comfort room have one window each, while my living room have two windows even though I only have a seventy square meter lot and fifty square meter floor area. I even have 4 trees planted in my front yard and one in my back yard. Usually when you have that size of lot, you need to utilize all the available space to widen your house thus sacrificing the ventilation. Due to that kind of house setup and with trees and other vegetation planted in my yard, I can survive the summer heat without using air conditioner. So with that, I can say that I'm doing great with the Green Home thing.

The second article deals on how to become a vegetarian and it benefits to our health and environment. This article struck me most not only because it will greatly help the environment, but will also save lives not only of the human beings but also of some animals. But unfortunately, I am not doing it. Our diet usually includes pork, chicken, beef and fish. Since my kids will not survive with green diets, I am force to eat meat as well because due to budget concern, we cannot afford to have two dishes of food everyday. But I am still trying to device a way that will not hurt our budget and be vegetarian at the same time, so that I don’t always have those guilty feeling during eating time.