Maddy Reeb

This week I ordered clothes online and chose the longest shipping time instead of the normal shipping time. 

This week I went to the grocery store to pick up some things. Normally I take a backpack and fill that and put the rest into paper bags. This time I brought reusable bags and filled those instead! I almost forgot them but turned around and grabbed them.  It was nice getting home, unloading groceries and just putting those bags back instead of having a bunch of paper bags.  It felt good to not have that waste!

The other night I wanted to make something for dinner, but I realized that I had leftovers from the night before so I chose to have those instead and not waste that food. 

This week after our discussions about our eco villages I talked to my roommates about some of the unique ideas that people came up with in class. We also talked about the importance of community, and the changes we have experienced during the pandemic.  It was nice talking about this because sustainability is not a subject we talk about often. 

This past weekend I went to the farmers market on campus.  I decided to buy a dozen eggs from a farm in Willamette Valley that were organic and pasture-raised to eat for breakfast this week. While they were a lot more expensive then the eggs I would normally buy, it felt good to support a local farm and to know that they were pasture-raised.  We also bought apples and pears from a local farm. 

This week for my ecochallenge I calculated my ecological footprint. The calculator says that we would need 4.7 Earths if everyone lived this way.  I was below the US average barely, but other countries had a much lower footprint. These results were shocking to me I didn't realize just how big my impact was and that most people are the same.  I liked looking through the map and comparing countries and looking at the differences between the biocapacity versus ecological footprint of people. It made me feel not very hopeful seeing how many countries were red and were biocapacity debtors. However, it did make me feel hopeful seeing countries like Canada and Australia being green and biocapacity creditors. 

This week I watched a documentary called Seaspiracy which was about the environmental impacts of fishing. The documentary follows Ali Tabrizi on his journey to learn more about how he can help protect the ocean.  His journey starts with looking into plastics role, then whale and dolphin hunting, which leads him to look more into fishing in general and he looks at human rights within this issue.  The documentary opened my eyes to an industry that I knew nothing about.  It was filled with shocking statistics like the fact that microplastics in the ocean outnumber the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy by at least 500 times and there could be empty oceans by 2048 if the way we fish, and other practices continue. I also learned that there are about 2.7 trillion fish killed each year, and that bottom trolling wipes out 3.9 million acres of seafloor deforestation each year. The documentary showed just how crucial the ocean is to keep our planet safe and that ocean life is important, and all animals play a role in protecting that ecosystem. One of the most shocking things I found out was how companies are claiming to be sustainable and fishing safely, but they are not and many of them are working with the fishing industry. For me this highlighted the point that as consumers we need to do a better job at looking into products and what we are consuming.  It also made me feel defeated because as a consumer I want to be able to trust companies and people who say they are working towards sustainability, but this might not always be the case. The documentary also talked about human rights issues within fishing like government observers being murdered and forced labor and slavery. The documentary talked about the most important things to do to fix these problems are no take zones must be established and enforced, governments need to stop subsidies, and to avoid eating marine animals. It is clear that there needs to be a lot more regulations, but it is hard to control. One thing that stuck with me after watching this documentary was one of the interviews he had with an activist where they said ““No one can do everything, but everyone can do something”. This is true for this issue and all sustainability issues in general. 

Watching The Story of Bottled Water was interesting to me to see how bottled water companies get people to buy their products by creating manufactured demand. One of their main tactics is to scare people about tap water and mislead them that it is not safe to drink.  I don't normally ever buy bottled water and don't necessarily enjoy the taste of it anyways, but I learned a lot of useful information in this video.  I also learned ways I can help besides just not purchasing bottled water.