sustainability – art, design and social practice

Carbon footprint project  Eleanor Farley

Waste Reduction:
*If it’s yellow I let it mellow
*I’ve started a compost pile in my backyard
* I’ve started reusing cooking oils, bacon grease, olive oil, vegetable oil.
(separately) If there is some left in a pan I filter it through a coffee filter and keep it in
a jar to re-use.
* I’ve been buying less processed foods, ex: dried beans instead of canned beans,
raw oatmeal instead if instant/flavored, make soup instead of canned soup
*I’ve started bringing tea/ coffee to school in re-useable containers, rather
than buying it in paper containers.
* Started making a quilt from my old clothes with rips and stuff in them

Energy Reduction:
* Haven’t turned the heat on yet, just recently used a low energy space heater for
night.
* Bought more blankets
* ride my bike more except it broke last week
* Wash clothes on cold and hang them to dry
* Buy most food at Farmers market, eggs, veggies, fruit, and Go to Mill Valley
down the street to buy cheese, milk
* Made plans for garden in the spring/summer, and found a place in VA to get
seeds that make seeds you can use again – seed saving.
* When I do drive I try to have at least another person in the car Ex- if I have to
go to Towson does anyone else have to go? Usually people do – and my car is full,
also don’t have to pay as much for gas
*making my own laundry detergent  – new plan
* actually recycling
* eat less meat

* Realized a lot of this stuff is stuff my grandma does anyway, depression era
habits, Will these ideas re-emerge from our current situation?

* Researching future alternatives – tiny homes, home heating, owning goats, owning chickens, etcetc

http://tinyhouseblog.com/

I have mostly been doing little things to change my carbon footprint, things that don’t register on the footprint calculators. I think if nothing else these little changes remind me of the bigger things that need to be done. One bigger thing that I have done is try to weather-proof the windows in my house. We put up those foamy weather-proofing strips and also put the heat-seal plastic on the windows. I hope to one day build a bicycle-powered washing machine like this one:

also: http://lagusta.wordpress.com/2007/11/10/thighs-of-steel/

In the mean time I have been handwashing my clothes or at least washing them in cold water and hanging them to dry.

sauerkraut in a german jar & some kombucha

I have been doing lots of food experiments, making my own food products so that eating mostly local food doesn’t feel too limited. So far I have had success making saurkraut, kombucha, sprouts, nut milk, and bread. I am currently making my second attempt at cultivating a sourdough starter. I hope to try out kefir and tempeh in the near future. oh! and i also made some key lime extract from key limes my roommate found in the dumpster. it was bright emerald green when i first made it. 

The other area I have been working on improving is consumption of disposable containers/paper products. I always have a jar with me to drink water/ get coffee and carry a fork, spoon, knife, and handkerchief so I don’t have to use plastic utensils or paper napkins/towels while out in the world. Sometimes I get crazy about really little things, like making sure all my hair trimmings when I cut my bangs make it into the compost. But I like to do that.

also i’ve been growing philodendron cuttings. philos are the #1 plant indoor pollution fighter. let me know if you want one! also one of those is a peperomia cutting, not a philodendron. 

In order to address my carbon footprint I have been recycling whatever I can. Also I have been trying to pick up recyclables I see on the ground or that have been put into the trashcan.

I do not own a car but have been driven around a little here and there. Any serious traveling I have done has been through public transit and my bike.

I have been trying to go to the farmers market when I can but have not been going as much as I would like.

I plan to continue my work on the community farm I helped to start last year this coming spring. I also plan to approach this with sustainability in mind. I hope to get free compost and seeds through the different city greening programs. I also want to keep in mind rotating and growing native crops. Hopefully, the people at Participation Park can teach me more about this.

Living in the gateway, it’s hard to make big changes to my housing, but, I have been making a point to make sure we turn off the lights when they aren’t in use, and the A/C in my room is off while the window is kept open.

My family is pretty well on board for environmental issues. My mother always buys “green” when she can. I have talked to her about switching to wind power, and she told me that we would try it out in spring.

