Urban Gardening fights climate change

Are you too worried about climate change and wondering what you can do more to reduce your carbon food print? Start an Urban Garden!

There are 5 big sustanability benefits of urban gardening. And no you don’t need a big garden nor live in a rural area. Every city dweller with a balcony, terrace or tiny garden can garden. And to make the biggest environmental impact you should grow your own vegetables.

Now let me tell you about these 5 huge benefits of growing your own vegetables in town.

Growing your own reduces waste

First of all because you help reducing the need for food packaging. That is a lot less plastic, but also card board and paper. 

Plus being able to pick and choose the exact amount of produce you like for your next meal, instead of buying fixed portions the supermarket presents you, you coniderably reduce food waste. 20% of household waste is food waste and gardeners throw away a lot less.

Growing your own manages the microclimate directly around you

Plants increase humidity and lower temperatures. Which is a very welcome feature especially in town where temperatures are higher than on the land anyways.

Plants help managing water supplies

First off all areas with soil instead of stones or concrete capture water preventing flooding in towns and on your balcony or terrace.
But the bigger benefit for you growing your own is that you can recycle rainwater by capturing it in a big bucket and use it to water your plants. Very smart water management as your plants grow better on rain water and you save water and money at the same time.

Urban gardens increase biodiversity

Small scale gardening is ideal for huge biodiversity. First of course because you create diversity in the vegetables, herbs and flowers you grow. The more varied your garden the more fun it is for you to eat from it. Plus the better it is for the environment as you attract a good variety of pollinators, insects and birds.

Growing your own balances O2 and CO2

Plants capture CO2 and they are most effective at extracting CO2 during the growing period of their lives. Of course growing vegetables means you continuously have plants at the hight of their growing period. In the end as soon as they stop growing you harvest them only to sow or plant something new to grow and effectively extract the maximum CO2 possible.

You also contribute to improving the O2 — CO2 balance because you bring production and consumption as close to each other as possible. With this you lower the food kilometres of your sustenance extremely.

So yes growing your own vegetables is good for the environment and a sustainable choice to effectively lower your carbon food print and help fight climate change. But of course urban gardening has many more benefits I’ll talk about in a next article.