Overall Ecological Footprint

Overall, I have reduced my footprint quite a bit in only a few months. I went from a 5.52 to a 5.20. Although this does not seem like a really big step it is to me. I am still changing a lot of things so hopefully this number will continue to decrease and my overall impact will lessen. There are still a lot of things I am trying to change and I will continue working towards these goals once the quarter is over. I know one of my biggest issues is driving because I drive my car all the time. It is very convienent for me and saves me a lot of time when I don't have too much to spare. I really enjoyed doing this project and setting goals for myself because it made me realize how big of an effect we are truly having on this earth and if we don't decide to change things soon who knows what will end up happening. The way we are living right now, I don't know how this earth has sustained us up to know. We are depleting resources we will never get back and destroying others we will never be able to fix in our lifetime and even further. I am trying to implement some of these goals at my parents house to gain their help in building this awareness.

I think one of the biggest issues with this is that most people just are not aware of the impact they are having. If there was a way we could open peoples eyes to this I think a lot more would be willing to help and change their ways of life. Right now, a lot of people do things out of habit or convience. If we could change these couple things, step by step we can help lower our overall carbon footprint on this earth. I know this is not easy for a lot of people, but easy or not we need to start changing things so we have a place to live in our future. I'm not saying we have to completely change our lifestyles right now, we all just need to take continuous steps in the right direction, continually changing our lives for the better. With each step we can form habits and end up saving this earth for the furture.

http://www.myfootprint.org/en/quiz_results/

Final Ecological Footprint

I have been doing a lot better towards the end of this quarter remembering to do some of my goals. However, the one that I am still struggling on is driving my car. Now that I have two jobs, a lot of times I leave straight from school to work so I need to have my car. I know I could take the bus but I have ten minutes to get from class to work and a lot of time I am cutting it very short. If I were to take the bus instead I would not make it on time. On the other hand, I am doing really well bringing reusable bags to the grocery store. I have not forgot them at all for the past month. It is becoming more of a habit for me so it is a lot easier to remember this one. With the whole organic fruit thing, I am still having a somewhat hard time just because they don't last as long. Other than this, I have changed every lightbulb in my house to CFLs and am buying only energy efficient appliances from here on out. Overall, I think I have changed a lot over this quarter and am going to continue to change my ways and try to become as sustainable as possible.

Ecological Footprint Update

I am doing a good job at some of my goals but lately I have been slacking off on one in particular. I'm remembering to bring reusable bags to the grocery store every time I go, I am trying to turn this into a habit so I just do it automatically without really thinking about it. I also told my mom to start doing the same, and she thought it was a pretty good idea since she has the bags, she just doesn't really use them. When I am at the grocery store I have been getting better at purchasing organic foods. The only thing I have a hard time buying still are fruits and vegetables. I have found that organic fruits and vegetables don't seem to last as long as the others. Since I don't eat a lot of vegetables, when I do get them it normally takes me about a week to finally finish them and by then the organic ones have normally gone bad. The one I am struggling with right now is driving. Now that the weather has really started to get bad, it is tough for me to want to walk or catch the bus to school when my car is nice and warm in my garage. I am trying to work on this, but it is somewhat of a struggle for me at least when the weather is bad.

"Sustainable Surfing"

The surfing industry is a $7.2 billion business and its latest efforts are to go green. Their biggest issue has always been the "toxic business of making surfboards and the tons of waste generated from broken boards, old wetsuits and other cast-offs from the nature-boy lifestyle." Looking at all the parts of surfing that are not sustainable in this environment is pretty outstanding seeing as there is not a whole lot to the sport itself. One of the biggest things they need is the waves which is constently brought to them by the environment. Green Foam Blanks, a company started by surf industry veterans Joey Stantley and Steve Cox in San Clemente, California, have decided to make new surfboards out of recycled polyurethane. This is combine with a carcinogenic chemical compound and Green Foam. By doing this they are essentially reducing the amount of new polyurethane that has to be made. It continues to say old surfboards can be recycled too.

They have also come up with other ideas to reduce their sports waste. They have begun, "experiementing with using polyurethane waste and broken boards as filler for asphalt paving as well as making surfboard accessories out of neoprene wetsuit waste." These ideas are working really well so far, they are figuring out how to make products out of waste that many surfers need. Some of the products they have made so far include sandals, surfboard leashes and traction pads, all of which have been made from recycled neoprene. In order to help sell their products they have decided to put together a "guerrilla marketing campaign to get recycled surfboards in the hands of celebrities, respected surfboard builders and pro surfers." The more widely known they are for their efforts to become more sustainable and the more people see their product really works, it will hopefully create a buzz and trend to push people towards a more sustainable surf industry. One celebrity stated, "I understand that humans have to learn to do more with less, therefore the products I use, like a surfboard for instance, I prefer to be made with our environment in mind." If it all works the same, why not choose the more sustainable product.

Lastly, they are doing a pretty good job so far, but they are also working with a niche market that hasn't changed hundreds of years. He has begun working with surf industry retailers to create a "Green Room" within their stores that will "sell sustainable products like board shorts made of recycled plastic and environmentally sensitive neoprene wetsuits." Stantley will also continue to market this Green Foam surfboards under a new brand he calls the "G" brand.

