Final: My Blog Experience

This blog experience has been interesting. I began very optimistic thinking I could every week add more sustainable activities to my schedule. This soon enough became challenging. by the fourth week I had trouble keeping up what I had decided on week one or two to do. I tried making these activities as part of my habits but adding more and more every week made it more of a chore than a habit. It was stressful trying to remember all the activities and as a result I would purposely not do them at times. It was also stressful to continuously come up with activities I could blog of. I mean let’s be realistic; any college student is extremely busy. Between classes, work, homework, family, friends, extracurricular activities, etc, I am running around all day every day of the week. Remembering more than ten rules I had set myself I wouldn’t do it’s just unrealistic.

Because of this after a few weeks, as the school semester picked up I changed my strategy. I focused on just a few activities and added one every other week, making sure to actually do them correctly. I selected activities that were easy to remember; for example taking the stairs up to my room or walking to work.  I also acted on cool ways to be sustainable that I came across while browsing on the internet. For example my blog about “sustainable wardrobe” I was not planning on cleaning my closet but as soon as I came across this article it seemed like a fun and cool way to change my ways.

Besides choosing activities and coming across a few on the internet, I also decide to bring back sustainable activities from my past. My blog about “recyclable paper” was something I used to do as a hobby when I was younger. I always had a good time making it and I had just forgotten all about it. the recyclable paper seemed like a great hobby to bring back now that I have countless paper to dispose of. Especially now that I am graduating and I have to send many “thank you” cards to the people that attend my graduation party, what better way that to make them out of recyclable paper.

If I could change this assignment in any way instead of just blogging about sustainable activities I would give more liberty to the writer. I would’ve liked to be able to write about more than just myself. For example, I work at UBS bank and I love how sustainability is advertised everywhere around the offices. Where the printers are located, around the garbage cans and the kitchen, there are sign with different ways you can be sustainable. For example next to the printer there is a sign that says “Think about it, do you really have to print it? if so, can it be double sided?”  these quotes make everyone think about their actions and helps them be sustainable. I would’ve had liked to be able to write about anecdotes like that’ it would’ve had made the assignment more enjoyable.

Overall, even though the assignment had its flaws, I did in the end become more sustainable. I also became more aware of my actions and help others change theirs. I think that was the most important thing rather than the blogs itself.

Reduce Plastic Bags!!!

I buy groceries about twice or three times a week. The reason for this is because I do not have a car at school therefore I rather buy small amounts of groceries at one time, than too many that I have a hard time carrying them. Because I shop so often, I also waste a lot of plastic bags. I thought about carrying an extra bag when I knew I was going to buy groceries, the problem with this is that more than half the time I spontaneously decide to buy groceries. Or when I do plan to go, for some reason or another I end up not having time and carrying the extra bag around would get very annoying.

I decided to look for a portable groceries bag online. Something that folds to be small enough to carry on a daily basis on my normal purse, but opens up to be big enough to fit all my groceries. I found what is called a “reuseit Workhorse bag” from the website reuseit.com (http://www.reuseit.com/store/reuseit-workhorse-original-bluesign-fabric-p-2391.html?slave_id=2393&ponoID=r0aep5pf3omorur8r646o28327). This bag folds up to be no bigger than the palm of my hand but can hold up to 25 pounds!

I now carry this bag around on a daily basis. I have reduced the amount of plastic bags that I used to waste to about one or none per week. When I do happen to get a plastic bag it is usually over the weekend when I do not carry my regular purse, or if I happen to overbuy groceries. I recommend everyone getting one of these bags. They are so small you don’t even notice it in your purse but so useful and very sustainable.

Reduce Plastic Waste

I decided to count how many plastic cups of coffee I waste a week. I am used to buying coffee every morning before going to work or class. A week I waste at least five but sometime when I need more caffeine I can use up to eight or nine! Let us suppose than in a month I use the minimum of plastic cups, so five times four, that is 20plastic cups a month, therefore, 240plastic cups a year. 240 plastic cups a year is the bare minimum, I am not even taking into consideration extra cups of coffee or the plastics cups I use for other beverages. In order to take action and reduce this amount I bought myself a traveler coffee mug. I carry around my coffee mug all day every day; this has helped reduce not only the amount of coffee plastic cups but also water bottles. I know rinse my coffee mug and through ought the day to fill it out with water. It is more convenient than carrying a coffee mug and a water bottle. With this simple change in my day routine I have exponentially reduced the amount of plastic I waste a year. 

How green is your wardrobe?

While researching activities that would help me become more sustainable I came across with the website http://planetgreen.discovery.com. In this website you can take different quizzes of everyday activities and it gives you ideas n how to become more “green.” The quiz that caught my attention was “How green is your wardrobe?” I am a big shopper, and therefore have accumulated many clothes. I clean my wardrobe once a year and I wanted to find a more eco-friendly way of disposing of old clothes.

