Healthy Living in New Zealand
Here are Love New Zealand we believe that loving New Zealand is a lot more than just caring about the country we live in. Its also about caring for the environment - air, sea and land - and also about caring for ourselves. Love the planet, love your body, love New Zealand.
We will continue to expand this section to bring you new and wonderful ways you can make a difference in your own live, in the lives of your family and friends, and the environment you live in.
1. Essential Oils

Essential oils are oils extracted from plants such as lavendar, lemons and eucalyptus trees, which are then purified and reduced right down to concentrate form. These essential oils are full of health benefits for you and your family. Some are great at helping you breathe easier, others at reducing pain and inflammation, others at killing germs in the air, and others yet at helping you to feel calm and relaxed.
Whatever you need, there's an essential oil that will work for you. If you'd like to buy essential oils in New Zealand head along to the Doterra shop. These amazing oils and oil blends are pure and highly concentrated and safe for the whole family. Alternatively, you can take advantage of wholesale prices and join the Doterra team.
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2. Choose Organic Produce or Locally Made
Whever possible, choose to buy organically grown produce or produce grown here in New Zealand.
Organic produce is generally grown with less interference from pesticides, insecticides and other toxic chemicals. These toxic chemicals build up inside our bodies over the years leading to inflammation, intolerances and disease.
Buying locally grown produce and New Zealand made products reduces your impact on the environment as well as supporting your country. Items grown or made in New Zealand create a significantly smaller carbon footprint than those exported from other countries. Not only are they likely to contain less toxic chemicals (such as fruit and veges that have been sprayed to both kill any insects and to make the item last longer), but also they do not require transport from one country to another. If you buy produce from your local grocer, or farm stall up the road, there are almost no transport costs and very little packaging required.
3. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Of course, one of the most important ways you can contribute to your environment is by changing your waste habits. For many years now we've lived in a society that is wasteful, we buy and use so many one-time products, and if something brakes its cheaper and easier to just throw it away and buy a new one.
Reduce
The first thing to try and do, is reduce the amount of waste you generate wherever you can. This can be as simple as switching out single use plastic bags for when you do your grocery shopping with reusable bags, to cancelling subscriptions to magazines that you don't really read anymore - or changing your subscription to online versions.
Reuse
Where you can, try and reuse things you would normally throw away. Single use plastic bags don't have to be single use, maybe you can reuse them to line your rubbish bin or even take them with you next time you go grocery shopping and use them again. Glass jars can be great reused for pickles and jams. Put all your food scraps into a pile or compost bin in your back yard, and then when its well rotted add it to your gardens and trees.
Recycle
When you can't reduce or reuse, then recycle. It's important to note that not everything can be recycled - and you might have to do a bit of research to find where you can recycle out-of-the-ordinary items that you can't put in your council recycling bin. For example, you can take your soft plastics to soft plastic stations at Countdown and other participating shops. You can take your aluminium, steel and other metals to scrap metal yards.
Read more ways you can reduce waste and impact on your environment.
4. Plant Trees and Flowers
Let's face it. One of the world's biggest challenges that we face is deforestation. We're cutting down all our ancient forests for timber, oil or anything else we can glean from them, clearing out all our native shrubs and plants to make way for housing, and clearing farmland for giant dairy farms. Alongside this, we're increasing our carbon emissions and warming the planet. In fact, humans have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by about 35 percent1.
An average tree is estimated to take about a ton of carbon dioxide out of the environment throughout its life! If you have land, plant a tree - or 10! Do your research, some aid with reducing CO2 emissions more than others. If you can't plant trees on your land, get involved with conservation efforts or support Trees that Count - a movement that focuses on replanting and restoring New Zealand native trees.
But don't stop with trees. Flowers are great to help save the bees. And there are lots of plants you can grow in pots around your home that will help purify the air and remove toxins from it. Some examples include Aloe Vera, Peace Lily, Spider Plant and Bamboo Palm. Plants such as Lavendar can help with feelings of calmness and aid with sleep.
1 Cited from https://www.treesthatcount.co.nz/climate-change/