My New Footprint

I am very pleased to say that my footprint has reduced over the course of 3 months, while I have been enrolled in Sustainability Marketing. In the beginning if everyone in the world lived like me, we would need 5.3 earths to sustain that lifestyle, BUT now we would need 4.6. This is a little bit of a shock to me, because I did not think I did enough to make an impact on the way I live. I was able to make progress on most of my reduction goals but never really succeed at them all with flying colors. Again this footprint is larger than it should be, but because I do fly very frequently, my footprint automatically gets increased by 1 whole earth, and this will change in the next year or so when I lose my special privileges of being able to fly for free on Alaska Airlines, a privilege I will miss greatly. If I was not flying as much my footprint would be reduced to 3.5 earths. 

I do know that this class has definitely made me more conscious of my actions and has shown me how to live a more sustainable life. Maybe more importantly, this class has taught me how to take all of the sustainable efforts of companies with a grain of salt and to really research what companies are doing and saying, because there can be a large disconnect in what they are actually doing and whether or not it is effective. I hope to continue to live a more sustainable lifestyle and hope that I can be of influence to those around me to be mindful of their actions and the impact it has on the environment. I will continue to try and live with a sustainable approach and set goals for myself in the future to lessen my impact. 

This is my new and improved ecological footprint at 4.6 earths:

Here is my original footprint, before I knew how my actions effected the planet, 5.3 earths:

Harvesting Rainwater

So I was recently at home visiting my family and I had some extra time on one of the mornings to have some coffee and be outside in our backyard. My dad installed a very large koi pond with two large steams going into it. so it makes for a great place to spend time when it is nice outside. As I was watching the pond and streams I was curious as to how we could make it more sustainable, there had to be something that could help make it more resourceful. So I started looking into it, I found the that rainwater harvesting is probably the easiest way to reduce the impact of this yard. The pond requires a lot of water to run normally, and if we could get that water from harvesting rain, it would be of great benefit. I wasn't sure if there was an atheistically pleasing way to do it, without having the large tanks to store the water. I found a company online who helps harvest rainwater and supply it to your ponds and streams. Below us a photo of how it would generally work, beginning with capturing the water and storing it underground, then filtering it, and finally allowing for use within the backyard. 

I am hoping to have a pond and waterfall in my backyard in the future, and I plan to incorporate sustainable design into the entire yard. If possible I will definitely be taking advantage of harvesting rainwater to use on the yard itself, and limiting the amount of water I need to take from local water supplies. I hope to see most yards turning to a more sustainable design in the near future as more and more people realize how much they can actually affect their ecological footprint and try to reduce it. 

Tiny House Movement

I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed the other day and saw an interesting post by one of my friends. I clicked on this post and learned about the Tiny House Movement. This was very interesting to me so I looked further into it, and there is actually a documentary being produced for this vary movement. You can watch the trailer here: Tiny House Documentary .

This way of living dramatically reduces your footprint, it empowers a simple way of living without having to build a mansion to enjoy your life. With the size of homes in america doubling, this movement is aimed at reversing this lifestyle. The house shown is only 89 square feet, that is smaller than my bedroom at home. You have to be very intimate with whoever you are living with for this to be comfortable. The couple kept referring to the world being their living room, with less costs and less maintenance time, these homeowners have more cash and time to enjoy themselves outside of their homes. Plus, the house is built on a flatbed trailer, so if you really want to go travel and enjoy yourself, your house can come enjoy it too.

There are many attributes to this home that would take some getting use to, if we are accustomed to the typical way of living in America. This will show you some of the adjustments made: Tiny House. One aspect that I am not sure I could adjust to is the composting toilet. I hope the smell is much different than an outhouse. The number one way to reduce your footprint is to simply refuse services or products, and tiny houses allow you to do that very successfully. So I commend all those who are able to live comfortably in tiny houses, I will have to think long and hard on whether or not I could muster up the courage to live in a house smaller than most rooms.