One of the biggest things I get coming away from this project is a greater sense of awareness. I always find myself thinking about how being better is not good enough, and trying to push myself and my friends to try live a sustainable life. This shift in awareness has been my greatest shift in this project, and it has inspired many conversations with my peers. With this I am left to believe that a greater shift towards sustainability will come hand in hand with a greater public awareness.

-Ian Cox

Hey Class,

If you remember my plan of action after learning my carbon footprint was to go home and educate my family about their carbon footprint and how to change it. So i did that and… nothing happened. They were ‘turned off’ by the information that i presented to them. It was tough to bring bad news to them, especially when they saw things like transportation and life style hard hings to immediately overcome. Although there were long term goals that i was trying to set, I really felt like it was a consciousness hat i was trying to imbue upon my parents. Where they thought about the importance of turning off the lights before going to bed. How do i make this work, more importantly is there a universal solution to get sustainability practices into upper middle class suburban homes. How to get through…

Then it hit me! I would design a home party! Home parties were invented by tupperware in the 1950s as a direct sales tactic. If your not familiar, the way it works is you call a sales rep from cutco, tupperware or mary kay. They come to your house and throw basically a sales party to you and your friends. What’s in it for you? The more your friends buy the more you get for free. What’s in it for them? They get promised freebies or discounted sales. The most important aspect of the home party: Fun as a commodity.
These things really exist. And my mom goes to them! But i think it would be a great way to introduce these wary ears to new ideas. How to sugar-coat bad news, the same way they do, glitter crafty oogly eyeballs. I designed home party to be a craft session similar to something to you’d see on Martha Stewart, but with alterior motives:) In home party we will taking ineffient items around the home and exposing them for the demons they really are. The crafts made will serve as reminders to changing your attitude about you sustainable future.

Dan Allende

“A kilogram (2.2 pounds) of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gases and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home.” New Scientist conclusion on the CO2 emissions of the meat industry.  This conclusion is based on the emissions of EUROPEAN vehicles, which are considerably lower than AMERICAN vehicles.  Incredible.

The majority of the emissions from livestock originates from within the bowels of the animals themselves.  That’s right.  Farts.  Incredible amounts of methane gas is released over the life span of the average piece of livestock.  The next largest CO2 source in meat processing is the transportation and production of feed for the animals.  It takes 16 times as much fossil fuel to produce 320 calories of beef as it does to produce 320 calories of vegetables and rice.  16.  These figures do not factor in the transportation of the beef once it is butchered, or the hefty energy consumption of refrigeration for meat.  

The UN”s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that livestock production generates more than 1/5 of the world’s greenhouse gases- more than transportation.

It’s clear- if you switch to vegetarianism you can shrink your carbon footprint by up to 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to research by the University of Chicago. – Time Magazine

This is the biggest impact I could possibly have on my own carbon footprint.  Phasing meat out of my life has reduced my carbon footprint by leaps and bounds.  I realized towards the end of this past summer that I didn’t really need to eat meat anymore, and so I began to phase meat out of my daily diet.  It took roughly a week to quit completely, but I haven’t had any problem since then in terms of craving meat.  Tofu, nuts, certain grains, and dairy products have kept my protein intake at a sufficient level.  The most striking element of this argument that I couldn’t have predicted was the fact that changing your diet could be more effective than upgrading your car from a gas guzzling SUV to a hybrid.  

Choosing to eliminate meat from my diet is clearly the most effective way to reduce my carbon footprint.

I will do a Letterman-style countdown for the other ways I have reduced my carbon footprint:

10. Craigslist

9. Buying used clothing

8. Using glass water bottles

7. Washing dishes by hand (already a part of my routine)

6. Air-drying clothing, not washing as often

5. Making a concerted effort to purchase less individually wrapped items and plastic bottles

4. Attempting to cut back on dairy products

3. Shopping locally whenever possible

2. Trying to conserve electricity, turning off lights when not in use, turning off my computer.

1. Riding a bicycle, not traveling by plane, staying in one area for an extended period of time.

The best way to make an impact is to influence others with your own actions, and I’ve been attempting to do this without forcing my views onto others.  Presenting the facts is enough to at least make most people think about how they live; making someone say “wow” by showing them the reality of something they had never before considered is pretty incredible.  Inspiring change through education is the ultimate answer, which is why this class is relevant in the first place.