Captain Planet, He's A Hero (Environment Seminar Blog)

Surprisingly, all is going well in the land of sustainability.

For my sustainability project, I decided to focus on changing my consumption ways and focus on the waste I produce in different aspects of my life. To my surprise, changing has not been that hard. There are a few areas that I still have some trouble with but everything seems to be going smoothly so far.

Except for tonight when I ate a hamburger (my bad), I've eaten no meat at all this week. My plan was to limit meat to once or week or, even better, no times a week. I didn't realize how much I wouldn't miss it. I always opt for the pasta dishes at the dining halls anyway so I never consume too much meat as is. But, luckily for me, the vegetarian pasta dishes are as delicious, or even more delicious, than the ones containing meat! This has been a smooth transition for me.

I've decided to change my eating habits as well; mainly, I've started to not eat after 7 pm. How does this relate to my sustainability goal? Well, because I'm not eating anything after 7 pm, I no longer go to buy plastic wrapped snacks. Of course, I still buy some occasionally but my numbers have decreased drastically. I'm hoping to switch this number to zero in the long term!

Taking showers during the day was an easier switch than I thought it would be; in fact, it's become relaxing. It's a mid-day pick-me-up! Unfortunately, I often forget to bring my cloth towel to dry my hands with to the bathroom; I need to work on remembering that!

Now electricity consumption has been the hardest alteration. Although I have been able to turn off the lights completely instead of leave them on for my roommates, this isn't an everyday occurrence. Especially with both my roommates having multiple midterms, they want the main light on when I go to bed early instead of turning on their own smaller lamps. I hoping I can convince them to think otherwise. Hands down the hardest thing I've had to change is my laptop usage. The lessening my usage by 5 hours per week plan has not been going down as smoothly as I would have hoped. I usually use count or upright forget. But, I think I've come up with a solution! I tend to sleep early as is (if you call midnight early) but I want to see if I can sleep an hour early. Not only will this make me better rested, but it's another hour that will be taken away from me using the computer.

All in all, my plan has had relatively few bumps in the road and I aim to make sure this is a lifestyle changing journey.

1. Now that you have read RS, imagine yourself and your lifestyle 10 years from now. What does it look like? How did you envision yourself 10 years from now, before you read the book? Has your vision changed? Your answers should include a brief characterization of your current lifestyle and a discussion of your material and immaterial goals as they relate to sustainable lifestyles.

My name is Yalda Mostajeran and I'm a waste-o-holic. It's 2020 and, as you all should know, I'm a famous CNN political correspondent. I own an array of fancy foreign cars whose names I cannot pronounce, I have a gorgeous model/actor/politician/poet/genius husband and 1.5 children. I eat the finest meals prepared by my gourmet chef and I have a lot of bling. So much ice on my chains. What can I say? I'm living the g-l-a-m-o-r-o-u-s life.

Alright, now "ten years in the future" me may have been exaggerating a bit but, well, looking at my current footprint now you wouldn't think that was the case. Before reading Radical Simplicity, I believed that I would be relatively cautious with what I waste but, overall, I wouldn't bother myself too much about it. Now, however, I envision myself living a much more sustainable future than I could have ever imagined. Don't get me wrong; although I commend Merkel for his ability to simply give up the lifestyle he was accustomed to and pursue the radical greater good, my lifestyle in the future would definitely be a little more moderate. My career and educational goals, even after reading Radical Simplicity, have not and probably will not change. I still plan on becoming a political commentator who, unfortunately, will have to work long hours. And, my apologies Merkel, I probably won't be living in a cabin in the woods. Luckily, though, after reading Radical Simplicity my immaterial and material wants for the future have changed.

In my future, I envision more spirituality—not necessarily one of religious sorts but a deeper bond with nature. I want to take my future children camping, hiking, fishing, etc. and really take in the beauty that nature has to offer. My future will be of moderate simplicity; not completely giving up modern conveniences but not allowing myself to become whole-heartedly attached. I'll use my car when utterly necessary but try to take public transit or, even better, bike to wherever I'm going. Let's hope I know how to ride a bike in the future. There will be less focus on the material and more on the immaterial; I also envision myself being more sustainably aware. Good-bye blood diamonds and hello cool environmentally friendly jewelery! According to Merkel, I'm currently at stage two: Conscious unsustainability. In my new enlightened future, I see myself as in between stage three and four; not completely sustainably conscious nor unconscious. I would be a blur of those two stages; on the fence. One thing I can be definite about, though, is that new and improved 2020 Yalda Mostajeran is more efficient and sustainable than the old model. Unfortunately, she still would run on B-Cafe croissants and tea.