Making the Skies Greener

One of my previous posts was in regards to InCycle technology and its benefits for Alaska Airlines operations. The new cup is allowing for reductions in energy use in multiple areas, especially in the area of weight. The most efficient way to reduce environmental impact in the skies is to reduce the overall weight of the aircraft that is being fueled. These new cups have allowed them to significantly reduce the weight of each aircraft, creating a situation where they simply do not need to use the fuel. What I am learning in the airline industry is that it is extremely difficult to reduce the impact a company has on the environment, but the most effective method to do so today is by reducing weight. Alaska has implemented a number of initiatives to help reduce their footprint over the past few years, some of them are: 

• Reducing weight by making catering carts more efficient, boarding less water on aircraft, removing unneeded insulation blankets, and replacing heavy pilot flight bags and paper manuals with iPads. 
• Keeping a young, fuel efficient fleet and always looking for more innovative designs to alter planes into more fuel efficient aircraft. Recently, they have adopted the use of winglets on the edge of the wing which increases fuel efficiency by 3-5% and can save up to 100,000 gallons of fuel per plane each year (WOW, that is a lot less fuel, but the somehow the fares continue to rise)
• Implementing 'Greener Skies over Seattle" has led to technology advances across their network, not only when flying in and out of Seattle. From this they have developed Required Navigation Performance  (RNP) technology which is leading the industry in GPS enabled navigation. This allows them to fly the shortest route possible between two points, reducing fuel consumption. 
• Sustainable Aviation Fuels Northwest was established with Alaska and 35 other stakeholders in and around the northwest to help develop biofuels that can be used to fuel aircraft. In November 2011 Alaska had its first biofuel flight.

Alaska continues to be ranked #1 in fuel efficiency compared to major competitors across the states. You can find more information regarding their goals to reduce their footprint at their website here: Alaska Airlines Environmental Responsibility

Sourcing for Good

After learning about sustainable design I started looking for products that were designed from a sustainable perspective. Once I did my research I found many products, but one stood out to me in particular, 3M's Agave Leaf Kitchen Sponge. 3M's approach was to find a recycled source material to make something from. They found their solution in Tequila, in one Mexican state where 41 million gallons of Tequila were produced from 700,000 tons of agave, but when producing tequila only the juice of the plant is used, nothing else. So some scientists began to think of different ways they could use the plant, and they did just that, made a sponge from agave leaves. The sponge is not made entirely from the agave fibers, it is made up of 50% of the sustainable material, but the packaging is made up of completely post-consumer recycled materials, so overall this product is a success in sustainable design. More than one area of the product was re-designed to become more innovative and green.

You can find more about their process here: 3m's Solution to Sourcing Sustainably 

I plan to look for this sponge at the store the next time I am in need of cleaning supplies. I am not 100% sure if my roommates will adjust to the new look or not, but I think it is worth the try, and besides, its a non-scratch sponge how could you go wrong?

Alternative Fuel Sources for Vehicles

After doing some research regarding electric vehicles for a project I am completing I found a lot of good information on alternative fuel sources for cars. I found that there are many different ways to run an engine and that there is a lot of research and development going into making cars greener. This is what I found most interesting.

In the past several years gas prices have been rising to historic heights. This has led to the increase of exploring of multiple new technologies or alternative fuel sources to help power vehicles, to get away from the reliance on gasoline which continues to rise in price due to the constant rise in oil prices. Many people really become annoyed during the summer when the price historically always spikes-when we all want to vacation and go on road trips with family and friends.

Unknown to most, there are many alternatives currently available besides a completely electric vehicle that are on the roads and available in dealerships. They range from hydrogen to coal to biodiesel to ethanol to liquefied natural gas. We will cover a few here. To begin, one of the more promising alternatives is using hydrogen fuel to power a vehicle. The most positive effect of using hydrogen is what emits-water vapor. Hydrogen can be used with two different types, a fuel cell-which generates electrical power quietly and efficiently, without pollution to power the car electrically- or an internal combustion engine that has been engineered to use hydrogen instead of gasoline. The fuel cell uses a chemical process with oxygen and hydrogen to produce electricity to power the vehicle and again the only byproduct is water vapor. Currently this is being done with a Honda FCX in southern California. For use in an internal combustion engine, gasoline is simply replaced as the fuel source and the vehicle is powered by hydrogen. Some studies on a BMW hydrogen powered vehicle have shown reports of the vehicle actually improving air quality around it, since when were cars known for helping the environment?

