Reflection: Starting up the project

During this project I have started to read more and listen to podcasts about sustainability and making better, more environmental friendly options. And the thing that strikes me (even though it's not new) is how difficult it is to tell the difference between someone's opinions and facts. And it's also often very difficult to know the validity behind a fact. What is the source? Is the source trustworthy? Are there other sources saying something different?

My intention with the blog has always been to try to stay as objective as possible and show different options and facts. The internet is full of opinions and I don't want this to be simply a blog full of my thoughts on this and that. I want it to be a mixture of my thoughts/feelings as well as facts from trusted sources. That's why I wll try to always clearly mark what's my opinion and what is fact. Blog posts containing facts will be named "Regarding:" and blog posts containing only my own thoughts will be named "Reflection:".

One reflection I have made is that I feel excited that I get to share with you the start of my journey. Many of the people out there sharing information about sustainable living have come a long way and some of the things they talk about feel very far fetched for me (I stumbled on something about having your own chickens for example) and I want to tell you about all the small steps that I take in my everyday life. That way you can use the small tips yourself and hopefully feel that the things I write about are applicable in your life, and that they inspire you. My goal with living a more sustainable life is not to be completely self-reliant and move out into the woods and grow my own veggies and have chickens. My goal is simply to adapt my normal living to try to make less impact on the planet.

Yesterday I started reading up on different impacts that my diet has on the planet. Today as I went grocery shopping I chose organic as often as possible (even though it's sometimes a lot more expensive). As I started reading I realised that there is so much information out there and I really need to be patient and not try to learn/read everything at once. Right now I'm still continuing to read about different food and how to make better options. I'm aiming for writing a blogpost with an overview on the different short tips I find and then later on reading more about the specific areas around food. I have a feeling that palm oil, red meat and GMO will be some of the first topics. Are there any specific things you would like me to read up upon?

Reflection: My ecological footprint

The last post was about the Ecological footprint as a concept. In this one I will describe the results I have received when I have calculated my ecological footprint through tests made on the internet. All I did was simply google "Ecological footprint" and took the tests. Below you can see my results and also some comments regarding the questions in the test and the results. At the end there is also a short description about my input in the tests.

www.greencred.me

About the test

The test is diveded into three parts. The first one about you living conditions, what country, how big is your home, regulation of heat in your house, how much electricity you use etc. The second part is about you consumption, what you buy and what you eat. The last part is about transportation, both your daily commute and long distance travels. However you are supposed to leave the travels you do in your work out of the calculation.
You can also register and compare your result to others.
I am able to fill out information very detailed and choose my country and a city close to me. It doesn't give me any information regarding what impact this has on the result but my guess is that it has. On some questions you could fill out "my country's avarage" as a response and for those I'm assuming that they have a database filled with input.

My result

If everyone lived like me, we would need 2 planets. The diagram shows that the largest impact of my living is my food followed by my mobility.

www.footprintnetwork.org

About the test

From the start I get to choose a country/city as a base. However not all the countries in the world are available, really quite few, and the reason is that the organisation behind doesn't have the data to support calculations made in other countries. I choose Ontario, because it's in the northern hemisphere (as my home Sweden) plus the country is (as Sweden) large compared to it's population.

Throughout the test I have the option to answer more/less detailed. For example how often do I eat meat or fish as one question, or two separate questions. The questions are concerning, food, consumables and travels. The test is somewhat more "fun" since it's got pictures and more interactive regarding the answers etc, instead of answers in plain numbers it makes exampels such as a sofa or a lamp. For some this might be easier to understand, for some just plain annoying. I'm somewhere in between the two.

My result

Based on me living in Ontario If everyone lived like me we would need 2.6 planets. Food, services and mobility takes up equal parts of my footprint based on me living in Ontario. The "Services"-part I am not able to affect with my lifestyle but is based on the country/city I choose. A comment from the organisation is that this could be affected through political engagement etc.  

I re-did the test, making sure to give the same answers but with a different country (Switzerland) instead and got the result 2.3 planets. There were also new questions when I did this and some questions were stated differently, probably based on the data they have collected. Here we can see that the Food-part is really the biggest part of my footprint, probably because the service-part is in factual numbers smaller.

footprint.wwf.org.uk

About the test

This test showed up on the British site of World Wildlife Fund. It's divided into four parts; food, travel, home and stuff. The questions are quite few and easy to answer. The test is based on you living in the UK. In this test I also got to answer questions about how much money I spend on my pet, I find this interesting since many people forget that having a pet can have a large impact on your footprint.

My result

My carbon footprint is 124% of my share. I assume that this would translate into 1,24 planets even though that seems very low compared to my earlier results...

