Marcell Szekeres

For the vision of sustainability eco-challenge, my ideal vision for the future is making sustainability and its practices part of everyday life, instead of treating it as an extra responsibility. Communities would be redesigned around reliable public transportation, walking, and biking, with greenery throughout. Renewable energy would be the norm, products would be built to last, local businesses would support resilient communities, and corporate greed and conveniences would not be valued above resilience and future prosperity. We’ve seen this a lot throughout our course, but those examples are unfortunately not as common as they should be. My place in all this is to help support sustainable systems and relationships, and to stay informed in order to make the right decisions. For me specifically, I would like to keep participating in community efforts, which often has broader impacts than just individual action. For this week, my coworkers and I finished planning out a carpooling schedule, usually for when we are scheduled to work later in the day. All it took was a little planning and communication, but these kinds of shared actions are what my vision of sustainability is built around.

For this week’s eco-challenge on consumption and economy, I realized that I already practice many of the positive habits discussed in the reading; I regularly use reusable bottles and containers, make most of my own coffee and tea instead of buying them, cook much of my food (though I really tried making all of meals this week), and I already tend to avoid online shopping. There were some changes I made, like replacing disposable paper towels with washable rags and a big one for me was consolidating my old electronics instead, which I tend to buy replacements of frequently when I can’t find them. I also recognized and limited some of the unnecessary expenses I still make from time to time: fast food and impulse purchases. Much of this comes down to planning and being efficient with my time. Practically speaking, this will definitely help save money, but also leave a positive environmental impact, which if really easy to overlook concerning these conveniences. Moving forward, I think the most helpful thing for me is to continue to plan out my weeks and keep in mind the easily hidden environmental costs of the everyday products that have unfortunately and quickly become commonplace.

For this week's eco-challenge on water, I ate no meat for the week, which was a pretty big shift for me. Realistically, my long-term goal is not to completely remove meat from my diet, but to drastically reduce how much I eat, especially beef. I did discuss this with my brother, who rarely eats meats himself for a while now and learned that it was a lot easier to adapt to than I initially thought, especially gradually. Besides that, I also paid more attention to my direct water use. I made sure to run the dishwasher only with a full load, kept my shower a lot shorter than usual, and reduced my coffee intake. This challenge also made me think a lot on the hidden cost of different products and amenities via water use/virtual water. I do feel that it is easy to forget how precious of a resource it is, so I also plan on keeping myself connected to that idea and being mindful of my impact on water availability.

For this week's eco-challenge on food, I focused on buying local and organic food when I shopped for groceries. The prices were higher, but the food typically lasts longer and usually tastes better too. I also went to a U-pick, which was a great way to support local farms and get some fresh raspberries. I also would like to grow my own food and would be my next step towards sustainability, though that is not super realistic for me at the moment. By doing these things, I hope to have helped reduce transportation-related emissions, support sustainable farming practices, and strengthen local communities.

For the second eco-challenge, I mainly focused on keeping my air conditioning use to a minimum. Instead, I opened the windows at night and kept the blinds closed during the day. I found this to be the toughest change, since my knee-jerk reaction is to rely on the AC, and I generally prefer colder temperatures. Besides that though, I tried planning my trips more efficiently to reduce how much I drive, kept my lights off whenever I didn't need them, took shorter and cooler showers, and air-dried my clothes instead of using the dryer. One thing I realized is how difficult it can be to move away from high energy use, especially because so much of our daily lives depends on technology and convenience. The changes I made this week were relatively easy to adapt to and it helps that they also save money, but I recognize that sustainability is a gradual process; larger changes, like switching to an electric vehicle and further improvements energy efficiency are goals that I’ll need more time and planning for.

For this week's first eco-challenge, I focused on a couple of things to reduce the amount of waste I produce. I had a tear in one of my jeans that I'd been meaning to sew up for a while, so I was glad I finally got around to repairing them instead of replacing them, although I did have to watch a few videos since it had been a while since I'd sewn anything. I also reached out to my boss about separating our trash for recycling. We already keep our cardboard separate, but plastics still end up mixed with the regular trash, so I'm hoping we can improve that. Besides that, I started making a few smaller changes that I can turn into regular habits, like choosing ceramic cups instead of disposable ones when I get coffee, reusing my mason jars and reusable bottles, and using washcloths instead of paper towels around the house. These are all fairly small changes, but on a personal level, I do think that it forming good habits is essential for waste management. Also, I hope that by encouraging recycling at work, that habit is propagated to larger systems at play.