The first question was “What’s the first step toward greening your wardrobe?” the answer I chose was to donate old clothes to Goodwill. Surprisingly the correct answer was “Learning to work with what you have instead of buying new.” It is better to see how I can rework the clothes that I already have instead of starting from scratch and just buying new clothes I will have to get rid of in a year. It also pointed out that when shopping for new clothes, to take into consideration that the items that I pick I will be able to use them indefinitely, not to buy disposable clothes.

Another question that I like what “What’s the greenest way to keep your clothes clean?” the correct answer was hand washing and line drying. When you hand wash you not only avoid the harmful chemicals you also conserve your clothes longer and save water.

An interesting question pointed out the damaged caused by chemical, fertilizers, and pesticides that go into growing and producing fibers. Conventional cotton requires 1/3 pound of harmful additives for one t-shirt, I can only imagine how fast it adds up. Just alone, 68 pounds of clothes are thrown out per American; I can’t imagine how many pounds are bought per person.

I enjoyed taking this quiz. Not only I gained ideas on how to maintain my clothes and recycle them, I also became more aware of how the environment is affected with the production of clothes. Under every question there were related articles to the issue. For example the question that related with pesticide, pointed out and article about “Choose cotton carefully” (http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/choose-cotton-carefully.htm). Tough I did not have time to read every article that came up related to each question, the ones that I did read were very insightful. I learnt how to conserve my clothes ,shop less but when you do shop for useful clothes that are not disposable; clothes that I will use indefinitely.  

Home Made Paper

During the course of four years I have accumulated countless sheets of paper s and book and though I thought sorting them out would be the hardest part, disposing of them seems now more challenging. I decided that I wanted to get something more out of these documents than just throwing them out. First I began by separating the sheets of paper that are printed only one sided or have barely anything on them. With though I have been recently printing notes on the clear side to avoid wasting new paper. For the rest of the semester I will only use new paper to print out essays or projects I have to turn in, everything else I will be using used paper.

When I was growing up, me and my friends would love to exchange letters that we would make out of paper we recycled ourselves. It is very simple and fun to make; you begin by soaking the paper in water. Then you use the blender to really shred the paper together. Finally you soak it again with liquid glue and put any artificial color you like. After you make sure it is all blended evenly, you spread it in any shape you want it to be at flatten it out. You let it dry for a day and you get home recycled paper. There are many different things you can add on it like dried flowers and stickers. Recycling paper is not only sustainable but it is also a fun way to relax myself. For this reason, I decided to keep a lot of the rest for the paper and use it to recycle it and make “Thank you” cards for my graduation.  I forgot how much fun this hobby of mine was and I am happy this class helped me remember.

Here is an example of how Home made paper looks like:

Sustainability with this hot weather!

Last week, the temperature extremely increased. Because of this, every time I got back home from work, class, or even out for lunch, I had the need to shower to refresh myself. It also made it worse that the heaters were still on in my apartment since no one expected to be so hot so soon. At first I must admit I began showering twice a day without concern but soon after I started realizing the great amount of water I was wasting. I decided to conserve water as my next step towards sustainability. First I had to reduce the times I showered per day. This was not an easy task because I very much dislike feeling hot or sweaty. So I decided that every time I felt the need to shower during the day I placed a wet towel on my forehead to cool myself down. This helped control my impulse to shower and therefore decreased the times I showered per day. But showered less per day seemed not enough for a week task towards myself being more sustainable. I also decided for this week not only to reduce the amount of times I would shower per day but somehow also reduce the time I spend in the shower. I began by timing my shower the first couple I varied from 20 to 30minutes. My goal was to decrease a total of 3 minutes every day until I reached my goal of 10-15minutes per shower. In order to achieve this I tried hurrying while in the shower and not lingering and spacing out. It was hard to achieve this since for me when I shower I consider it my relaxation time. After a few times it started becoming a routine and I began showering faster. Also, timing myself helped me keep track of my improvements. 

Sustainability over break

I have decided to take advantage of this nice weather in my journey to being more sustainable. Now that it is more bearable to be outside I try walking a lot more. I must admit I can get pretty lazy and take cabs even when I am just going a couple blocks away.  Now I decided to walk as much as possible and when it gets too cold for walking I take public transportation for part of my journey. I have been doing this for the past two weeks. I now even find enjoyable and relaxing the walk from the train to work, which is about four blocks .Last week was spring break and I decided to go home to Wheeling in the northwest suburbs. To keep myself in track of being sustainable instead of driving to work I took the Metra all week. Not only I loved the ride because I got to catch up on my reading, I also enjoyed the convenience of not having to look for parking. Parking in the city can get very expensive so the ticket price of the Metra was also convenient. Overall, I am enjoying driving less or taking fewer taxis; the extra walk relaxes me and on the trains I catch up on readings.