Lifestyle and Sustainability Essay Example for Free

Lifestyle and Sustainability EssayLifestyle and Sustainability are two different concepts combined together to describe how people should live nowadays. With the matters like the growth of modern technology, milieual degradation, and pollution, we now consider the best ways to live our lives without jeopardizing our environment and the future generations. Now, were concerned not only about alimentation in comfort and ease, but also about the sustainability of the world we live in, of our environment and our resources. Lifestyle is defined as a way of life, the manner by which a person lives. It involves various behaviors and practices regarding ones social relations, consumption, entertainment, and fashion. These behaviors and practices are composed of various habits, conventional modes of action, and reasoned actions. Simply put, lifestyle is ones style of living it is very personal and depends on the person who lives it. In relation to lifestyle, we come across the concept o f sustainability, which literally fashion to sustain or the ability to maintain certain processes or state. Nowadays, sustainability is often connected to how we human beings live.Concerns about the environment, pollution, and shortage of resources have driven us to apply sustainability in any aspect of our lives (Sustainability Reporting Program, 2004). We think of sustainable ways to build our homes, use our innate(p) resources, dress up, and grow our food. Somehow, we have connected sustainability with how we live, and it is now considered as a lifestyle. One important aspect of a sustainable lifestyle is food consumption, and in relation to that, we come across the concern of sustainable means of exploitation our foods.An important issue is brought up when we talk about sustainable means of growing food, and that is the use of pesticides. We are all familiar about pesticides, because it is the conventional means of eradicating the pests in our homes, properties, plants and c rops. However, the use of certain pesticides is deemed as un-sustainable because of the health risks they carry with them (EurActiv, 2008). It can also affect other organisms in the environment aside from the pests that they kill.To better guess pesticides, we need to know more about them, including the history, benefits, types, and other aspects as well. Pesticides have been utilize several thousand years ago, being utilized by earthly concern to protect their crops and plants from pests (Medline Plus, 2009). One of the first cognize pesticides used was sulfur dusting in Sumeria. In later centuries, mad used toxic chemicals like arsenic, mercury and rifle to kill pests. Natural pesticides were also used, like nicotine sulfate extracts from tobacco leaves, pyrethrum from chrysanthemums, and rotenone from the roots of tropical vegetables.These pesticides benefited man in several ways. The first, and possibly the most prevalent reason for pesticide use are for the protection of crops. Pesticides contain potent chemical ingredients which kill or deter insects and other pests that consume and destroy mans crops. Another application of pesticides is disease control, regulating or controlling the organisms which are considered harmful to health. A good example is the use of pesticides to kill mosquitoes which are known carriers of deadly diseases like dengue fever, west Nile virus, and malaria.Insecticides are also used in killing parasites like fleas and ticks in bigger animals like horses and cattle. It is also used to kill termites that can cause structural damage to our homes and dwellings. Overall, pesticides are used in variety of ways, all for the benefit of humans. We can classify pesticides into two study types, chemical or synthetically prepared pesticide, and biological or biochemical pesticide. We are more familiar with chemical pesticides because theyre the conventional pesticides. These are do from various chemical components, like the ones men tioned earlier.This type of pesticide is easier to produce because of the abundance of their chemical components, and is more potent and is more effective when it comes to killing the pests. The downside of this type however, is that it has harmful implications to the environment and to human health. The other type of pesticide is the biological or biochemical pesticide. This type is produced from plant extracts which can deter or kill insects. The biological pesticides use the natural enemies of certain plant pests. Other insects and spiders are used because they prey on these pests, regulating their population naturally.References EurActiv. (2008). Pesticides Tough negotiations ahead as MEPs back bans Retrieved April 14, 2009, from http//www. euractiv. com/en/sustainability/pesticides-tough-negotiations-ahead-meps-back-bans/article-176936 Medline Plus. (2009). Pesticides Retrieved April 4, 2009, from http//www. nlm. nih. gov/medlineplus/pesticides. hypertext mark-up language Sust ainability Reporting Program. (2004). Pollutants, Sustainability, Health, and Environment. Retrieved April 14, 2009, from http//www. sustreport. org/issues/health_env_pollut. html