Wow!! I took the ecological footprint quiz and if everyone on the planet lived my lifestyle then we would need 4.58 earths! This is a problem for two reasons, the first and most obvious reason being that we only have a grand total of one earth... the second and more disturbing problem is that I actually thought I was pretty good at minimizing my ecological footprint. I'm one of those people that takes short showers, doesn't leave water running in the sink or lights or appliances/electronics on in the house, keeps the thermostat low, etc. I even have energy saving light bulbs in my apartment! So here I am, trapezing through my days thinking that while we definitely need to come up with a solution to solve some of these global problems, at least I'm not contributing too badly ~ WRONG! Scary to consider how oblivious I was, and even scarier still to consider the fact that there are so many people out there who don't even bother to do the bare minimum to improve the damage we are causing.
So since I am now done reeling from the shock at how awful my lifestyle is, I have a plan of a few things I can change right away to at least start lessening my contribution to the problem. I am going to quit driving around quite so much. I moved into town from sudden valley and as a result, thought nothing of hopping in my car a couple times a day to run various errands because everything seems so close to me now compared to when I lived 20 min outside of town. I will either start taking the time to plan out errands again and then do them at the same time I drive to/from campus, or I can start walking. I have a grocery store that is less than a 10 min walk from my place; I'm pretty sure it won't kill me to hoof it there... Also, I have noticed there is a heat light in my bathroom that I am sure consumes more energy than necessary so I will head to Lowe's to get an energy saving lamp to replace it. Finally, I admit I am one of the water bottle people... Although I do use the same one for a little while and refill it before recycling it, it would still be better to just not use one at all. So I'll find a Nalgene bottle and switch to using that instead.
Hopefully with these small changes I can start to improve the way my lifestyle impacts our world and I have no doubt it will continue to be quite the eye opening experience!
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Andrea - the interesting question is whether plastic bottles like reusable Nalgene ones are better than the stainless steel ones (which also require using fossil fuels)............. plus the effect that re-using a plastic bottle might have on our health :) Good luck with your goals, they seem reasonable.
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