2. Does the lifestyle that Merkel lives seem radical to you? Do you think he goes too far? Why or why not? Don't just answer yes or no. Be specific and thoughtful, utilizing the concepts from RS to reflect on your own willingness or unwillingness to live as simply as the author advocates.

In a nutshell, yes; I think Merkel's lifestyle is radical but I do not think that he goes “too far”. The way I see it is that going “too far” is when you reach a routine that makes you unhappy, unhealthy and is just one that you can't handle. Although I believe Merkel's lifestyle is radical, he is able to handle it, he's healthy and happy so, therefore, it's perfectly doable for him; it's not going “too far”. But, when applied to myself, that's a completely different story.

The one downfall in Merkel's experiment, and a possible turn-off to some readers, is the fact that Merkel started living sustainably when he had a sufficient amount of wealth saved up to support him. He had already lead a good, modern life and now had the funds to live a radically simple life. As a college student, I definitely have no money. In addition, when I finally have enough money to live a comfortable life I'm not sure I'd be willing to give it all up and chill in the woods, to be frank. I can tell that I'm not willing to go to the extremes that Merkel does; I am, however, willing to give a few of his ideas a shot. As I stated before, I want to embrace moderate simplicity. One aspect of Merkel's methods that really intrigued me was his journey to form a bond with nature. Without any closeness to nature, one doesn't feel a need to preserve it. If there's one lesson I'm taking away from this book and willing to try, it's deepening my bond with Mother Nature. I feel like if I learn to appreciate the environment more then being sustainable, in some aspects of my life, will come naturally.

Merkel's experience has inspired me to try to reshape my life; mold my practices into more sustainable ones. I may not have the money, or the life experience, but I'm willing to give it a shot. Kudos to your radicalism, Merkel, but I don't think I'd ever be able to trek that route. I haven't even tasted financial success and I'm not sure I'd be willing to give it away so quickly. However, no need to worry, I'm not completely turning away from sustainability. I'm looking at my ways, evaluating them and hoping I can change them for the better. I may never become a full blown environmental “hippie” but, who knows? I like flowers and peace; things could change.

Anyone who has read my blog knows that I am far from being sustainable. If this was a "least likely to harm the Earth" contest, I would get last place. On the bright side, though, if this was a "most likely to harm the Earth" contest then I might get second place, right behind the big industrial food corporations. But I digress. My ecological footprint was a whopping 30.23 acres; nearly 17 acres more than the average adult American's. I was utterly shocked by this result. For one, I have yet to have any disposable income; I have no job or car, so imagine what I'll be like when I do. The thought is frightening. With that in mind, this is my footprint for when I'm in a dorm; a place where there are some factors I don't even have to worry about. Like the trash inventory exercise, this was a huge wake-up call.

What surprised me the most, however, was that the two largest areas contributing to my massive footprint were not what I would have guessed. I had fathomed that food consumption and trash would be my largest contributors to my footprint. On the contrary, Monthly Transportation and Monthly Goods and Services were the two biggest factors. Now, I know, how does the first category make sense? I'm in a completely new state with no car and no knowledge of the transit systems. I do, however, have a sister and aunt who live in Pasadena. This is where I believe my culture and values influence me. In the Persian culture, as well as in other cultures I'm sure, family is important. Extremely important. Mother, father, siblings, extended family, in-laws they're all equally important. Spending time with your family is a strong part of the culture and I value my family highly. Because of this, I visit my family in Pasadena at least twice a month. The gas and mileage, as you can guess, piles up; it becomes costly. Aside from travel on the ground, I generally fly a lot. El Paso, Texas (my hometown) is about 15 hours away from California by car. With my sister and I having different school schedules, we cannot drive together to visit family. Therefore, anytime I want to visit my parents, I fly. Add onto this the fact that my family and I love to travel (domestically and internationally) and the travel footprint escalates! Despite the amount of mileage dedicated to travel, my Monthly Goods and Services footprint was the highest of all. This is all thanks to my little friend: tuition.

My tuition was a major contributor to my footprint (this only including the price of education and a couple of books; no food plan or housing cost included in my education total). Being an out-of-state student, my tuition is near the 50K mark, meaning that it adds a vast amount of acreage to my ecological footprint. Unfortunately, being that getting residency is insanely difficult, it's most likely that the education portion of my footprint will remain relatively high. Furthermore, as I plan to go to graduate school, it'll be a couple of more years until I can finally lower that portion of my footprint. I consider this one of my long term goals of utmost importance: lower my education costs! Once again, it is unfortunate that I do not have direct control of this but, hopefully, I'll be able to finish my education quickly and reduce the amount of money I have to spend on it.