Now why aren’t we all using hydrogen yet if it is so easy to reengineer the vehicles engine? Hydrogen is very difficult to extract in an efficient manner. It is usually combined with other elements creating a difficult process. Once extracted, storing liquid hydrogen in tanks is safe, but if it escapes into the environment it could be potentially dangerous-if it is combined with oxygen in some rare instances it can react explosively or catch fire easily. And surprisingly hydrogen flames are very difficult to see, creating a problem. The average person would not be able to notice the flames and fight them in a quick fashion. Burns can also be an issue if liquid hydrogen comes into contact with skin. As of the moment there is not an infrastructure in place to scale hydrogen powered vehicles across the nation or world to make an immediate impact. Hydrogen still has some time to develop and work the quirks out before it is seen on the road more often.

Another alternative that might be more recognizable to most is the use of ethanol. If you have ever been on the road and started to smell French fries it is either the nearest McDonald’s or it could be the car in front of you. Ethanol is made from plant matter or in some cases fry grease. But for those more health conscious there are other options, most popularly corn or sugar cane. Ethanol can be used in the normal internal combustion engine, it simply replaces gasoline. But not all vehicles are capable of burning this fuel. Most automakers have numerous flex-fuel engines that can run on gasoline or ethanol, they would use E85, a blend of fuel that is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. This would definitely help in reducing gasoline prices and the dependence on expensive oil. But this definitely a tradeoff, it takes a lot of energy to create ethanol but does limit the dependence on oil. The infrastructure is growing for ethanol and there is a large network of ethanol fueling stations already in existence.  One downfall is that farmers could make more money producing crops for ethanol than for eating. This would cause most farmers to invest more into ethanol crops, in turn causing food prices to rise.

Another exciting alternative fuel source compressed natural gas. Could you imagine fueling your car from home? Simply using the common natural gas line to a lot of residential homes, you could refuel right from home instead of taking a trip to the gas station. Compressed natural gas is the same fuel some people might use in their homes for cooking and heating, supplied by the regional gas company. Compressed natural gas is stored in tanks after it has been compressed, so in addition to the gas line the car owner will need a house capable of compressing the gas before fueling up. The use of compressed natural gas begun in 1998 in Honda’s Civic GX-the compressed natural gas is cheaper and burns cleaner than typical gasoline. This would not solve all of our problems, but we would definitely feel it in our wallets, with more cash to spend on sports game tickets and movies with a friend rather than fueling our vehicles. Some of the disadvantages of compressed natural gas is the amount of gas that needs to be stored for a vehicle to have a sufficient range.  In comparison to gasoline natural gas takes up a greater amount of space than gasoline does, and it would possibly need multiple tanks. To put a gas pump in at home is expensive initially, but over time savings will be had with refueling. Like many other alternative fuel sources, compressed natural gas does not have a network of available pumps. There is little or no infrastructure at all to help sustain this new alternative fuel. This in turn leads to the decreased range of a compressed natural gas fueled car compared to the original gasoline fueled car.

There are many new and old alternatives available today and a higher demand for replacing traditional gasoline powered vehicles on the road. This demand is leading the way for more research and availability of alternative fuels for normal everyday people. It is exciting to watch and only time stops us from seeing more and more alternatively powered vehicles on the road way.  

InCycle Cup

I was on Facebook the other day and noticed a post by Alaska Airlines (who I worked for over the past summer) about switching all of their coffee cups to this new locally made, InCycle cup. It is made right here in Washington state, in Arlington! I was interested because they said it was made of 50% post-consumer products and is 100% recyclable. So, I looked up the cup and found a couple interesting videos. I learned that more than 25 billion plastic cups are thrown away each year in the United States, that was shocking. The InCycle cup is completely recyclable! This video shows the process of making an InCycle cup:

The InCycle cup is trying to help promote sustainability by making a coffee cup that is made from recycled water bottles. One cool thing about these cups is that they do not cost more than the standard plastic cup, so it is even easier to make a choice to switch to greener products. If you can't avoid using plastic cups, then you might as well choose one that can be recycled and is made from recycled materials. 

This caught my eye, especially because I feel like it is extremely hard for the airline industry to become sustainable, but Alaska is doing a lot to make improvements to their business. They have made it easily available to read their sustainability report from 2012. It is the biggest link on their "About Us" page of their website. Because of my interest in Alaska, I am going to look into their sustainability report and see what they are doing to improve their business and become more sustainable. I think they have a pretty big goal ahead of them if they are going to try to green their operation, but I know that it would give them a big competitive advantage if they succeed in this.

