Sustaining Heritage Through Sustainable Choices

It’s Heritage Month in sunny South Africa, which means honouring the values, traditions, and customs that have been handed down to us by our predecessors. The 24^th of September, particularly, is a day that we all embrace our national tradition of lighting a fire and enjoying a braai with those closest to us.

The preservation of cultures across the globe has been one of the main goals of human beings since the dawn of time, however, we need to be aware that the preservation of our heritage relies heavily on how we secure our future. Sustainable living is definitely the solution to ensuring a healthy environment for our future generations.

Now, while we all know that it’s unrealistic to expect every person on the planet to be converting their homes into eco-homes, there are a few changes that can be made.

Alternative Energy

Traditional energy sources are the largest contributing factor to both our energy and environmental crisis. In South Africa, our only source of electricity is powered by the burning of coal, not only does this affect our energy supply, but it’s outdated and costly. Using a hybrid energy system for your home and/or business ensures less CO2 emissions and a consistent power supply. It’s a win-win. Not only are you ensuring that our future generation will grow up in a more stable ecosystem, but you’ll be ensuring that they’ll be able to thrive in their present-day too.

Sustainable Farming

Again, it is unrealistic to expect agriculture to go completely green, but a few small changes can make a huge difference. Power supply and water distribution are two of the main areas that can be changed in order to ensure your farm is friendlier to the environment. Water pumping solutions that make use of solar and wind energy already lessen the load on traditional energy sources, and are lighter on the pocket too. It also assists with pumping borehole water, or rainwater, to the various outlets, lightening the load on municipal catchment areas too.

Be Water Conscious

South Africa is well aware of the reality of province-wide drought. The Western and Eastern Cape especially. Being more conscious of how much water you use and how often, makes you more aware of where you can make realistic changes that could drastically impact the overall water supply to your town or city.

Make Sustainable Food Choices

Food production and manufacturing is a very large contributor to the decline in our environment. Large factory-produced items rely heavily on machinery that creates vast amounts of CO2 emissions daily. By supporting local producers who use more sustainable methods to produce and manufacture their products, you are already making a huge difference to the environment.

Buy Local

Not just with your food, but your household goods and clothing too. While, again, we cannot avoid imports completely; we can make choices about where our most used items are made. By supporting local suppliers, you are reducing import travel and ensuring a healthier economy.

While these few changes will not revert our environment to the healthy ecosystem of millions of years ago, it does ensure that our future generation will still be able to enjoy the sound of birds in the morning, or drinking water running out of our taps. It will ensure a future generation that will be able to sustain the generations to come while honouring the generations that came before them.