The end has finally arrived: summer is upon us and this concludes the lived ethics project.
If I was to do it different I would have picked a larger goal to try and achieve because I feel like because my goals were relatively small I was less inclined to do them. After watching No Impact Man, though the radically altered their lives I somewhat feel like it would have been better to go all in, instead of just picking one small thing about my consumption habits to change.
My original goal was to cut out one-use cups. And for about a month, I was really good about it. Not only did I buy a new cup, but the impending colder weather made me more inclined to drink tea, which i'm less likely to go out and buy a cup of anyway. By about week five, I lost my reusable coffee cup, and I became more lenient. Like, a lot more lenient. So lenient in fact that I've kept all of the iced coffee cups (one-use) that I bought in my room just to show myself how much I was failing. 6 cups. Horrible.
Anyway, if I compare my habits of being wasteful at school compared to being at home, being at school far outweighs being at home. At home, I rarely buy drinks/snacks with a lot of trash etc.. Because telluride is expensive and usually I don't want to spend the money. If I do go out, I never go to to-go places, but instead go to restaurants where personal waste from a meal is diminished. Ideally, I would like to return to the patterns I had at home, it just makes it easy when you use "fake money" and don't ever feel the impacts (monetary) of what you're buying and the trash its creating.
Overall, I enjoyed the lived ethics project just because it made me think about the choices I make on a day to day basis, and at least notice my unhealthy habits of consumption and wastefulness.
I've noticed the opposite in my experience of wastefulness at home compared to school. I have a much lower waste at school because I just don't buy as much stuff as I did at home, which might be why I have so many tiger bucks left... I also compost and recycle MUCH more here than I did at home. Your blog inspires me to consider my waste at home in order to align my views on overconsumption with my actions. I plan on trying to reduce my waste by buying less in general, avoiding single packaged items, and remembering to bring my reusable bag to the grocery store or farmers market. I think it was a great idea to save the one-use cups when you started slacking. In situations like this it is always important to keep your initial goal in mind.
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