I think they have done a very good job establishing a company and a product line that emphasizes sustainability. They are using materials that have all been put straight into the landfills and instead, they are creating useful products for surfers today. Essentially, they are trying to create a closed-loop system for their industry. This way, instead of the waste from old boards and wetsuits going straight into the landfills, they will be recycled and made into newer and more environemtally friendly products. Hopefully they can help change other manufacturers and show them the benefits they are gaining from doing this.

http://http//greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/sustainable-surfing-rides-the-waves/?scp=10&sq=Environment&st=cse

"Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976"

While reading this article I found it really interesting how federal regulations govern toxic subatances. A campaign called the Million Baby Crawl was developed by the Seventh Generation which is the manufacturer of green household cleaning products. This campaign was set up through a series of advertisements, YouTube videos and in-person promotions where Seventh Generation wants its supporters to post messages attached to something they call a virtual "crawler" which will be seen on their web-site. These messages are there to help show representatives in Congress the new legislation that would end up amending the Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976.

This new legislation "allows the Environmental Protection Agency to test for safety and restrict the more than 80,000 chemicals used in product manufacturing." This sounds like a very good idea however since the first law was enacted only 200 chemicals have been tested and of those 200, only five have actually been removed from the market. Not only will this campaign help Seventh Generation in the household cleaning product market, it is helping them against their huge competition, Clorox and SC Johnson. They use to have a big hand in the market but now that greener products are being seen more and more on the grocery store shelves, Seventh Generation is having a much more difficult time differentiating themselves from its competition. With this "openly championing legislation, it enables Seventh Generation to show core green consumers what the difference between a green company and a company that sells green products." If this campaign pays off in the end, it will be a big step forward for the company and will help move it up in the competition.

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/campaigning-for-a-cause-and-customers/?scp=2&sq=Environmental%20Sustainability&st=cse

"Sustainability Field Booms on Campus"

This article talks about the rise in sustainability classes on college campuses. More and more students are requesting an increase in sustainability courses across campus majors. Since this is a really big topic in all lines of business I believe there should be an increase in the different sustainability courses offered throughout the campus. There doesn't seem to be very many thoughout our campus here at Western and we are seen as a sustainable university. I believe there should be a GUR set up based on the main points of sustainability, touching a little bit of all aspects of business. This way, students will get more of an insight and hopefully choose to continue to take more and more sustainable courses as they are offered. I believe this is a big part of life now but a lot of people don't really understand what it means to be sustainable and how important it is to increase these efforts.

For our group project we decided to see how much students on the Western campus actually know about this universities efforts to go green. For the most part, the students had no clue. We are trying to build awareness and get more students involved in our office of sustainability because I know personally I had no clue we even had this here until I took this class. By building awareness throughout the campus we can hopefully change the views of the students and get their hlep in lowering our overall environmental impact. This is something that should be done at all schools across the country and eventually should be implemented into elementary, middle and high school. The more people we get involved in these efforts the greater the impact we will have and hopefully will be able to lower environmental impact across the U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/education/20GREEN.html?scp=4&sq=Sustainability&st=Search

"Everybody in the Pool of Green Innovation"

This article talks about businesses collaborating and sharing ideas of how to become more environmentally friendly. A lot of this gives thanks to the open-source software movement. With this, many different corporations are using these forums for sharing different environmentally friendly innovations and in turn this helps to build communities around them. The very first forum to create a community was the Eco-Patend Commons, which "was started in January 2008 by IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes and Sony in collaboration with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development." One thing I noticed about the different companies who are working with each other are that they are not competeing for consumers. Most of the companies are working in different lines of business. The article goes on to state the concept which is "companies pledge environmental patents to the commens, and anyone can use them - free." I believe this is all a really good idea because by sharing the different environmental technologies companies are developing it helps to maximize the social benefit without actually sacrificing their competitive strategy.



The following are a couple different examples the article gave.

• DuPont: "method for better detecting pollution in soil, air or water by using a microorganism that produces light when exposed to a pollutant." The picture to the right shows the sustainability goals DuPont wants to achieve by the year 2015. By doing this, DuPont will continue to improve its overall environmental impact and will also help other companies to improve theirs.

• Xerox: "removing toxic waste from contaminated groundwater, as well as a cleaning technique for semiconductor wafers from IBM that uses ozone gas and eliminates chemical contaminants that result from other processes.

Since the start of this, the commons has grown to 100 patents from 31, with 11 companies who are participating. There is also another commons called the Creative Commons which is "a nonprofit organization that previously developed licensing programs tohelp in sharing creative and scientific content," and it is planning to continue its efforts and take on environmental issues.

In early 2010, Nike and Best Buy plan to share an initiative called the Green Xchange. This is a program which will include both patented technologies and forums for continuing to exchange innovations. One of these innovations include Best Buy's system for rating the sustainability of a supply chain. The companies who choose to contribute in the Green Xchange have the right to either charge users a fixed annual licensing fee and restrict any licensing by rivals or for competitive use. No matter what they choose to do though all participating companies must register so there is a record of who is actually using what technology. One thing Nike came up with was their air-bag technology which they use in their shoes. This technology could be sold to non-competeing companies and could build a fairly large profit outside its normal business.

Overall, I found this article to be very interesting because it showed how different companies can all collaborate with each other to make a much better ending product. One company cannot accomplish everything so with the help of others they can all build on their products and lower their environmental impact. I understand not helping out the competition because you are essentially competing for the same consumer business, but by helping non-competitors you are lowering a much greater amount of environmental impact instead of only your own.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/business/01proto.html?_r=1&scp=6&sq=sustainability&st=cse