Living an eco-friendly lifestyle includes every aspect of your life – your food, your activities, your personal belongings – virtually everything you own, especially your pets. You have seen the benefits of going green with your lifestyle. Your pets can enjoy multiple benefits too with you becoming a green pet guardian.
Why Go Green with Pet Care?
The only realistic answer to this question is because IT’S WORTH IT. Here are some reasons:
- Making the green switch in your pet’s lifestyle means eliminating the carbon paw prints your pets are leaving on Planet Earth. Pets are allegedly a greater pollutant than sports cars so imagine your contribution if you go green with caring pets.
- Eco-friendly living not only means healthy living but also safe living. By giving your pet’s lifestyle a green living makeover, you reduce, if not eliminate, the danger of poisoning them from synthetically produced products.
- Consequently, being a green pet parent or guardian is investing on your pet’s life. Going green with pet care helps avoid untimely deaths for your pets. This means more years of companionship and friendship with your pets.
- Best of all, you can save money. Living a healthy life mean less trips to the doctor or the vet and safe living means keeping the annual contingency budget intact.
Steps to Becoming a Green Pet Parent
Just like caring for a child, becoming a green pet parent is not an overnight task. It’s a lifetime (based on the pet’s lifespan, at least) and continuous process. But you can start with these simple, easy-to-do steps.
- If you’re still planning to adopt a pet, look for one in animal shelters. These animals are sold at a very minimum price or even for free. Moreover, you save the life of an animal probably on the shelter’s “for mercy-killing” list.
- The fact that the number of animals enrolled in animal shelters only shows that pet population have increased to an unmanageable rate. Spay or neuter your pets before their family tree becomes too large for you to care. Spaying or neutering also provides healthful benefits to your pets by decreasing the chances of developing cancer and prostate diseases among them.
- Go natural with their food. Look at the labels of the pet food products you buy in pet shops and go for those made from natural ingredients. Better yet, prepare their food yourself. This way, you can be confident that only the best quality ingredients are put into their meal.
- Substitute commercial pet care and grooming products with green ones. Commercial flea and tick treatment products contain harmful active ingredients which are harmful not only to your pets but to your kids as well. Avoid using pet beds and beddings made from polyester, which is a petroleum derivative, especially when your pet likes to chew or ingest their beds. Use natural cotton or hemp for all pet beddings.
- Go organic with your homes. Start from your switching your household cleaning chemicals to eco-friendly products. Then change your artificial air fresheners and odor naturalizers to pure essential oils made from botanical plants. And lastly, go green with your yard by eliminating all artificial fertilizers and insecticides and use non-chemical or organic fertilizers instead. More than anyone else, your beloved pet will be the one to benefit from your eco-friendly lifestyle.
- Let your pets play green. Pet toys and accessories can be laded with toxic chemical elements like arsenic, mercury, cadmium and lead embedded in the material that toy is made of or in paints on the toy. Fortunately for green pet lovers and guardians or parents, the pet market is increasingly becoming aware of the need to go green with pet care. Lots of eco-friendly toys, pet collars, among others, are available now in the market. Or, you can recycle old items in the house and turn them into toys for your pets. Just make sure these items aren’t harmful to them. If you’re not sure just think you’re making it for your kids.
Just by reading this far is already a starting point on your journey to becoming a green pet guardian or owner and I can feel that you’re thinking the next time you shop, you’ll bring home grocery bags full of green products for you and your pets. Congratulations!