It is time to check how I am doing with my goals to help reduce my impact on the environment. It has been about 5 weeks since making my 4 goals and my progress has been very slow. So it is time to reevaluate my goals and make adjustments. Here is where I am at right now:

Goal 1: Ride the bus to school 4 out of the 5 days if not everyday, or walk if it is a nice day since I do not live far from campus.  

I did not do this very well in the first couple weeks after making this goal. It has taken some time to get in a routine of not driving to campus and being lazy. If I want to take the bus I have to get up a little bit earlier than normal which was a struggle, but I can say that I rode the bus to school all 5 days last week which was a success. Already drove to campus once this week, so hopefully I can continue my success.  I was trying to limit the amount of driving I do, but this quarter it has been difficult to avoid with family being in town and having to drive south to go home and visit. I did make an improvement and instead of take a short flight home I carpooled with my roommates, dramatically decreasing the footprint for that trip. 

Goal 2: Replace my lunch sandwiches that consist of meat with strictly peanut butter sandwiches, this should be easy since peanut butter is one of my favorite food items. I will not but anymore lunch meat for the remainder of the quarter.  

This goal has been accomplished in a round about way. I have not purchased anymore lunch meat and have made a lot of peanut butter sandwiches, but I also do not make any sandwich some days and this causes me to purchase a lot of food. Most often at subway, which does not help me achieve this goal. Spending more time on campus requires more planning of meals so that I do not need to buy more processed foods. So this goal can use some improvement on my part by not being lazy and taking some time to plan. 

Goal 3: Visit a couple local farms to purchase my fruit and vegetables, Joe's Garden is a mile away from my house so it could be an easy adjustment. 

With this goal I have to be honest, I have failed miserably. I have only been to one local farm and that was for a date with my girlfriend to pick out pumpkins for Halloween and have a good time. But, I did pick 5 pounds of apples while I was there, so I did get some locally grown vegetables. I need to make major steps to achieve this goal. Joe's garden does not have all the vegetables and fruit available that were available earlier in the fall. I need to do some research to find other farms in the area that I could shop at. 

Goal 4: Also, my roommates and I used to recycle a lot but we have lost our commitment to that and I would like to restart our recycling process. We have done it before, so I know we can do it again. 

This goal has been achieved in moderation. It is difficult to get roommates to buy into recycling. Our trash can is constantly filled with recyclable items. I have to do more to encourage recycling in my house. I could make us more organized when it comes to recycling so that it is simpler for everyone. 

A new goal that I want to set for myself is to watch the amount of electricity my roommates and I use. Over the past few weeks I have noticed the amount of lights that are left on in my house and have decided that I am going to start making sure all unnecessary use of electricity comes to a stop. Hopefully I can stop coming home to an empty house fully lit up with lights. 

The Cost of Green

This week I was grocery shopping and decided to take a trip through the natural goods area of the grocery store. I was looking at all sorts of different items, from avocado oil to compostable laundry detergent cartons. One item that really stuck out to me was a roll of paper towels. This ONE roll costs $2.59. So that got me thinking about the paper towels I buy, I know that I am on a budget and when it comes to the necessities price always wins at this point in my life. I could not imagine spending this amount on only one roll of paper towels. So I took a trip back to the rest of the paper towels and looked for the roll I would buy if I was only buying one, the price was $1.09. This Seventh Generation roll of 100% recycled paper costs me 238% more than the average roll of toilet paper I would purchase. This discouraged me, but I am still interested in purchasing products that are actually looking out for the seventh generation when I am more financially secure. It would take a lot to begin purchasing products such as these paper towels now. But, at the same time if I were to limit myself to only purchasing these types of products, the price might force a change in my habits. It would lead me to really weigh the costs of using a paper towel over an actual towel in the house to clean a mess that can be reused.

