This year, I haven’t made drastic plans to live differently, but I have decided to take more opportunities in the future to do more outdoor activities. So far, I haven’t a had a lot of opportunities while I have been in college to take more trips, but this summer I plan on focusing on doing more activities outdoors than just staying inside, as well as working to save up for a cross country road trip I would like to go on next summer. After going on the ENR camping trip and learning about the national parks, I started to want to plan more trips based on what I want to see, rather than the typical beach vacation my family plans.
During the Earth Month Action Plan, I switched from a pescatarian to a vegetarian and I found this change to be a lot easier than I expected. It wasn’t hard to just make different choices when going out to eat or eating in dining halls. I plan to follow this for the most part, however I am okay with occasionally eating some more local fish that are more sustainable rather than predators, like tuna, that are highly overfished. I chose to change how much fish I eat after doing more research and watching ted talks by people like Sylvia Earle, I realized how the issue was really important to me.
As a part of my Earth Month Action Plan, I also watched a documentary with friends. I watched Racing Extinction, which I had already seen before, but I wanted my friends to see it because it is really great. After watching the documentary, I felt really inspired again to think about my life and how I could make changes and I watched a few ted talks about girls who have gone zero waste and I think this lifestyle idea is really cool. Moving out of my dorm and helping my mom move as well has made me realize how much stuff I have that I just don’t use or need. Over the process of moving out, I plan to get rid of trash and papers that can be recycled that I just keep in my room as well as put aside the clothes I am not wearing to be donated. In the future for clothes I plan on only shopping second hand and only buying clothes if something is ruined or I get rid of more clothes first. For certain things that I may not want to buy second hand I will try to buy from more sustainable and ethical brands. In general I want to decrease my consumption and instead of buying a lot of things, I would rather just have a few nice things that will last me a long time. As far as food, I am planning to shop locally at farmers markets more often and I learned that at farmers markets they organizations set up to pick up compost, so I am really interested in trying this out. Also, I’m planning on avoid plastic straws, cups, and utensils when eating out by bringing my own reusable cups and utensils. Making these changes to go low waste will require more preparation before leaving, which I think will be very beneficial to me because I am somewhat of a forgetful person. I am planning to take a tour of the Rumpke landfill as well as a recycling plant and I think getting a real view will help make the issue more clear and educate me on the actual issues. I think the amount of trash each person produces is pretty crazy and I hope to at least greatly decrease my impact.