Ecological Footprint, Reduction Goals and Strategies

It's time to evaluate my progress towards reaching the reduction goals and strategies i outlined at the beginning of the quarter for reducing my ecological footprint. Here is what has been working so far and the challenges that I have faced:

• Working to keep electricity costs down has been very effective. Turning off lights, unplugging phone chargers and laptop battery chargers, and reducing water usage have all been pretty easy to stay accountable on. One of the challenges, however, is that my roomie owns a very large big screen television that I know eats up lots of electricity. Hence, we have been very cautious to never leave the television on or plugged in when we leave town/ aren't using it.
• Our house has been very committed to recycling. We have found that most often we take out the recycling more often than the garbage.
• Cell phones! I still have more research to do on recycling cell phones. I have heard that there are some different locations in town that could help with recycling cell phones.
• I haven't been grocery shopping for weeks, so I haven't personally been using my reusable shopping bags. However, I keep them in the kitchen so my roomies have been able to utilize them for trips to the grocery store.

I have been successful in achieving most of my initial goals to help with the reduction of my ecological footprint. Another goal that I would like to start for myself is to reduce my use of water for laundry. I can easily oftentimes combine loads with a roomie or with kitchen/ bathroom towels to fully utilize wash and dry laundry cycles.

Keeping good on my promises?

So, after attending Sustainable Marketing last Thursday, I decided to add additional Sustainable Challenges...

• To remember to bring reusable grocery/ shopping bags with me when grocery shopping. I have nearly half a dozen reusable shopping bags sitting around my home, yet I oftentimes walk out the door and completely forget to bring them along. I know what a difference it makes to carry out two reusable bags from the grocery store, rather than four or five category-sorted individual plastic bags.
• Buy less! I would like to make it a goal to make purchases less frequently and only when things need replacing.

Now, for this week's progress on my already-documented sustainable goals:

• Not charging my phone throughout the night has been difficult! Out of habit, that seems to be the only time that I can remember to plug my phone in the charger. Thus, when not charging my phone overnight my phone has consistently been dying throughout the day at very inconvenient times.
• I have been doing a really good job at turning my laptop off at night and unplugging the battery.
• I definitely did not meet this week's tv goal. Swine flu has not helped this goal one bit! However, I will do better this week. I'm feeling much better and I will definitely be spending more time at the gym and library and less on the couch!
• I couldn't say that I have had much opportunity to turn off the the house lights because our whole house was pretty much home from school last week with the flu. We have, however, been really good about turning off the bathroom and laundry room lights when they are not in use.