I got the result divided into percentage on the four different areas and according to this one Travel is one of the biggest contributions to my footrpint. However (in my defence?) the flight-history was to be filled out based from Uk, something that might have affected the result.

ecologicalfootprint.com

About the test

The test is very simple and short, all questions on one page. You can choose between living in UK or "Rest of the world" so I can imagine that the test is fairly blunt. However your result is shown on the page while you answer questions so you can see what difference your answers make.

My results

My results here are about the same as for the WWF-test with 1,4 planets. But there is no break down of the result.

wwf.panda.org --> myfootprint.org

About the test

I found some info regarding ecological footprint on WWF's global homepage and it directed me to the page myfootprint.org to calculate my footprint. To do this test I need to subscribe, $1 for a day, $3 for a month or $10 for a full year. I choose to only take the one day option and the payment is made via Paypal so I feel safe not being scammed. 

The test is very detailed with lots of specific questions regarding your food, transport and living. Some of the questions were difficult to answer, especially thos on housing since I live in a rented apartment and am not sure about the detailed specifications of the apartment.

My result

If everybody lived like me we would need 1.60 planets. I got a comparison between my results and my country average, here we can see that I'm lower on all parts apart from the Food footprint.

Conclusions

So what are my conclusions after making several tests? That it's very difficult to get a good understanding of what is "correct". My results are 2,0 planets, 2,6 planets, 2,3 planets, 1,24 planets, 1,40 planets and 1,6 planets. So the deviation between my best and worst result is 1,36 planets, which seem like quite a lot difference. In average my result is 1,86 planets, compared to the global average 1,6 planets (2007).
I think these tests can be an awakening for some just to see what different aspects in ones life is affecting the eearth the most. For me it was a confirmation that I need to do something about my eating habits since they seem to be one of the largest impacts. I also think for me that the tests can help me in seeing the difference on my ecological footprint after this project. So basically that if/when I do the tests again in a year it will be easy for me to see if my life is more sustainable.

Input in the tests

I live in Sweden, in a rental flat together with my fiancee. The house we live in is a low energy building with high isolation, mostly heated up by the people living in it. We don't have a dishwasher but we do have a washer and dryer, however most clothes we hang dry, not tumble. I do enjoy a bit of shopping and I go by bus to work, approximately 10km away from my home. We don't own a car but occasionally we rent one when we go on holidays. I am not a frequent flyer and I try to buy ecological goods when possible. I eat meat & fish in almost all my meals. 

Regarding: Ecological footprint

An ecological footprint is a measurement on how much impact you have on the planet. An accouting system to find out how much land area is needed to provide for you lifestyle, and as a comparison on how many earths would be needed if the whole population lived like you. It gives you a chance to compare how much area is needed for your lifestyle and how much area that is available (biocapacity)

It can be applied not only on you as a person, but also on companies, cities or countries. That means on a global scale we can use it to show how big the human demand is compared to the earth's capacity. The measurement is commonly used around the world as an indicator on sustainability.

The idea of the ecological footrpint first came from William Rees in 1992 and since then it has been refined and improved with standards to ensure that calculations are comparable to each other. It is a means to compare different lifestyles to each other. However it is not perfect and has been criticized throughout the years. One of the largest criticisms is that calculating the footprint of an area or city with a large density in it's population give these areas very "bad" results. Since these areas have very little biocapacity to maintain its large population their scores are bad. Another critique is that the footprint calcualtion does not differ on what type of forest there is, if it's an old tropical forest or a plantation. Therefore the measurement should not be seen as a complete but be combined with other types of demasn, such as biodiversity.

For me however I see that making a calculation of my ecological footprint could be a good measurement to use to see if the changes I make really make a difference. I will therefore calculate my footprint, and of course show it to you on the blog, and comment on the result.

Reflection: Keeping the project sustainable

Sitting on a train, travelling between families. Between christmas and new years festivities. The holidays with a lot of time of work gives you a lot of time to reflect. I have started to think more about my project, especially with the hole consumer-shop-aholic-thing that Christmas has become. This year I didn't give my friends and family any gifts, but gave the money to charity instead. When someone has asked me this year what I want for christmas I have responded, nothing. I want nothing, please give to someone who needs it more than I do.

