Journal #5 Ecological Footprint

After calculating my ecological footprint it has come to my attention that I and as well as others need to change our habits. My score was 7.5, meaning that it takes more than one world to sustain my lifestyle. Basically this means I need to take action and change certain ways I do things in order to be more environmental friendly. My weakest part on the graph was transportation. I own a Jeep Grand Cherokee which gets horrible gas mileage and I rarely drive with others in my car. It is sort of out of my control though as my parents bought me the vehicle and I don't have the money to buy a different car. Things that I could do to avoid wasting fossil fuels would be using my bike or walking to places that are in close proximity. One thing that I have been doing is keeping all the lights off during the day and making sure to turn off the tv when it is no longer being watched. I have also changed most of the light bulbs in my house to the new energy efficient light bulbs. On the top of the page is a picture of the light bulbs I now use. Theses bulbs decrease the electricity bill while at the same time lasting longer than the standard bulbs. I am very willing to attempt to change my lifestyle a little in order to promote sustainability. The thing is we need to focus more on passing on green living to our children. It is pretty much to hard for us to change our lifestyles the best thing we could do is change the lifestyle of the people in the future. I have already been doing what I can to practice sustainability but there is only so much a poor college student can do since green products and going green in itself is very pricey.



Links to picture I used:

http://imgsrv.qcountry1037.com/image/wqny/UserFiles/Image/going-green-ideas-save-money.jpg

http://smallbiztrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/sustainability2.jpg

Journal #4 ECHO

In class with week we left our normal class room environment and ventured to ECHO. ECHO is an organization with a goal to reduce hunger around the world by teaching how to plant and provide food for themselves. I think the idea of this group is great. Teaching others how to plant and run there own farm to reduce hunger around the world. I personally really enjoyed my time spent at ECHO, I do wish it had not gotten dark so quick so I would have been able to see more about ECHO. I haven't grown plants by myself except for maybe a school project or two. I one day might want to make my own little garden at my house for fun. I believe I could learn how to grow anything I wanted by researching information through the internet or library. The only thing I did not like about the group is that they seem to put religion behind the group. It seems that while they are teaching these skills to people they might be pushing Christianity down others throats which I am against. I am not a very religious individual at all but if you say your goal is to reduce hunger than you should leave religion out the picture.

At ECHO there were a bunch of different areas which represented certain environments.They try to find ways to grow agricultures no matter what the environment. The area I found most interesting was the urban growth area where they used tires and concrete bricks as pots to plant plants. Below is a photo of what the plants looked like being grown in tires.



I learned a lot about the different methods of farming. One thing that I found interesting was the water system that was simple yet such a great idea. The pump was powered like riding a bicycle and takes less work than carrying buckets all over the place. The system is affordable to make and wont break someones bank. Below is a photo of a pump similar to the one we saw at ECHO.





I got my image's from:

http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/school-gardens-resized-flowers-planted-in-tires.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3147/2348183212_3317808a0b.jpg