Natural Living - Advantages, Disadvantages, Helpful Ideas

Natural living is centered around making green, sustainable, and eco-friendly choices in the way you live your life.

Pursuing natural living can not only help to improve your wellness but also help protect the environment.

For example, organic foods help to conserve water, reduce soil erosion, use less energy, and reduce pollution.

There’s also a lot of information on how eating organically can be good for us. We’ll get into more advantages later, but let’s expand on the meaning of living a natural lifestyle.

What does natural living mean?

As expressed in the introductions, the meaning of living naturally boils down to living an environmentally-friendly lifestyle.

Here are some basic tenets you can strive to follow:

• Own products made of natural or recyclable materials
• Reduce waste
• Use renewable energy sources
• Conserve water
• Keep your greenhouse gas emissions low
• Eat organically
• Support eco-friendly businesses

These are the main pillars of how to live a natural lifestyle. Even if you only start doing one of these things, you’ll help to make a positive impact on the planet.

What are advantages of living a natural lifestyle?

There are many advantages to living a natural lifestyle that can be good for you, your fellow humans, the animals, and the planet overall.

Here’s how it can be good in each way.

1. How living naturally benefits you

Natural products tend to be better for us and more long-lasting. For example, clothing made out of hemp is more durable and long-lasting than clothing made out of regular materials.

When you choose to reduce your waste, you’re choosing to be more resourceful about how you use things, which could help you save more.

Similarly, using renewable energy sources can also potentially increase your savings. In addition, as noted earlier, choosing to eat more organically can be beneficial to your well-being.

2. How living naturally benefits other people

As a whole, when we choose to follow the tenets of living naturally, we help to create a cleaner environment for all of us.

That means cleaner air and cleaner water for more people. That’s less toxic substances potentially causing harmful ailments to our community.

By choosing to support businesses that are eco-friendly, we’re helping them survive, and encouraging other companies to go in that direction.

That can result in sustainable products being more readily available to people.

3. How living naturally benefits the animals

Unfortunately, a lot of animals are harmed to make the foods that some people eat and the clothes that some people wear.

Choosing to opt for more vegan-friendly meals and vegan-friendly products overall helps more of them to live.

Beyond getting to enjoy the animals on our planet more, the less we eat meat and dairy, the less greenhouse gas emissions that end up in our environment.

4. How living naturally is good for the planet

Ultimately, the lifestyle we choose to live has an impact on the planet either for good or for bad.

Whether you’re using renewable energy sources, going vegan, reducing your waste, or any other of the tenets of living naturally, you’re helping the planet thrive.

You’re causing there to be less greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and thus less global warming.

Disadvantages of living a natural lifestyle

We wanted to be fair in bringing up what some would argue are disadvantages of living naturally and address those points.

1. Living a natural life is expensive

As you may or may not already know, sometimes eco-friendly and sustainable products can be more expansive than regular ones.

One reason for that is it can be expensive to make products eco-friendly, which is why a lot of businesses don’t do it.

Couple that with the lack of buyers and you have a company that needs to make their products cost a lot to make enough to survive.

But there are owners of eco-friendly businesses that really do try to make their products affordable and accessible to everyone. You just have to look around for them.

You also have to keep in mind that in the end the products you’re getting will usually last longer, saving you on your finances in the long run.

2. Living a natural lifestyle is inconvenient

Another disadvantage is that it’s not always convenient to live naturally. As an example, there aren’t always vegan-friendly options available around us.

We unfortunately live in a fast-food culture that caters to meat-eating and dairy consumption.

But thankfully, more fast-food businesses and other food companies are jumping on the vegan bandwagon.

But yes, you will have to make an extra effort sometimes, whether it’s looking for eco-friendly businesses to shop from, or finding ways to drive your car less.

Nonetheless, what may seem inconvenient initially, can be good for you in the long run.

3. Natural products aren’t as diverse

It’s true that at times, there’s not as much variety when it comes to available natural products. It’s an industry that’s still growing, so the types of items you can buy may be limited.

Still, you’ll find there are interesting options available that are different from what you’re used to.

In time, if more people shop at eco-friendly businesses, which influences other businesses to make more eco-friendly products, we can be able to see an increase in variety.

Helpful ideas for living a natural life

If you’re ready to get started, there’s a lot of different ways you can go ahead and start pursuing a more natural lifestyle.

Here are some helpful ideas to get you started:

• Shop natural and organic clothing brands
• Use eco-friendly packaging
• Learn about composting
• Buy from online thrift stores
• Stay at eco-friendly hotels
• Practice minimalism
• Buy from zero waste stores
• Learn fast-fashion brands to avoid
• Buy eco-friendly baby shower gifts for moms to be
• Support black-owned sustainable businesses
• Celebrate Earth Day