Jake Hansen

This week with the topic of consumerism, I decided to try and only buy things that I need. This is something that I usually do anyway, however this week I tried to be extra careful about it. If I went to buy something, I stopped to ask myself, is this something I really need? Is there a local or more sustainably produced alternative? I don't shop that much to begin with, so this wasn't all that difficult, but I think taking the time to be more mindful about the things we buy is really valuable. Even with something like food, that I need to buy to survive, I found that there are ways to shop that are more sustainable. We have to much access to consumer products that we often take it for granted, and hardly stop to think about with it really means to need something.

This week I decided to only use human powered transportation. I really enjoy walking and biking places, because it's good exercise, and allows me to get some fresh air on my commute. Living in the city, its actually pretty achievable to walk or bike almost anywhere. There are definitely some instances where biking can be a bit far. Getting out to the Sunflower farm was a bit of a trek, but it wasn't too bad. It took around 45 minutes, which is only 15 minutes longer than public transit, not counting any time spent waiting for the bus. I don't usually drive that much to begin with (partially because I do not own a car and rely on borrowing my girlfriend's) but I'd like to stay in the habit of using my legs to take me where I need to go as much as possible. Especially while the weather is nice.

During one of our class sessions this week, we talked about how technology affects communities. Our group got to talking about how weird it is that every time your in an elevator, everyone is just on their phone. To realized how strange it is to be trapped in a tiny box with a bunch of people, only to try and pretend that they're not even there. It's even worse that this has become so normal that we had never thought to question it. So my idea for this week was to try and change that. It's pretty simple, but I wanted to just be more friendly, and acknowledge the fact that people exist. Whether its saying good morning to someone in an elevator, giving a small compliment, or even just smiling and waving to someone. It felt a little awkward at first, but I think little actions like these can really help to build community and help people feel comfortable in their environments.

After doing last weeks reading I was really surprised by how much of our water consumption is "virtual", or water that is used during the production and manufacturing of items we use or eat. Around 90% of the water we consume we never even see! So this week I decided to try and reduce my virtual water footprint. I mainly focused on food. I continued my streak of not eating meat from last week, since meat is by far the most water intensive food that we eat. I did some further research on how to reduce virtual water use, and something that was brought up is the consumption of processed food. The process of manufacturing, packaging and distributing these foods, (on top of the water that might be used to grow the ingredients) makes them more water intensive than whole foods. So I also tried to reduce my intake of processed foods. I see this as a win-win, since its not only good for the environment, but also my health.

This week I decide to try and go a whole week without eating meat. Eating meat is something that I've always felt conflicted about. I know it's bad for the environment yet I still consciously choose to eat it, which I have mixed feelings about. Over the course of the week, I decided not to have meat in any of my meals, which to be honest, wasn't all that difficult. I just had to choose not to buy meat products. There were certain meals where I would normally default to adding meat, so it just forced me to get a little more creative with my cooking. However, I think If i were to continue with this diet I would need to research some vegetarian recipes with more protein, as I probably wasn't getting enough. I've tried vegetarianism in the past and haven't been able to stick with it. But I have made some smaller changes in the past few years such as limiting my beef and pork consumption. So I think a more sustainable change for me is to be more mindful of my meat consumption, where it comes from, and how its produced. I would love to at some point be able to eat mostly locally grown meat to sustainable farms, but it's just not in my budget at the moment.

This week I decided to try and reduce my electricity by being more conscious about turning off lights and unplugging appliances. I made sure to unplug things like power strips the toaster and air fryer. I've never really thought twice about leaving these things plugged in, as I wasn't really aware that they still used a significant amount of electricity. We also have some string lights in our apartment that we have a bad habit of leaving on all the time, even overnight. They are LED lights so they're a bit more efficient, but I imagine they still use a lot of energy. So I made sure to keep those off more frequently.
I feel like in general I am pretty good with energy use. I always wash my laundry on cold, and my roommates and I have never once turned on the heat or AC in our apartment (we are very lucky that our apartment usually stays at a pretty comfortable temp). I'd like to get in the routine of doing more little things like this to us even less energy.

This week I decided to try and reduce my waste by creating an art project for an architecture class using only reused materials. I'm an architecture major, and in my program we do lots of hands on art projects and model making. This does however require us to purchase a lot of material such as wood, cardboard, and chipboard. People don't usually use all the of materials that they buy, so we have a reuse room where we can drop off scraps from our projects for other people to repurpose. However, most of these materials are cut into odd shapes and sizes, and don't always meet to requirements of what we're looking for. So they usually end up getting thrown away or recycled in the end anyway. It kind of disappoints me how much waste we create in the architecture program. At the end of the term or after a big project, the trash bins and the reuse room are overflowing, and I am unsure about how much of the material actually get properly recycled.

I had a project that I was working on this week, and I wanted to challenge my self to use nothing other than the scraps that I found in the reuse room. Sometimes, working with scrap materials can be challenging because not every piece will suite your needs perfectly. But thats part of the fun, seeing the potential in every piece. It was really fun working with just reused materials this week, and I plan to try and use as much recycled material as possible going forward. I won't bore you all the with details of the assignment, so heres a picture, and you can interpret it however you like.