My Ecological Footprint after 10 weeks

I reduced my ecological footprint by .5 earths! I'm now at 3.5 planets, when my original footprint was 4 planets shown here (Original Footprint). 

I set for myself 7 goals to reduce my footprint this quarter and I think I did a fine job achieving these goals. Even though I did reduce my footprint by a half-an-earth, I almost expected a little more of a difference in my end results compared to the amount of effort I put in to changes my daily habits... But I guess it makes sense that it must take a huge altering life change in order to make a significant difference. 

Due to winter almost at it's end, and spring approaching quickly, it was a natural process to achieve my goal of turning down the heat, not only at night but during the day as well. I'm assuming our thermostat will progressively go down in temperature until fall picks up again. So that goal should remain in effect for the next 6 months or so. 

Compared to earlier in the quarter, I have been driving a lot less. I used to work down in Seattle on the weekends, requiring me to drive bath and forth all the time, racking up the miles. But over the past 6 weeks, I haven't been traveling down south at all. This goal might be a hard one to continue, considering spring break is coming up and I will be driving around a lot more often, and also more activities are coming up in the spring that will require me to drive down to the Seattle area once again. But luckily my car gets great gas mileage and I'll try my best to carpool!

As far as my eating habits and food choices go, I feel like I made some slight changes. I don't usually eat a lot of meat anyways, so reducing that wasn't a huge deal for me. But I did make a point to buy locally grown produce and becoming slightly addicted to organic fuji apples. Considering I live two blocks away from the Downtown Co-op, I've been shopping there a lot more recently, despite how costly some goods are. I think it's worth the extra money. This is a goal I think I'll be able to continue easily. Knowing that I'm eating less packaged food, and more locally grown products has made me feel a lot healthier and better about what I'm eating. 

Lastly, my more ambitious goal was to reduce my showers by 3 mins. This one was more difficult than I expected...and most of the time I would forget how long I was in there. Thinking about it, I have been running late in the mornings recently, in which I hurry through my showers as fast as possible... so that might have made a slight difference. I'm still going to continue to try and take faster showers and reduce the amount of water consumption in other various ways.

:)

E-Waste Capital of the World: Guiyu, China

We all know how important it is to recycle our old electronics and it's becoming easier to do so by all the services out there who give incentives for bringing back those electronics to be recycled. I know a lot of companies take those electronic goods and refurbish them so they're able to sell them back to consumers. But not all companies and recyclers do that... so what do those people do with those parts and where do these discarded items end up? 

Guiyu, China employs over 150,000 e-waste workers who work long 16+ hour days, dis-assembling 1.5 million pounds of old electronics and recapturing whatever metals and parts they can re-use or sell. The people of Guiyu begin work right on the side of the street, as massive piles of various computer parts, wires and cables are strewn about the streets and into their river banks. These laborers snip and untangle wires,  grind plastic computers cases into particles, pry chips from circuit boards and then dip those circuit boards in acid baths to dissolve the lead, cadmium, and other very toxic metals. There's no doubt that is city is facing serious environmental health problems. The air reeks of burning plastics and noxious metals, and the water is incredibly toxic.
It's easy to say that this industry should stopped and that imports of electronic waste should be banned and enforced, but the whole economy of Guiyu is dependent on this industry. Another key factor is that even if the town of Guiyu was shut down, this industry would just continue on to somewhere else because people from all over the world are still going to dispose their used up electronics and suppliers will still pay for those raw materials. 

How do we fix this problem? When reading articles about Guiyu, the e-waste capital of the world, it reminded me of the video we watched earlier in the quarter, "The Story of Electronics." Our country especially just consumes, consumes, consumes and doesn't even think of where are disposed goods go to. It's sad to me how places like Guiyu and other e-waste villages are driven by our consumption, and how little educated they are about the health impacts that are being exposed to them through this process. 

Story of Electronics Video

Guiyu: E-wasteland of the world

Solar Leases

OneRoof Energy is a California based company that develops, owns, and operates solar energy generation systems for the residential market. This company utilizes solar photovoltaic systems, which uses solar panels to produce free electrons when exposed to light, to provide predictable, affordable, and environmentally-conscious power from rooftops.

The article I read on the Forbes website discussed how OneRoof Energy has lined up a $100 million fund to finance residential rooftop installations. It mentioned that this fund was originally created for their SolarSelect financing program, which gives homeowners the opportunity to lease these solar panels by paying a fixed, monthly fee for using the solar electricity, instead of paying for the pricey expenses of upfront costs and installations. Not only does each customer enjoy all the benefits of solar energy at a lower price than their previously existing energy system, this leasing option is set to drive the growth of the U.S residential market from $1.3 billion to $5.7 billion in just 4 years. Since OneRoof Energy has developed the initial market for this kind of financing system, other companies have started to implement solar leases or power purchase agreements into their business model. By offering a system where people pay for just the amount of electricity they generate rather than a fixed fee each month, I believe this will ultimately reduce the amount of energy people use and cost them less money in the long run. If I'm paying a flat fee for any amount of energy I use, I'm not going to consciously think about how much energy I'm actually using and probably end up consuming much more energy than I actually need. However, if I know I'm paying for only the amount of energy I'm consuming, I'm going to want to use less, and pay less.

