Read 'n' Seed #2

This week I read Chapters 1-3 of Do One Green Thing; Saving the Earth Through Simple, Everyday Choices, pages 1-52.

The water bottle I
bought to replace my
use of disposable
water bottles.

Chapter one was titled "Drinking Water".  I have always known that disposable plastic water bottles weren't good for the environment, but I didn't really know how bad they were, or that the water in them isn't always better than your tap water.  This chapter gave a few fun facts about what would happen if every American stopped buying water in disposable bottles.  My favorite of the facts was, "We'd save the nonrenewable fossil fuels that are used in the plastic, which equals seventeen million barrels of oil annually - enough for fuel one million U.S. cars for a year.  Adding in the energy used for pumping, processing, transporting, and refrigerating bottled water, Americans would save fifty-four million barrels of oil, the same as running three million cars for a year." (p. 30).  After reading this chapter and hearing how much Dr. V hates disposable water bottles I was curious to hear more about their impact on the environment.  I found this "Use-and-Toss Plastic Bottle Facts" article and found it very interesting and helpful.  Since reading this chapter I have gone out and bought a reusable water bottle, I'm no longer contributing to significant amounts of waste created from disposable plastic bottles.

Chapter two was about produce.  It talked about buying locally and organic.  Something that I really like about this book is each chapter has a "Chose it or Lose it" section.  I found this chapter's "Chose it or Lose it" to be very helpful in guiding me towards what I should be trying to buy organic and what I can buy normally.  Some things the book says you should buy organic are apples, carrots, celery, and grapes.  These are the things I spend most of my produce money on, which sort of freaked me out, knowing I will probably need to start spending more money on produce.  The reasoning behind buying these things organic things is because the pesticides that are used to grow them can be bad for your health.

Chapter three was titled, "Fish".  I rarely eat fish, and never buy it, so I thought this chapter would be pretty useless to me, but they did have a "Chose it or Lose it" section that talked about which fish are better for your health, which I will base my choices off of when I go out to eat.  I was surprised to find that smaller fish are better for you.  This is because they, "eat low on the food chain, are shorter-lived, and thus collect fewer toxins in their fat than do big, long-lived predators such as swordfish" (p. 36).  At the end of the chapter the author provides us with a website where you can look up which locally caught fish are better for you to eat at that time.  This will be helpful for me because most of the time when I go to Red Lobster or something I tend to chose the locally caught fish.  that website is www.ewg.org/node/8151 (p.52).

Eye Opener: Ecological Footprint

I've heard about carbon footprints before, but I never really looked into what my carbon footprint would be.  I knew it would be pretty big.  I live in a big, drafty house.  I eat frozen meals a couple times a week. I drive back and fourth from the cities frequently.  Blah, blah, blah... After taking my Ecological Footprint Quiz  I have a new perspective on really how big my carbon footprint is.  The results to my quiz told me that if everyone lived like me we would need 5.2 earths to provide enough resources, to support my lifestyle it takes 23.1 global acres of the earth's productive area.  This is definitely an Eye Opener!  The website that I took the quiz on broke my usage up on a pie chart, showing that most of my large carbon footprint is due to my use of services, which I understand to be my electricity use.  This is something that I know I need to work on not using as much of.  In my room and in the living room at my house we have power strips that we can turn off when we're not using whatever is plugged into them.  Rarely do these strips ever get turned off, I plan to be more cautious about turning these off when I am not using them.  I also need to be more aware of turning off lights when I'm not using them.  We also use a lot of electricity during the winter to heat our large, drafty house.  This year I plan to get a higher-grade of the plastic to cover the windows so our heater doesn't have to work as hard to keep our house warm.  The other part of my pie chart that was pretty big was the food part.  I eat frozen meals a couple times a week because that is what I bring to work for dinners.  Instead of buying Lean Cuisine's I could make a large amount of food and freeze it, bringing the individual servings to work, this will lower my food part of my footprint greatly.  I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again, I really enjoy learning about how I can be more environmentally friendly, and this activity was just one more step in the right direction.