Final Reflections...

Well, this is the last blog entry so it was time to recalculate my ecological footprint and have a moment of truth with myself (and anyone else that happens to read this...) At the beginning of this journey, if everyone on the planet lived like me then we would have needed 4.58 Earths; I still remember how shocked I was to learn that I had so many unsustainable habits integrated into my life. I felt like it was a successful quarter in meeting my goals that I had set in an effort to reduce my contribution to the environmental problems we are facing, but was unsure if this would be reflected in my quiz results. After taking the quiz, I am proud to report that if everyone on the planet lived like me, we would now "only" need 3.34 Earths. While this is obviously still triple what is available and clearly still a problem, I feel that it is a significant improvement, especially considering the limited amount of time that I had to make these changes. After all, if it only took me 3 months to make these small improvements that resulted in this much of an impact, imagine what I could accomplish after continuing to adjust my habits for 6 months or a year!

In order to see the improvements, here is a chart showing my new ecological footprint. Beneath it, I have explained the most significant changes leading to my more sustainable lifestyle.

- My new carbon footprint is 73.3, which dropped from 92.1 when I first took this quiz. There were a couple changes that I made that were responsible for this reduction. I committed to carefully planning my driving so that I was not taking many short drives or backtracking around town, minimizing the amount of time that I am on the road. I also adopted more energy saving habits, such as using power strips to turn off electronics and replacing heat lamps and normal lighting with compact fluorescent bulbs.
- My new food footprint was also reduced from 41.4 to 25.3. This was also the result of a couple small changes. Instead of eating a few large meals a day, I eat one substantial meal and then a number of smaller snacks through out the day. While this was not an initial goal that I had set, between being really busy and trying to maintain my health it just worked out to also being a more sustainable choice. Secondly, instead of doing my grocery shopping at large grocery stores, I have adopted shopping almost always at Trader Joe's, which leads to my buying almost all organic food now.

- There was a minimal reduction in my housing footprint, from 9.0 to 7.4. I believe this small change was just due to following slightly better water saving habits, such as taking shorter showers. Also, I hardly wash my car during the fall and winter, nor do I spend time hosing down my deck since I hate being cold outside. The benefit to this is that it also plays a part in reducing the amount of water consumed, lowering my housing footprint.

- My goods and services footprint dropped from 35.1 to 23.6. While this is also not a really huge reduction, I believe that significant change comes from compiling many small ones. The only change that I consciously made to reduce this was to become better at recycling, even if it was not always the most convenient. When I was throwing away things that I knew could be recycled, I felt guilty and got irritated with myself for being lazy. Since that's not any fun, I altered my behavior and started recycling any bottles or cans, as well as paper products. I was raised to recycle things instead of just throwing them away, and I am glad to have restored this old habit.

Overall, I feel that it has been a worthwhile experience and that I have learned a lot. I had never invested much thought in trying to be more sustainable, probably because I had no idea how "bad" my lifestyle was to begin with. After realizing this, I would have assumed that it would require massive (i.e. inconvenient) changes in order to remedy this, and have been pleasantly surprised ever since. Because it has been a relatively easy adjustment, I am confident that I will be able to maintain these changes that I have made and continue to lead a more sustainable lifestyle, and this makes me feel like I am able to say that I am at least a small part of the much needed solution, instead of blindly continuing to contribute to the problem.

I will leave you with two of my favorite quotes to ponder:

"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them."

~ Albert Einstein

"I cannot understand why people are frightened of new ideas; I am frightened of the old ones."
~ John Cage