Ecological Footprint Reduction Goal Update

We are halfway through the quarter so it is time to give you an update on how my goals to reduce my ecological footprint are going. Here is a little refresher of what the goals are that I committed to at the start of the quarter are:

1. I will start a compost bin in my apartment with my two roommates so that our food waste isn't just thrown in the trash but instead can be carried on into a cyclical system of putting the food back just where it came from in the first place. 
2. On the first day of class, the alliteration of Meatless Monday really stuck with me so once a week, every Monday, I will stay away from any meat at all seeing as that is where a fair amount of my impact is rooted.
3. The food that I choose to purchase is more frequently than not something that's a little more on the convenient side rather than the eco-conscious side. With that being said my final goal for the quarter will be to visit the farmer's market or the co-op to purchase locally grown produce and meat products once a week as a substitution to taking a trip to Frey Meyer or Haggen. 

So far I have maintained a perfect record for Meatless Monday and the food compost bin at my apartment. It would be a lie if I told you that I enjoyed Meatless Monday but I have in turn rediscovered my love for Morning Star Farm products, specifically chick-patties which I ate for lunch regularly in elementary and middle school. 

The food composting is also going well. I went home to Seattle for the weekend a few weeks ago and my family was nice enough to give me some of their compost bags because of how expensive they are to buy so my parents donated some to the household which has been greatly appreciated. 

The goal that I have had the most trouble sticking to is the buying locally. It has been somewhat of a challenge because a lot of the things that I eat are simply not in season locally so it is hard to buy the majority of the produce I consume locally but I have been doing the best that I can. 

Throughout the quarter a lot of my attention has been brought to the litter that is LITTERally everywhere I go. Whether it be walking downtown, walking through campus, or walking through my apartment complex, almost everywhere you go you can expect to find someone on the ground that shouldn't be here. With that being said, I am guilty of looking at garbage on the ground but not doing anything about it and that is where my next goal stems. From this point on, I am adding a new goal and that is that I will no longer walk by a piece of trash on the ground without picking it up and bringing it to the nearest means of disposal. There will be exceptions such as if I am in a rush or the piece of trash is not advisable to pick up with my bare hands but for the most part I will do my best to stop walking by this litter and start actually doing something about it. 

My current event for this week can be found here. 

With so much of the plastic that is produced every year not being recycled and instead ending up in the oceans, companies are starting to realize that this is just as bad for their companies as it is for the planet. It costs money for companies to produce the plastic that their products go into and when that plastic goes into the ocean, those companies are losing the money that they spent on producing that plastic. Seven plastic dependent companies have had enough of their money ending up floating in the ocean bringing no benefit to anyone at all and they are deciding to do something about it. This push to utilize the plastic that is hard to sort out to be recycled and using it to make more plastic products is a movement that has the potential to not only help the earth but also these companies and that is what sustainable business practices are all about. 

Photo source: http://water.uci.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/06/PlasticOceanPromo11.jpg