Re-Caluclated Footprint

Over the quarter I was only able to reduce my footprint by .3 earths.

Over all I am a bit disappointed with this. I appreciate now how hard it is to break out of this American lifestyle of high consumption. Small changes do make an impact but I still use so many resources to fuel my lifestyle.

I am glad that I was able to reduce the impact my diet has on the environment. My first footprint listed food as a quarter of my impact.  Now it it just under a quarter. Buying organic food and only eating meat during dinner seemed to help.We also started composting all of our food waste. The quiz did not account for this so I am left not knowing how much that helped.

I was also able to lower electricity and gas use quite a bit. Our bills were lower than they were this time last year. Usage is frustratingly high during the winter no matter what though. I've been thinking about how poorly homes are designed based on what we have learned about greener more efficient building methods. Our heating bill is so high during the winter just trying to keep our house warm. It's silly to think that we spend so much to heat our house when it could have thicker walls, better instillation and better fitted windows. Its sick to think how much energy is wasted making up for bad design.

I will continue these lifestyle changes after the quarter ends. The changes aren't so hard once I'm in the habit and they do make a difference even if it is a small one. I will also look into vegetarian recipes once the quarter ends and I have more time. For all my work this quarter food is still the highest impact area so there is more work to be done there.

Rethinking Water Fountains

 

Woosh Water is  a new approach to the distribution of water in Israel. They come in the form of attractive water bottle refilling stations that now cover the city of Tal Aviv. The station dispenses cold filtered drinking water and will clean and sanitize your refillable bottle for you. The stations are free to use by anyone but offer additional benefits if you join the network. Joining can be done online quickly and easily. Once done you receive a key chain sensor to log in with when you refill your bottle. It will keep track of individually how much water has been consumed and how many plastic bottled have been saved as well as the collective numbers for all users. These statistics are displayed on screen when you log in.

I think this is a great and very effective plan to save plastic water bottles. People are drawn to and to want to interact with beautiful objectives. Woosh is beautifully designed and clearly has been thought through. I think they add aesthetically to the city and are a constant reminder to people to use their own refillable water bottle. The fact that is dispenses cold water is further influence to use the stations in hot climates like Israel. Thus these  

Woosh hopes the stations will be used in cities across the globe in the future. Here is a video further explaining the system: 

 What I wish Woosh would have done is incorporated a water station locator app like the WeTap app. This app relies on crowd sourcing to keep track of new fountains, removed fountains, and water fountains that need maintenance. It will even tell you the quality of the water, the condition of the fountain and allows for comments and pictures to be posted for each fountain by users.


This is a screen shot of the app

 I love the idea of this app. Water fountains are disappearing from our city landscape. I think  apps like this one and increasing new interest could influence cities to reinstall water fountains. It would certainly help save plastic water bottles and make it easier for people not to use them in the first place.


This is a picture of a very stylish water fountain you can find in the Fairhaven Village Green (behind Village Books)

There also used to be a octagon shaped water fountain on the corner of Cornwall and Kentucky (between Bellingham High School and the Catholic church.) but it had to be removed because it was being used as a garbage can. Which illustrates the point that its ultimately up to the people of a city whether water fountains and stations can work and whether we will be seeing more of them in the future. I personally hope that we do.

UN climate talks

In light of what has happened in the Philippians it is more important than ever to come together to create change. Representatives from the Philippians have been many of the speaks at this years meeting. They are very passionate and some even cried. They challenged who ever doesn't believe climate change is happening to go to the Philippians and see for themselves.

Places like the Philippians should not be paying the price for global warming. I feel people will not understand the effects until it happens to them though personally. The question is how many more super storms and human lives lost will it take until the world comes together for change?

Read the full article below:

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/12/we_can_stop_this_madness_philippines_delegate_urges_action_at_u_n_climate_talks/

Evil Bottled Water

I did a project on the bottle water industry over the summer and its a lot worst than what she says. FDA has 1/2 a person that looks over the entire bottled water industry. She splits her time between that and her other responsibilities. There is also no regulation on water that is sourced and resold within the same state which the majority of water falls into this category.

