10 Environmental documentaries to watch ASAP

Did you know that April is Earth Month? Do you care about saving the planet? Would you consider yourself environmentally conscious? Do you want future generations to have a planet to live on? If so, keep reading or listen the video/audio version of this blog.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve really cared about the environment.

I can remember learning about sustainability and eco consciousness all throughout my school years starting at a very young age.

It has always been one of the few things that I enjoy and felt passionate learning about.

My mom would call me the reduce, reuse, recycle police.

I would give her and my grandma lectures about conserving water in the kitchen and turn off the faucet while they were scrubbing their dishes. I would make sure that everything that could be recycled, got recycled. I would never throw plastic water bottles out, I’d collect them in my car and recycle them at home. I would repurpose random things just so I could avoid throwing them out, and so on. (My mom also called me the junk yard queen lol).

I have a bachelors degree in Sports and Recreation Management with a concentration in Event Leadership. But, sustainability and the environment still had a firm grasp on my attention.

While I was in college, I had the intention of specifically working to make events more sustainable and eco-friendly. I took several environmental and sustainability classes for my electives. Each of my professors had well qualified backgrounds and experiences to be teaching the subjects.

I learned so much that continued to fuel my “reduce, reuse, recycle” habits and passion for helping the planet.

As life continued, I ended up going into real estate rather than sustainable events after graduation. But even within the real estate industry, I have been able to help make a lot of environmentally positive changes within the company that I work for. (I'm very proud of that).

However, March 2018, I learned some information that shocked me.

After watching a few documentaries and doing some research myself, I learned that Plant Based/ Vegan eating is the single most impactful thing that you can do as an individual to help this planet!

Even those who aren't fully plant based or vegan, the more plants and less animal products we consume, the better.

You can have a MUCH larger and more positive impact on the environment than just recycling and conserving shower water. You can even have a much larger impact than buying the most expensive, eco friendly car on the market.

In general, our practice as humans, of raising animals for food, is not only extremely destructive to our bodies, but also very destructive to the planet.

It is the leading cause of rainforest deforestation, general deforestation, species extinction, ocean dead zones, ocean pollution, fresh water consumption, and more.

We are the only species on earth that does not live in harmony with it.

91% of all deforested land in the Amazon is used by the livestock industry to either raise animals or grow food for animals to eat. More than 200 million acres have been devastated since 1978.

About 5 million acres of rainforests are destroyed every year by the the livestock industry all around the world.

70% of arable land (any land capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops) in the United States is used only to grow crops for animals, not humans.

It takes 2,400 gallons of water and 12 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef.

40% of our freshwater supply will be gone by 2030

Every minute, a garage truck load of plastic is dumped into the sea joining the over 150 million tons already floating there. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch alone is 610,000 square miles big (twice the size of Texas).

46% of the Great pacific garbage patch is fishing nets (which are literally designed to kill marine life and that exactly what they do).

Livestock contributes to 53% of Nitrous Oxide, 44% of Methane Gas, and 5% of Carbon Monoxide found in the air. Animals raised to become food produce more greenhouse gasses than all planes, trains, and automobiles combined.

And that’s just a few random facts.

As a person from rural Lancaster, PA, I was jaw dropped (to say the least) to learn how unsustainable and earth damaging the agriculture practices that I grew up around truly were.

Check out the documentaries that I listed below so you can see all of this information for yourself. But before you do, I just need to point out what pisses me off the most about all of this.

I NEVER learned about this in school.

Not one person who ever taught me anything about the environment and how to help it said ANYTHING about changing the food that we eat. This is mind blowing to me. This is a true disservice to the planet.

Not to say that everything I learned was a waste of time, it wasn’t, I learned a lot! And I still put a lot of that knowledge into practice throughout my every day life.

But the things I learned about, and even the things that are widely talked about in the media, are such small factors compared to the impact of our eating habits.

It’s like trying to win a football game by only kicking field goals and not trying to score any touchdowns. Or seeing some leak holes in the bottom of a boat and not trying to plug up the largest hole.

However, in my professors’ defense, barely any of the leading environmental groups and advocates are talking about this.

Unfortunately this is largely because of who their sponsors are. For example: you can’t talk about the destruction caused by commercial and mass fishing practices on our oceans and entire ecosystem, when you are funded by the fishing industry. So, plastic straws is what's targeted instead.

It’s not like the agriculture or fishing industries have the intention of harming the planet…

Like all things, it's business as usual.

When it comes to informing the general public about the consequences of their food choices, money, businesses, and entire industries will band together to stop the word from getting out. Simply, because it would be bad for business.

The sooner you understand that your health and the health of our planet are unfortunately not on their priority lists, the better off you will be.

With that being said, though it's not their priority, it can still be yours!!

We have more control over our choices and actions than we give ourselves credit for.

Things don’t have to continue to be a certain way if we choose to do things differently.

Our planet, just like our bodies, has an amazing capacity to regenerate if we give it healthful conditions and let nature do its thing! Large scale changes, begin with small scale actions.

Everything in this world is connected.

What you do, can and will have a ripple affect whether you want it to or not.

You will see in these documentaries that it's not just the environment that is impacted by our food choices. There are so many layers. But it all comes back to what you choose to be on your plate.

I challenge you to let your actions create positive affects that will keep this planet around for your future and your future generations!

I could go on about this, but I’ll let these documentaries do the rest of the talking, for now.