Looking Back

 *NOTE TO THE PROFESSOR* This blog post is the same as the reflection summary I turned in.

 I started out at the beginning of this semester with the goal of defining sustainability for myself, and living up to that definition as much as I could.  Before this diary I was environmentally conscious, but I didn’t necessarily back up my words with actions. In the end, I discovered how I truly felt about sustainable living and learned a little bit more about what I could give up for it. This is a reflection on what I did and whether my efforts were successful.

At first I started out small by changing the tungsten light bulbs in my apartment to compact fluorescent lights and increasing my recycling efforts. I have always recycled but this blog forced me to make it into a system. My apartment now recycles all paper, plastic, metal and glass — that is, as long as my roommates don’t forget! I also went with a roommate to buy some everyday products from Sam’s Club. It cost a lot, which makes me wonder just how effective the trip was at reducing packaging costs in the long run, but we didn’t have to buy toilet paper for a long time and we still haven’t need to buy more paper towel, Clorox wipes, Kleenex, body wash and feminine products.

Throughout all of these beginning steps I discussed Roderick Nash’s book Wilderness and the American Mind because what I was learning through reading it made me stop and think. I had never considered the obvious separation between humans and the wilderness. It caused me to really ponder the issue of how humans should act within the environment because it depended on whether they were actually apart of the environment. During the semester I went on a camping trip to Nordhouse Dunes, a designated Wilderness area and that helped further my thoughts on man’s relationship with the wilderness. I noticed how nature seems to show signs of man everywhere, even in our “Wildernesses.”  I also thought about the effect I have as a single person and whether my changes will matter in the long run. It was a depressing little thought, but in the end I decided a single person has to matter, because without that single person movements would never start! I feel the same way about the type of changes I instituted. I wondered if I needed to make more drastic changes in order to cause change, but decided even little changes matter in the long run.

Eventually I defined sustainability for myself — an important step in trying to be sustainable! I decided it has to do with the balance of nature. For me to be sustainable I have to maintain that balance in my own life and give back to the world as much as I take out of it. I began thinking about globalization and the movement to buy local products and how they interacted. It is a difficult question because globalization promotes efficiency but comes with inherent transportation costs! I really like the ideas of Barry Commoner in Closing the Circle and the Gaia hypothesis. They really struck home to me as related to my diary, since Commoner talked about only taking what you need from nature and the Gaia hypothesis talks about the planet as one large organic system.

Other efforts I made to live sustainably involved reducing how much I drive. This one was the most difficult for me. As the semester wore on it got colder and biking became harder and harder to do. I rarely drove into campus for class during the day, but I did drive in every Wednesday for my night class and for evening meetings. I can’t say I succeeded in driving less, but to compensate I have been trying to drive in a manner to save gas! I used the Nature Conservancy CO2 emissions calculator to see where I fit in the grand scheme of things and found out my estimated emissions are 11 tons of CO2 a year, which is less than half of the average American citizen’s emissions, but more than double the average world citizen’s emissions. I consider this to mean I am doing well in my quest but can still improve and so continued to look for ways to live sustainably.

I started shopping at the East Lansing Food Co-op, which I discovered is a nice place, but hard to implement because I don’t always do the shopping. I also considered composting on the balcony of our apartment, but discovered it would be very difficult to do in the winter, so I’ll have to revisit that in the spring. With Christmas time approaching I started thinking about presents and consumerism, and with John Kenneth Galbraith’s ideas in the back of my head, I decided to buy most of my presents from second had stores. It should be fun!

Overall I am proud of the actions I have taken and I really believe that I can continue these as permanent changes in my life. I know that even if my actions don’t change the world, they are at least helping push the world in the direction I believe is best.