She states in the video that bottle water is sometimes less clean than tap. I feel like that is an under statement. Bottled water has been recalled many times before and independent firms have found toxic material and caner causing agents in the water straight off the shelf.

She also does not address that when companies pump ground water for their bottles they hurt poor communities. Towns have seen their water tables drop and have experienced days with no water. The water bottle industry then turns around and sells their water back to them. Basically the company steals the towns water and then sells it back.

It was nice to see in the video that bottle water sales are dropping. I really hope they continue to. At one point in the video she says that carrying and using bottled water is going to the way of smoking. Its looked down upon and you see less people doing it. I totally agree with this. I certainly find myself judging people I see with bottled water and hate carrying it myself. I feel bad if I do and feel like people are now judging me. I want to tell people "I never do this truly".

The horrors of E-Waste

This video shows what happens to our e-waste when it ends up in china

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2013/05/30/pkg-aoc-watson-china-e-waste.cnn.html

Green Toys

Hasbro, Lego and Mattel have all starting thinking green when it comes to their toys, manufacturing and packaging. 

Before this article I hadn't put a lot of thought into the toy industry when it came to sustainability. I don't think I am the only one either, I feel outside of safety concerns this industry is mostly over looked. It really got me thinking though. Here we are pumping out millions of toys each year and how long do these things really last? Toys are easily broken or lost or just outdated because kids always want new toys. I think its where their consumerism starts. So even if the toy is still fine and working the child is bored with it and wants a new one anyway. So what happens to all these old toys? Some get donated, I know I took all my old toys to the local Goodwill. Some get passed down and some get saved for grandchildren but they are still all old toys. The new kids getting them can't be that excited to receive them. Especially now that toys change so quickly with new technology shifts. So most of the toys get thrown away and end up in landfills.

If these toys are going to end up in the landfill what they ares made out of  and how much really matters. Besides being non-toxic and safe to play with most toys are plastic and won't break down in a landfill. Hasbro is starting to study alternatives to phase out PVC's and Lego already has entirely. Hasbro has stopped using plastic bags within their toys. (The bags that the pieces come in and are stored it when now in play) Lego has also made sure that every raw material they use complies with the UN Toy Safety Directive.

There is also the issue of packaging. I remember mountains of packing and wrappers after receiving new toys for Christmas or birthdays. Mattel has eliminated non-recyclable twist ties and has been playing around with new ways to package their toys using less material or using recycled materials instead. Lego has introduced smaller boxes that they say have saved 4,000 tons and Hasbro has reworked their play-doh cans to use less material and be better designed to be reusable. The company doing the most though may be Lego. They are trying to reduce the amount of waste they generate and say that any waste that is produced is being reused or recycled. I think there is still a long way to go in this area of improvement though. Toys come with so much packaging.

The three companies have also looked in to their manufacturing. The most interesting was Lego. Their parent company Kirkbi is investing $547 million into building a wind farm. The company will control 32% of this farm and says they will being giving back to the world the same amount of renewable energy that they have used in manufacturing. Each company has also pledged to reduce emissions and and toxic byproducts.


You can read the full article below:

http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2013/10/31/how-hasbro-lego-and-mattel-stack-green-toy-makers

Reducing My Footprint: Progress

My goal to turn off the lights and TV when not in use has gone very well. I am much more conscious and aware now of how I use electricity. My goal to take shorter, cooler showers has also gone well. I am down to just under 15 minutes. My goal to eat less meat on the other hand has not gone so well. I did cut back to eating meat just for dinner but it took a lot longer than I thought it would. Its been about the last week that I finally reached that point. I think this is mostly due to my busy lifestyle. I don't have the time to find new receipts and options that are still easy and fast. I think for this quarter I will eat vegetarian dinners when I can but will not be working on my original goal of only 5 meat dinners a week. I think this is something I can revisit in the future.

Instead my new goal is to eat more organic and/or local food. I recently started shopping at Trader Joe's last week and want to check out some other new stores soon. This new goal will work towards reducing my food slice of the pie in a more obtainable way I think. 

We also started composting. We set up a bowl in the kitchen to collect food scraps that we then dump into our compost garbage can that the city picks up. Its been pretty easy to do and is such a simple fix.