Kit Stauf

To foster connection to my community this week, I've been discussing my project and things I have learned in this class with my family, including outside of my household. Though my composting project is still very much a work-in-progress, I've been keeping my mom up to date on the information I have been gathering about what can and can't be composted, what good composting practices look like, and how we will hopefully incorporate composting more and more into our household over time. My mom also likes to garden, so I have brought up the topic of how synthetic fertilizers are really not good for the overall health of the environment. Additionally, I mentioned that I was going to begin composting to my grandma, who is someone that is very eco-conscious and has instilled a strong desire to "save the Earth" in me since I was a very young child. Lastly, for the independent field trip, I found a local "no waste" store (Mama & Hapa's), and am planning to visit there with my mom. I'm hoping that I will find products there that will be easy to add to or substitute into my lifestyle, and I will be supporting a local small business at the same time!

I use reusable water bottles, even when I'm at home! That way, I can keep a filled water bottle by my bed and don't need to wash a glass every day. I also never leave my faucet running when I'm washing the dishes, but I notice some of my family members do. Unfortunately, this hasn't changed despite me commenting on it. I don't think I'm up for the challenge of 5 minute showers yet, but almost all of my showers have been only about 15 minutes for the past 5 or so years. I liked the idea from this week of collecting rainwater, but I'm not sure what my household would use it for aside from perhaps watering plants.

To be honest, I didn't engage very thoroughly in this week's ecochallenge. I already struggle with choosing and preparing meals for myself rather than relying my household to prepare them for me for reasons that are difficult to explain. At this time, I don't feel like I am prepared or able to make any big changes regarding my meal habits. However, I have been trying to be conscious of where the ingredients and foods that I use and eat come from, just to be more aware of how I am involved in this chain of consumption. I am also trying to make some more healthful choices with what I eat, balancing "something to fill me up quickly" with "something that my body needs now."

This week, I tried limiting my "passive" energy use. I often like to put my laptop to sleep rather than fully powering it down so that it takes less time to start and I can keep tabs open. I've trying to do this less, by bookmarking tabs to come back to, and always powering my laptop down fully at the end of the night. I'll only leave my laptop on sleep overnight if I'm in the middle of a task that I want to keep my workflow open on. I also turned off the power strip that powers my TV and game consoles in my room, as I don't use most of these extremely frequently. I'll turn it on when I want to play games.

To help reduce and properly dispose of waste this week, I looked further into what contaminates recycling. I already knew a lot about what shouldn't be in the recycling bin, but there's always more to learn. In a previous class I took, I learned about the idea of "hopeful recycling," where people put things into their mixed recycling in hopes that it will be accepted and recycled. In actuality, this can contaminate the properly recyclable materials, causing entire batches of otherwise recyclable material to be thrown out.
I'm aware that food is a big contaminant, so any food packaging that has food residue on it I make sure to throw away. Additionally, I make sure to rinse out plastic containers very well so they do not leak liquid that could contaminate paper/cardboard recycling.
Frozen food boxes or containers that have a waxy coating are also not recyclable. Unfortunately, I've been putting this type of box in the recycling for years, so I feel pretty bad about that. But I'm able to make that change now.
For plastic in Portland, much of what is recyclable depends on the shape and size of the item, rather than plastic type. Plastic bags are an especially troublesome contaminant, because they can can get wrapped around the processing machinery and damage it.
Tin/aluminum foil can be recycled as long as it is clean, dry, and crumpled into a ball at least the size of a tennis ball. So I've started cleaning some of the foil I use and keeping it in a little ball, to put in the recycling once it gets big enough.