Did you know that an integral part of sustainability is getting active in your community! This social side of sustainability is extremely important.
For a workplace this includes getting to know and work with not only the businesses close by, but also the people that live in your area and are the bulk of the clients that come to you.
For example are you working in a veterinary clinic which sends it laundry away to be laundered? Where is it going? Are you supporting a local community business, that has good service and cares for the environment? Where else are you sourcing things for your clinic - can they be sourced locally rather than from businesses/suppliers based far away. I realise a number of things can't be but there will be some things, perhaps more than you think.
Do you get involved with the local school - sponsoring events, offering up prizes, talking to the kids about animal care and responsibilities or about training to be a veterinarian, veterinary nurse or rural animal technician?
Do you make your facilities available to community groups or offer special services to the local community?
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| Singing "Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours, with a little understanding, neighbours become good friends" |
At home - do you know your neighbours?
Neighbours are "alarms" when you are out, they can share things with you (perhaps you grow great tomatoes and always have too many and they grow great apples and always have too many), perhaps you have an elderly neighbour who would be happy for you to plant a vege garden at their place provided you share some of the produce? Neighbours can help you if you need help and vice versa. Perhaps one neighbour is a builder, another is a plumber, another a gourmet cook that does catering and you have a hobby of restoring old furniture to their former glory! Perhaps you can all share services for a win win situation without so many $$$ changing hands?
In an ideal world we should be pulling our fences down that separate us rather than building them up to facilitate these neighbourly interactions.
In Norway this is one thing that really struck me about the communities - they are not all fenced in. It is very similar in Tekapo, in the MacKenzie Basin. There is a council bylaw that prevents high fences separating properties. I think removing the fences has the effect of opening everyone up so its easier to say hello and chat. Making this easier would reduce the feelings of loneliness people experience. Social interaction is important for keeping people healthy.
Modern NZ homes where households enter the car from an internal access garage, drive off somewhere and then return to the internal access garage make it very hard to create interaction with your neighbours. Choose to walk to local places, make an effort to knock on the neighbours door and say hi. Maybe take some of you home baking over.
I am not saying we should live in communes but we should create communities that are open and welcoming. In addition to this we should be open and welcoming ourselves - hold street parties, invite your neighbours for a coffee to build relationships or drop them over so excess produce you have and stay for a chat. You never know what doors might open to you.
A personal story
On a personal side, I wanted to share the situation I live in with our neighbours to show that I recognise that some neighbours are impossible to like and get to know.
We live up a long drive in a caldersac, All the neighbours in this drive and up the street get on, know each other enough for a chat, to look out for my kids who play up and down the street. Our immediate neighbours up our drive are often sharing plants and produce with us. However the house that shares our longest boundary, but is entered from a different street contains a set of neighbours I wish we didn't have and we have had to go against my own advice above and put a trellis top on the fence to stop them looking over the fence when they yell at the kids for playing outside (which occasionally involves squealing), for us having BBQs on the patio or any similar normal neighbourhood activity. They won't talk to us, they won't accept offers of a coffee etc so we've given up! If anyone would like to make an offer on that house so that we can take the trellis down and even put a gate in the fence I'll be happy to present the offer to them!! LOL
This weeks challenge
Make an effort to meet and greet at least one neighbour that you don't know.
If you know all your neighbours already you can rest on that one and take a big pat on the back and perhaps you might like instead to share your secrets of how you have got to know all your neighbours on this blog.
Have a great weekend
Kind Regards
Francesca
In terms of increasing sustainability, and reducing our footprint on this planet, doing things to reduce our reliance on the global food chain is a step in the right direction. So the purpose of this post is really to show you that even some of the things you thought you couldn't source locally, you can!
