Concepts

Activism: is the doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means of achieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations, protests, etc.

Biodiversity: describes the number, variety and variability of living organisms in an ecosystem. 

Bee colony collapse disorder (CCD): is a phenomenon in which honey bee colony abruptly disappear because of the combination of a number of diseases, bad practices in the industrial agriculture as the use of pesticides. Significant economically because many agricultural crops worldwide are pollinated by honey bees. Shortages of bees in the US have increased the cost to farmers renting them for pollination services by up to 20%.

Carrying capacity: of a biological species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment.

Certification: is a form of environmental regulation and development where a company can voluntarily choose to comply with predefined processes or objectives set forth by the certification service (eg. Ecolabel). To minimize the harmful impacts to the environment by voluntarily following a set of externally set and measured objectives.

Compost: is the product resulting from the biological decomposition of organic matter into mineral elements by bacterias under aerobic controlled conditions.

Downcycling: is the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of lesser quality and reduced functionality. A clear of example of downcycling is plastic recycling, which turns the material into lower grade plastics.

Ecosystem: a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.

Earthship: is a registered trademark by Michael Reynolds, that refers to a type of passive solar house made of natural and recycled materials.

Extinction: is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms (taxon), normally a species. 

Ecological Product: is developed in accordance with criteria for the formulation and packaging in order to have less impact on the environment. This does not mean that the product is respectful of the person and the environment throughout its life cycle. In the absence of a recognized label, the consumer has no way to know if these arguments are satisfactory if there are no specific and complete criteria to respect, or official organism to confirm the veracity of the responses to criteria.

Eco-friendly product: should have a very good biodegradability and low ecotoxicity and respect the person, because humans are part of the environment. The European Ecolabel guarantees the consumer that has satisfactory environmental qualities. 

Environmental education: is a learning process that increases people's knowledge and awareness about the environment and associated challenges, develops the necessary skills and expertise to address the challenges, and fosters attitudes, motivations, and commitments to make informed decisions and take responsible action

Fracking: is a technique in which typically water is mixed with sand and chemicals, and the mixture is injected at high pressure into a wellbore to create small fractures-earthquakes, along which fluids such as gas, petroleum, uranium-bearing solution, and brine water may migrate to the well.

Folk crops: is the variance in genetic and physical characteristics of plants as a result of adaptation to local conditions used in traditional agriculture

Footprint: is the impression left by a foot or shoe on the ground or a surface.

       G.

Gaia theory: proposes that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a self-regulating, complex system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.

GMO: genetically modified organism is an organism whose natural genetic material has been altered using engineering techniques to include new characteristics on it for lucrative interest.

Green product: is a product that organic compounds are mainly of plant origin.

Impact: Possible adverse effects caused by a development, industrial, or infrastructural project or by the release of a substance in the environment.

Indigenous: peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system.

Natural product: is a product extracted from nature. The word "natural" is more or less defined by legal instruments. On the other hand the term "natural" does not always guarantee a satisfactory respect of the person and the environment. Many natural substances are classified as "toxic" to the person and / or to the environment or are classified as allergens.

Natural environment: encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof.

Organic & eco-friendly: terms used to refer to goods and services, laws, guidelines and policies claimed to inflict reduced, minimal, or no harm at all, upon ecosystems or the environment.

Organic product: is a product which at least has 95% of its ingredients from plants or minerals, and 10% total composition must come from organic farming, which means without GMOs, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides.

Pollution: introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light. Pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants.

Permaculture: is a branch of ecological design, ecological engineering, and environmental design that develops sustainable architecture and self-maintained agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems.

Pesticide: is a substance used for destroying insects or other organisms harmful to cultivated plants or to animals.

3 R : Refuse - Reduce - Recycle in your goods consumption

Species: is the basic unit of biological classification. Is defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring.

Sustainability: is the ability for society to meet its present needs while preserving the ability of future generations to meet their own.

Upcycling:is the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value.

Vermicompost: is the product of composting utilizing various species of worms, usually red wigglers, white worms, and earthworms to create a heterogeneous mixture of decomposing vegetable or food waste (excluding meat, dairy, fats, or oils), bedding materials, and vermicast.

Water footprint