Consumption

Consumption. As a species, how much of Earth’s resources do we actually use? I think, for the most part, we all like to believe that we live pretty efficient lives. We try to only buy what we need, choose healthier options, and not live in excess. However, I don’t believe that I do that one bit. In fact, thanks to the Footprint Calculator, we can actually see an estimate of our ecological footprint. According to my results, we would need 4.8 planet Earth’s to provide enough resources if everyone lived like me. Hopefully you don’t because I don’t want to be responsible for your death. As far as the goods and services go, it seems to be a reasonable looking pie chart. Services amount to a little less than 50%, with food at a little under 25%. I honestly thought food was going to be number one, considering that’s what I spend the majority of my money on. So, by looking at these numbers overall, I am not surprised at all. I, like many others, want the most we can get out of anything and everything. Unfortunately, that comes at a cost. There are some small changes I can make in my daily life that could reduce my ecological footprint. Maybe reducing the amount of electricity I use, buying local food, and not solely relying on one food group for my diet. I think these changes are feasible, but I won’t say that they are easy. We are a society that becomes very entrenched in traditional ways of doing things and it’s very hard to break that habit.

Now, our trip to the Waste to Energy Plant was very enlightening because I had never been to one of those plants before. It goes back to that mindset of “out of sight, out of mind.” I just expect the garbage and recyclables to go where they’re supposed to go and that’s the end of it. So, it was really cool to see that the waste we produce can be converted back to energy and used to benefit us in a whole new way. I also thought that the way everything is handled was very environmentally friendly. They were very hard on the fact that that plant is not an incinerator, which naturally has a bad connotation.

This field trip actually allowed me to see how this whole process works. What you may think is very boring and dull, can actually become very interesting. For example, when we went down to see where all of the garbage is dumped before its burned, if you can get past the smell, it was really impressive. But, more importantly, seeing all of this up close does make an impact on you. For me, it was actually witnessing how much garbage we use. Truckloads and truckloads of garbage is wheeled in every week and it’s never going to stop. I think that is reason alone for us to step back and see how we can improve our own way of life.