Startup OneRoof Energy Secures $100M Fund For Solar Homes

Marketing Campaign

This campaign’s goal is to make people aware of ghost power and the amount of energy they are unknowingly using, and how power strips are the cure to that problem. With a little knowledge and a slight change in their daily routine, many people can reduce not only the amount of energy they are using, but also diminish the amount of money they are playing for their electricity bill. Beyond the use of power strips, we want to hopefully give people the knowledge on how everything they have plugged into the wall is using energy, even when it’s not in use. Over time, many microwaves and televisions actually consume more electricity during the hours they're not in use than the times you're actually using them to heat up dinner and watch your favorite show (HowStuffWorks: How Vampire Power Works).

Our primary target market for this campaign would be individuals in their teenage years to up to people in their 30’s; however, spreading this knowledge to all age groups would be the ideal market. College students would benefit from this knowledge because many of them use all different products of technology and are constantly charging those products or have some sort of electronic plugged into an outlet. Students’ are also constantly in short of money and trying to find ways to save it. Using power strips and turning that switch off when it’s not in use can definitely reduce the amount of money you are spending on unnecessary energy. Speaking for myself, I find myself too busy or forgetful to remember to unplug all my devices from every outlet, but it’s a lot simpler to do when you have all your chords plugged into one power strip and can easily turn that switch.

This campaign will use rational appeals to engage with individuals to try and get them to reduce the amount of energy they use. I want to target to people’s self interest to get them motivated to change. Because young adults tend to be penny pinchers, I think using financial appeals to educate how this will save them money in the long run will make an impact.

This banner ad (shown above) would be intended to display on commonly viewed websites for our target market, such as Facebook, Yahoo, Google, YouTube, etc. An idea would be to have this banner ad on various electronic stores’ websites so that when people are looking to purchase electronic devices, they can also think about the amount of energy they can be saving from plugging in those devices to a power strip. The overall objective is to get people aware amount their energy consumption and how there are easy, little changes you can do to reduce the amount of energy you use. 

Footprint Update!

I reduced my ecological footprint by .3 earths!

And how did I do this you ask? Well, I first implemented my original goals of:

• Turning down my heat at night from around 68-70 degrees to about 62-64 degrees,
• Plugging my electronic devices into power strips and turning those off when they are not in use,
• and changing my eating/buying patterns to more organic, locally grown food and by dining out less.

Then implemented my new and revised goals of:

• Reducing my showers by 3 minutes, and
• Limiting the number of times I drive down to Seattle on the weekends (used to travel down south every other weekend, now I go maybe once a month)

*** New Goal for the rest of the quarter:

• Stop buying plastic water bottles and always remember to bring and use my re-fillable cup.

A Journey to Sustainability....Finally

Over the weekend, I read this article about how The North Face just now released their very first public sustainability report. It could be just me, but this came to a bit of a surprise because I just assumed that The North Face corporation had already implemented some sustainability practices in their company and with their products. The report they unveiled follows the GRI G3 Guidelines that we have mentioned in class and also mentions the areas in which they have fallen short, and lists their future goals in the upcoming years. 

It's a bit refreshing to see a sustainability report in progress that has actual quantified goals, after recently studying Walmart and their so-called eco-initiatives. For example, The North Face's use of recycled content garments increased 1% in the 2010-2011 period, but they plan to increase that number to total of 7% to 30% by 2015. 

A quote in the article that stood out for me was from the VP of Global Product. He states that, "Until this point it has been 'my sustainable is more sustainable than your sustainable'". He continues to say that it should be about conservation and the environment, and about deeply rooted corporate responsibility, not marketing positioning. I feel that a lot of companies and a good portion of people as well, believe that being "sustainable" and "going green" is the new trend right now and partake in that trend just to keep up with societies social conventions; as if they were associating how 'green' they are with their status. It's important to realize that our climate is changing and that it is measurable and we need to make our contributions to put our efforts together and change our behavior. 

The original article is shown below:
The North Face Unveils First Sustainability Report
The North Face 2011 Sustainability Report

One Dollar

I was reading up on some success stories from the Kiva foundation and other micro-finance organizations and was amazed at how these small loans can make such an astonishing impact on their struggling lives. These people aren't in poverty because of their lack of ambition or intelligence, but the deficiency of resources they have access to that myself takes for granted on a daily basis.  

Living on One is a documentary created by 2 college student buddies, along with their 2 filmmaker friends (Western Alumni's) who set off to to rural Guatemala and live on one dollar a day for two months. 

It amazes me how many people all over the world are sitting on stacks of money, with no value or purpose to them, when just a minuscule fraction of that can make such a difference in someones life. I read many success stories on how micro financing change these peoples' lives and how their business ventures lifted them out of poverty. 

When watching these videos, it made me really reflect on my life and solidified my thoughts on how lucky we are to have access to all the resources that we have. Shelter, water, food, electricity, and education are just a few resources I take advantage of daily. I think about how my life would be if I were to live on only $1 a day and I can't even picture it. I think it's time for me to start consuming less and live a more efficient lifestyle.