Something to think about...

There is a triple bottom line approach to sustainability and it is three fold: economic stewardship (valuing financial continuity over profit), environmental/ecological stewardship (maintenance and renewal of natural capital), and social stewardship (equitable distribution of resources, human and community well being).



Social stewardship resonates the most with me with this definition of sustainability. I believe there is responsibility of all businesses to give back to the community, serve others, to serve "the least of these", corporate, social responsibility, public relations or whatever you want to call it. We are not on this earth merely to fulfill our own desires and look just for the benefit of ourselves. I found a video on a buddie's blog that challenges today's youth and twenty somethings to look beyond themselves and to bring about social stewardship in their local communities and globally. Here is a teaser to the feature film that will be released this November from The I-Heart Revolution

Alot of work ahead of me... I suck at being green.. Here is my ecological footprint

So I took the ecological footprint quiz on myfootprint.org and found out some pretty interesting results. So here they are...

If everyone on the planet lived my lifestyle, we would need 4.49 of these earths pictured here:

To be honest, I wasn't too surprised to see these results because two-fold, I haven't been to environmentally conscious and when I am I opt out for laziness. For example I choose not to search for a recycling bin when I need to throw away a plastic bottle. However, I would really like to know how myfootprint.org determines how many earths your lifestyle consumes, it is pretty scary at the first initial glance. I am pretty happy though when I compare my footprint in comparison to the U.S. Below is the comparison:

However when I look at my footprint in the pie chart in terms of biome, I can see some definite areas that I could work on in terms of footprint reduction. Such as my forestland footprint (40%) and my pastureland footprint (20%). And looking in the above chart, my food footprint is ridiculous (65.7!).

So that being said, some actions need to be taken to reduce my footprint in these areas. I did some research of some of the websites that Wendy gave us for resources in ecological footprint reduction and I have found some practical ideas that I hope I will follow through during the quarter and carry over after this quarter.

1. Eat red meat once a week or none at all (see pbjcampaign.org and omnivores dilemma)

2. Walk or Bike to class, bottom line, no excuses this quarter as well as carpool when going to the grocery store.

3. Recycle... plain and simple. Pretty lazy about that. Bottles and paper.

Secondary goals

1. Shorter showers

2. Bundling up at night, conserving heat

3. Turning off the water when hand washing dishes.

4. Closing the refrigerator or minimizing the time that it is open.