Luckily for myself, Mother Nature and my pocket book, I have a plan. Three, to be precise. In creating vigorous short term, medium term and long term goals, I hope that I can drastically reduce my ecological footprint and better my sustainability efforts. For my short term goals, in an attempt to at least reach the 23.5 acres of usage the average American uses, I plan to attack the two most difficult areas: travel and food. Although Monthly Goods and Services is the biggest contributor to my ecological footprint, as I said before that is solely due to my high tuition; until I graduate or stop attending school, this is unfortunately out of my control. Education can be dealt with in the long term sense; I can attempt to graduate earlier. However, as of now, I cannot change that sad, sad tuition rate. What I can do for my short term goal is watch what I eat and how much I travel. A lot of my food intake consists of pastas and rice (guilty pleasures, what can I say?) I want to stray away from these processed goods and eat more salads and organically grown vegetables. Not only will that lower my footprint but I'm sure it's healthier for me! Besides, making organic salsa is delicious. Can't disagree with that. As for travel, I am not flying internationally this year so that's good news. But the bi-weekly trips to my sister's? As much as I miss my family, I think I'll have to lower the amount of times I go over. Or, instead, find a way that we can both commute to a certain place using the transit system. That way I can still see my family but not have to waste all the mileage and gas.

For my medium term goal, I want to attack the airplane portion of my transportation footprint. Although I do not fly home often, it's definitely more than I'll probably be flying out in the future because it's my first year out of my home state. I'm sure as the years progress, I'll become more accustomed to California and, therefore, won't feel as bad of a need to fly out very often. Moreover, I intend to continue to decrease my footprint (at least to 18 acres) by handling my food intake again. Since, by this time, I'll probably be living in my own apartment then I can freely choose what to buy and can actually cook for myself. If I'm using my own money to purchase goods, then I'll purchase items that give me more bang for my buck. As delicious as sugary snacks are, I wouldn't want to waste so much money on them when they don't fill me up like a good, healthy homecooked meal does.

Lastly, for my long term goal, I hope that I can decrease my ecological footprint to 10 acres, at least. It's definitely a drastic change from where I am now (it's one-third of my current footprint, to be precise) but might as well be like Merkel and tackle my problems radically! During this time in my life, I want to continue to decrease my reliance on automobiles. I want to carpool, use the transit system like it comes naturally to me and ride my bike everywhere. First I would have to learn how to ride a bike, but you get my point. I'd search for furniture and appliances from second-hand stores and use electricity efficient appliances and lightbulbs. Moreover, by keeping tabs on what I eat, making sure to dispose of trash properly and managing my funds carefully then I aim to be a sustainable being in the long term. As for now, I have a lot of work to do. But at least now I know how unsustainable I actually am. And knowing is half the battle.

Short. Sweet. To the point. (Knowing me this will take up five pages then.)

"Food Fight"? Excellent documentary. After being exposed to many documentaries that seem to force a belief down your throat, I was pleasantly surprised that while this documentary urged us to change what we eat, it didn't force feed the message. It was well-made, humorous, and really made me want to change what I eat. In fact, this weekend I want to make some organic mango salsa! Yum. The footage was brilliant, the message was clear and aside from the two random guys who yelled, "GO WILD!" in the middle of the movie, the experience was awesome. Also, Wolfgang Puck; you quirky Austrian you.

Trash Inventory Spreadsheet (Since Open Office doesn't allow conversion to jpg)

I need to send Mother Nature a biodegradable apology basket of some sorts. After begrudgingly tallying ever article of waste I disposed of, I came to a shocking revelation: I'm the person Merkel is trying to change. Granted, since I am not old enough to have a steady cash flow I may not be able to indulge myself in consumerism as much as the average American adult but my wastefulness is quite extreme. It surprised even me.

Now before this exercise I did not think I was a conservative person; however, I never thought I was this wasteful. Upon evaluating my trash inventory results I am definitely most wasteful than I expected to be. The one area that made up, no joke, 91 % of my trash consisted of paper products. Majority of this was produced by paper towel and paper napkin usage. I do, however, have a few hunches as to why my trash in this particular area was so high. For one, although I technically am "paying" for the paper products through what I pay in tuition, it's not a direct correlation. I'm not having to take out my wallet, go to the store and by paper products every time I run out. Therefore, without seeing my cash flow decrease I don't think I've realized how wasteful I've been. i would dry my hands with four, five paper towels and not think anything of it because I never saw how much I alone was using of the paper towels. In the communal dorm bathrooms, items are used up and are quickly replaced; I never thought that sparing a paper towel or two would save money and the environment. Luckily, my eyes have been opened thanks to this exercise. Instead of using two many paper towels I'm going to use zero now! Small hand towels, anyone? As for the paper napkins in the dining halls, I need to be more watchful. I will definitely have to keep count of how many I've used and limit myself.

