J840 Communicating Social and Environmental Initiatives

I, like Kim, just waltzed back into my college life in Lawrence after a 17-day journey in the Big Apple. Needless to say, I miss every aspect of the life I had there. Until I read Kim’s post, I had only calculated my “normal life in Lawrence/Kansas City” footprint, but decided to calculate my NYC footprint as well.

Lawrence: 20-acre footprint — 4.4 planets
New York City: 10-acre footprint — 2.2 planets

I wasn’t surprised in the least bit that living in a major city cut my footprint in half, but this knowledge makes me admire New York living so much more. Most people there aren’t making enough money to waste much themselves anyway, and to be honest, I walked or took the subway absolutely everywhere. Public transportation makes me giggle– I love it that much.

Life in Lawrence, for me at least, is not “eco-conscious.” Although I walk to campus and my classes, and I admit, to the bars, I drive everywhere else. It seems that’s what life has dwindled down to. Especially being from the Kansas City-area, I’m used to getting around by car. And now that I intern in Topeka part-time (at Natural Home magazine, a sustainable, “green living” magazine), I am going to be driving that much more. Kim and I are carpooling with each other, but I only thought to do this in order to “save money,” not the environment. That’s what our world has come to– everything that drives our decisions is mostly by the price tag attached to it. I would like to eat better, natural, whole foods, but it’s more expensive. I’d like to buy energy-efficient lightbulbs, etc., but again, they’re expensive.

I’m not saying I’m not conscious of it, but in a college student’s life, it’s much easier to go the cheaper way than the healthier, environment-friendly route. I hope that I can learn to take those “baby steps” toward better living, even if it’s by the sacrifice of some short change.

–Danae DeShazer

So, it is refreshing to hear that my footprint of 12 is half of the average person. But what is not so refreshing to hear is that we would need 2.7 planets to support a world of Sarahs.

To tell you the truth, I expected a warning box to pop up at the end of my Ecological Footprint Quiz telling me that I am one of the people who are specifically responsible for the destruction of the rainforest; and because of this I am going straight to hell. Luckily, that was not the case and it sounds like I was spared.

I will be the first to admit, I have not been the most environmentally friendly person up until recently, and my results were not shocking to me. When I say “up until recently” I mean for example, I was that person who didn’t recycle because I was lazy to take it somewhere, the one who grabbed a new water bottle instead of reusing one, and I’m the same person who used a roll of paper towels to clean up a mess instead of the washable towel sitting next to them on the counter. Obviously, I needed to make some changes. After taking this Ecological Footprint Quiz, my assumptions were reaffirmed. I need to continue to change my lifestyle, and so does the rest of the world.

So far, I am proud of the small changes in my life that I have made. I’m trying to take it one step at a time, and slowly recruit my friends to do the same. I purchased my own reusable grocery bags at Hy-Vee the other day and have vowed to stop using the thousands of plastic bags I probably used last year. I took my first load of recycling up to Wal-Mart as well, and let me tell you, it felt great. My proudest moment so far was stopping by Local Burger instead of making a mad dash through the McDonald’s drive-thru last week.

-Sarah Nelson

The Bad News: From taking the Ecological Footprint Test, I just discovered it would take a planet the size of Neptune to sustain my current way of living.

The Good News: At least it wasn’t the size of Uranus. (Okay, I admit my humor was stunted at age 10.)

Seriously, while the Footprint Test was very useful–and one that every American (if not every Earth dweller) should take at some point in their life–I did notice some serious oversights in its approach. I appreciated its simplified nature (making it accessible and easy to fill out), but I wish it would have gone to greater lengths.

For example, I consider myself to be a fairly enlightened person when it comes to environmental issues (key word: “fairly”)–I recycle on a regular basis, I take cloth bags to the grocery store, I purchase mostly organic foods (that don’t rely on harmful pesticides or needless chemical substitutes)…none of those factors, though, appear directly in the test. Instead, we do get standard questions about gas mileage, plane useage, and public transportation. All important questions, no doubt, but not the entire picture. Moreover, most of those factors are pretty much out of my control.

What do I mean exactly? Well, let me put it to you this way: I came to this realization while frantically spending my Sunday afternoon trying to deal with a frozen water pipe that cracked under the strain of tundra-like conditions, turning my basement into a set from “Waterworld.” As precious water was wastefully gushing, I saw firsthand how some environmental catastrophes, though occurring under my watch, are simply out of my control. Moreover, when I was reminded by the plumber that future pipe bursts could be prevented by constantly running a stream of water from the taps in my house, I had a mini-breakdown, wondering if I’d ever be able to lessen my wasteful ways. I eventually came to the conclusion that, try as hard as I might, I simply couldn’t correct all of my problems. I’m destined to leave a larger ecological footprint than I’d like. But then again, we’re always told that size doesn’t matter, right? (Yeah, I never believed that either…)

More to my point, there are some things, like gas mileage, for example, which I simply cannot correct overnight–and I certainly can’t make those changes alone. For instance, I’ve promised myself that my next car will be a hybrid (even though my current car gets a decent mileage of 28/30 mpg), but even THAT is not enough. As the documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? pointed out, we currently have the technology to create cars with far better gas mileage (that is ZERO useage of gas)…unfortunately, though, such cars are not available to–or affordable for–average schmucks like myself. I can’t, for example, take a bus or a train to my semi-annual work trips to NY and DC; my city doesn’t offer truly efficient and reliable public transportation to reach all corners of town. So, on some levels, I’m stuck, dependent on lawmakers and financial considerations, among other factors.

All of this, of course, is not to say the “Good Fight” is futile. It’s anything but that. But it does mean we have to set priorities, make the changes immediately where we can, and fight for the bigger changes whenever possible. And, even though we each have an individual ecological footprint, we are not going at this alone…just like I relied on that plumber to bail me out of the flooding, so too must we all work together to make sure mileage standards are as high as possible, that public transportation becomes a viable option, that recycling opportunities are made available to all. We can all reduce the size of our footprint individually–and that would be a major first step–but let’s not also forget, as the Worldmapper reminds us, that ultimately we leave a collective footprint as a city, a state, a nation…a planet. So, the tricky part, I suppose, is finding the balance between lessening one’s own footprint and finding a way to reduce our collective shoe size, as it were.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, they’re scheduled to play an NHL game in my laundry room, and I’m supposed to officiate…

–Ranjit