Anyways, those are my thoughts on the expensive paper towels that are out there and why it is difficult for most people to adjust to buying greener products. I did look a little more into Seventh Generation, here is the link to find out more about them and what they are doing to help the world.

http://www.seventhgeneration.com/

Got2B Full of Toxins

After watching the Story of Cosmetics, I began to wonder what kinds of toxins I might be putting on my body every day. So I looked into this and began looking at the ingredients used in my personal care products. I decided to take a closer look at my hair gel that I have been using for years, Got2b Glued Styling Spiking Glue.

I started reading the small print on the label, and these are the ingredients that I found that are being used to make my hair gel: Water, Sorbitol, VP/VA Copolymer, PVP, Vinyl Caprlactam/vp/dimethylaminoethyl Methacrylate Copolymer (what?), Petrolatum, Tricontanyl PVP, Propylparaben, Cetearyl alcohol, Parfum (Fragrance), Hydroxyethylcellulose, DMD Hydantoin, and Methylparaben just to name a few.

I was shocked when I could not pronounce most of the ingredients or even have any idea of what it is. But then I researched this gel a little more on Environmental Working Group's website to see what these ingredients are and what they are doing when I put them in my hair most mornings. I found that this hair gel scored a 6 on their rating system with is the highest score you can get on the Moderate level, so this product is considered "moderately hazardous." The ingredient "Fragrance" is the most hazardous but it was hard to know what it actually is, and after researching a couple other products Fragrance is in almost every personal care product, so that was a little alarming. Another ingredient is Propylparaben, which scored a 7 on EWR's website putting it in the "High Hazard" category. So I decided to research what this ingredient is.

Propylparaben can be found naturally in some plants, but is manufactured synthetically for its use as a preservative, commonly found in water based cosmetics, like hair gel and other lotions and creams. Its main use is to kill and prevent the growth of fungi. It is said that it is safe with concentrations up to 25%.

The biggest concern is Endocrine disruption as it mimics estrogen, which has been found in recent studies showing strong evidence. There is also strong evidence of Propylparaben being a human immune toxicant or allergy. These are all dangerous outcomes from one ingredient, the main way this ingredient irritates people, is by skin irritation. It is easy for the gastrointestinal tract to rid the body of this. But there have been cases where Propylparaben was found in breast tumors, but they have not linked it to causing cancer.

Overall, I will continue to use this product because the amount of Propylparaben used is between 0.01 and 0.3% concentrations. After finding this information I am now aware of all natural products that are available and have begun to look into these. It is hard to switch after using the same product for about 5 years, but it could be in my best interest to replace this product with a less harmful competitor. So with that, I am going to look into non toxic products and see if any are comparable to this product I use now.


Websites used for information:

http://www.drugs.com/inactive/propylparaben-87.html

http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-propylparaben.htm

http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/product/479610/Got2b_Glued_Styling_Spiking_Glue/

Ecological Footprint

As a part of my Sustainability Marketing class, we are committed to attempting to reduce our ecological footprint. To start, I had to take a test to see what my lifestyle's footprint is. By doing this I was definitely shocked at how what I do impacts the environment. I learned that if everyone lived the way I do, we would need 5.3 earths to sustain that lifestyle, this was a surprise to me because I am a relatively conscious person of what my actions do to the environment. So, I started thinking about my lifestyle and what would really cause my footprint to be so large. Then I realized that my mobility portion was my biggest contributor, and that is because of the large amount of flying that I do. I have a special benefit because my step-mom works for Alaska Airlines, which means that I get to fly for free on them to many different places, and I take full advantage of this perk, so much so that I have flown back and forth from Bellingham to Seattle to commute home, which can contribute to the high footprint. This would be a hard habit to break since my benefits don't last past my college graduation, so I may need to change other parts of my life to help my footprint. 

To help reduce my ecological footprint I am committing to 3 goals that will reduce my impact on the environment:

1. Ride the bus to school 4 out of the 5 days if not everyday, or walk if it is a nice day since I do not live far from campus. 
2. Replace my lunch sandwiches that consist of meat with strictly peanut butter sandwiches, this should be easy since peanut butter is one of my favorite food items. I will not but anymore lunch meat for the remainder of the quarter.  
3. Visit a couple local farms to purchase my fruit and vegetables, Joe's Garden is a mile away from my house so it could be an easy adjustment. 
4. Also, my roommates and I used to recycle a lot but we have lost our commitment to that and I would like to restart our recycling process. We have done it before, so I know we can do it again.