Looking back at everything I threw out and in what quantities I feel like my trash reflects that I'm, well, a college student. Now don't get me wrong here; I'm not saying that all college kids are a wasteful mess like I am. In fact, I'm on the extreme side of the spectrum here. What I am trying to get at is that I throw away a lot of paper and plastic products; I waste some food but not too much. I buy plastic wrapped snacks and drink numerous tea and water beverages that come in plastic bottles. I eat at the on-campus restaurants a lot and produce more trash because of it. In order to live a sustainable life I see it necessary to devise two plans: one for dorm Yalda and one for "I actually live in an apartment" Yalda. Right now, my paper and plastic waste is high because I haven't connected the cost that goes with wastefulness. I have a hunch that when I live off-campus my paper and plastic wastefulness may decrease since I have to actually pay for those products with my own money. On the other hand, my food wastefulness may increase because I have always had a tendency to cook more food than I can eat. Overall, for now, I need to focus on buying less plastic-contained snacks, using less paper products and just managing my trash altogether.

As I stated before, I am the person Merkel is trying to change. Or, at least, I'm the beginning of the average American Merkel is advocating against. My lifestyle is far from what Merkel describes in the first few chapters of Radical Simplicity. It will take hard work and some true dedication in order for me to change my environment harming ways. However, after getting solid numbers that depict my personal trash habits I feel like I can summon enough motivation and courage to change my living style. My values are not in favor of harming the environment; I'm not a die-hard environmentalist but I do believe that our world needs to be conserved and saved. It's time that my habits reflect my values. My apologies, Mother Nature; I hope you like Edible Arrangements.

Precursor: Let me declare for the millionth time that I'm not the end-all of sustainable living. I have a heeeeeeeeell of a long way to go so pardon me if my critiques sound a bit like I'm a know-it-all. Trust me, they're not supposed to sound that way.

Yo Environmentalists I'm happy for you, and Imma let you finish, but "Going Green" is the biggest fad of all time! OF ALL TIME! For my first informal blog post I decided to tackle a subject that I've seen a lot of people already address: how "Going Green" is a fad. Now, to make a long story short, I completely agree; people are buying the cute bags and wearing the ironic shirts because they're, well, cute. People who wear that stuff usually aren't interested in the environment at all. Sure, they'll recycle a couple of times or use both sides of the paper every now and then but that's it. Truly sad, isn't it? Now don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming to be an environmental saint; there are a lot of changes I could make to my lifestyle. So, I don't mean for this to sound like I'm a sustainability God who is looking down upon the fad followers of today. I'm not trying to sound pretentious. But, hey, some environmentalists--again, not all--do sound like that when they're trying to make a point. And that is another issue I have with the whole "being sustainable" business. A lot of people do it and act completely pretentious about it. "I save electricity. What? You don't? Pffft. You're a horrible person." Moreover, people will buy a hybrid or buy locally grown produce and then think they are the bomb like tick, tick. Once again I do not mean to say that all environmentalists are like this; it's just that a few bad apples can ruin the bunch, you know? It's unfortunate that these type of people are the ones who stand out most in my mind instead of the environmentalists who live sustainably because they actually care for the Earth. What really is a shame is that these pompous individuals will engage in some sustainable acts but will have no idea what they're doing. I bring to you an example from "Millionaire Matchmaker". (I like that show. Don't hate.) One of the millionaires that was featured had his own environmentally friendly clothing line. Cool right? Well, then he was set up on a date with a really nice guy who, at the restaurant, wanted to order a steak. The millionaire looked shocked and appalled, telling him that there are more environmentally friendly choices on the menu. That is true. However, when the millionaire's date asked him why ordering a steak harmed the environment, the millionaire couldn't give an answer. Over and over again he'd only repeat that it was "bad" but not why it was bad. The millionaire didn't know that the amount of land and resources used to raise the cows was what made steak a bad choice; all he knew was that it was "bad". It's sad to see people have a superiority complex when, to be frank, they themselves don't even know what the hell they're doing. The whole "I'm being more friendly towards the environment AKA I'm better than you are" attitude is quite annoying and the fact that some people don't even know why their choices are environmentally better multiplies that annoyance by ten. To sum my point up I leave you with this South Park episode. Mind you, South Park is very... well, come on, it's South Park. It's full of cussing, "did they really just do that?" and "oh my gaaaaaawd" moments so viewer discretion is advised. Seriously. South Park is offensive; I'm advising you times ten.

South Park Episode