I felt frustrated and saddened on Christmas. So many things that need to be done and so many people to help for this world to become a better place. How can we manage this? My patience is nonexistent, I want everything to happen at once! But, as the days went on, I played with my nephew and niece, ate a lot of food and spent time with my loved ones I realised that I cannot do everything at once. But I can do a little. This project to start living more sustainable is meant to start on the 1st of January, but I cannot live 100% sustainable by then, and expect myself to know everything. My knowledge will have to come over time, and my lifestyle will change gradually. I think that will be the most sustainable way to do it, otherwise I face the risk of trying to change too much at once, feeling that it all gets overwhelming and the risk of going back to my old habits would be imminent. So small steps forward will have to be the way to go, investigating and learning as we go along.

One of the first things I need to do is to make an analysis of where I am today. How sustainable is my lifestyle today?

Reflection: My resolution

Why have I decided to do this? Why make a resolution to live a more sustainable life? Where did the idea come from?

It really started last spring when I started to investigate what my life-goals are. I defined three projects that together sum up my life. The first was about safety and having a steady ground to stand on. The second was about always growing and continuous learning. The third was about making the world a better place.

Since then this third project has been gnawing on my mind. How can I do this? Where do I start? The culmination came when christmas shopping was starting. I got an e-mail from a NGO that I sometimes give money to, saying that this year I should give people what they were wishing for. I should give them Nothing. The NGO then had gift certificates saying "This year you get Nothing". I decided that instead of giving my near and dear gifts that they don't need, I would give them Nothing. Because of this I started to reflect on all the different things we buy that we don't really need. I went in to a store that sell all those kinds of cheap tingle tangle and it really sickened me, how much of the things people buy in here will just end up in the trash?

A decision: I need to consume less!

So, if I consume less, the world will be a better place? But how do I measure this? Am I willing to sacrifice some of the comforts in life? And what is it that I really want to achieve by my smaller consumption?

I want to use less resources and make sure that the resources I use are not damaging the environment. But I also wanted to support developing countries and fair trade. And then suddenly the word sustainable dawned on me. This was the word that I would use and go by. My goal: sustainable lifestyle. To keep it sustainable for me, the environment and the people around me.

The reason I decided to start writing about this project was that I realize that it will take a lot of effort and knowledge to get through this. And I want to share that. I want others to be inspired by and learn about the things that I find. Sharing is caring you know! I will try to keep my consumption at minimum but the things I do consume, I will do as sustainable as possible. Telling you all about the analysis I have to make to find the best choice of different products and how one can think when choosing what to consume. And also problematize about how to choose the lesser evil, if necessary.

Come along and join me. I have created this resolution for myself, what will be your?

Regarding: Sustainable

Definition of sustainable
a :  of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged <sustainable techniques> <sustainable agriculture>
b :  of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods <sustainable society>

Source: Merriam-Webster online dictionary

So basically using the resources we have in the world today so that they can continue to be viable and continously used. The first time I really came in contact with the word was during my education when we started to talk about Sustainable development. The expression was firstly use in the Brundlandt report in 1987. They defined it as development that meets the needs of today without jeopardizing the fulfilment of needs for generations to come. The things we do today should not affect the possibility for our children to live the lifestyle that they want to live. Since the first use in 1987 the expression has now been aimed towards the goal of socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable economic growth. Sustainable development includes both economic development, social development and environmental protection. It's a systematic approach to look at growth and development as well as manage the resources in the world (both social, natural and produced) for us and for generations to come.

I want to apply sustainability on all parts of my life, to have it as kind of a catchword. I want to use resources in a more efficient and sustainable way but I also want to apply it on a broader perspective on my personal health. I need to make sure I don't use up all of my own energy but use it responsibly so that it will continue to be viable. Lastly I also want to strive for mor equality in the world, not only between genders but between the "rich" and the "poor" and different religions. I want a more equitable world. Justice for all. And world peace.

Regarding: solution.

We need to talk about a solution. About how we should make the world a better place to live. About how we should ensurethat we don't risk the health of the earth. About how to end in-equalities in the world.

Resolution vs solution

Resolution, noun - a resolve; a decision or determination: to make a firm resolution to do something.

Solution, noun - the act of solving a problem, question, etc.

Sustainable development

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:

· The concept of 'needs', in particular, the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and

· The idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs."

— World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (1987)

Sustainable resolution

This project started as an idea for a new years resolution - to live and act more sustainable in my day-to-day life. How can I, in my small world, make changes and live so that my ecological footprint is as small as possible? And how can I affect others to try and do the same? How can I be a larger person and aim for the best solution, not only for me but for all the world? Is there a world where we all live in peace and understanding, guaranteeing the same for generations to come? These are some of the questions that I will investigate. Please follow me on my journey and be inspired to make changes in your life as well. The blog will be filled with personal reflections as well as facts about sustainability, environmental, equality as well as other things.

This is my resolution, to try and find a solution on how to live more sustainable.