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Hungry Planet

My weekly food purchase is usually spread out to two weeks time. My wife, Lauren, and I tend to procrastinate on getting groceries for ourselves until we absolutely need to get them. Lauren tends to eat out at work, while I tend to eat the leftovers or a sandwich when I'm at work. Looking at these photos of these families from around the world, I am in awe of how much food they have at home. To be honest, I understand the savings that be made with buying groceries instead of eating out. Usually, we spend around $100-$150 on groceries during the two week time period we buy them. These photos showed that when there is an inequity of food security in an area, it is drastic. I believe the most major inequity was showed with the Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp with their 3 large sacks of grain, 11small plastic bags of other foods, and some jugs of water. Their total cost in USD was $1.23. That is a very, very low price compared to what it costs to have all of that in the US(of cour...
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Water Footprint

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Out of three categories(indoor, outdoor, and virtual), my largest was virtual. Followed by outdoor and then indoor being barely anything. Below I have the results of my water use, based on www.watercalculator.org. A day, for just my indoor water use and based on the results from my water footprint, I spend .39 cents. All together, it would cost me $11.30 a day for my indoor, outdoor, and virtual water use. Amounting to about $339 a month! Thankfully, I only pay an average of $30 a month for my water bill; which is about $1 a day. I would love to be spending only .39 cents a day for water, however I will stick my current water bill over $11.30 a day. Is this financially worth it for me? No. The reason I say that is because I think that the survey was somewhat flawed when it asked if you ate meat or not(with it being my largest amount of calculated water use). My main meat is chicken, and a large portion of my diet consists of chicken and rice. I would assume that chickens ...
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Carbon Footprint

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The calculator itself was very thorough in what it asked for to determine the carbon footprint of my household. It was a little difficult when asked if we could change certain utilities within our home since we live in an apartment and are restricted from changing most things, but in my mind I said yes. Was it accurate? I had to guestimate the transportation portion of the calculator to the best of my abilities, but I believe it is pretty accurate. If anything, the miles traveled per week is wrong. At work we do not recycle anything other than cardboard(which I am a little surprised with how much we use paper) and that is something that was not on this calculator. The fact that we do not recycle our paper at work nor turn off all of the lights(which we have no control over) would have to be my two things that would make my footprint higher. Two thing that might make my carbon footprint lower would have to be my lightbulbs used within the household and our recent purchase in new bl...
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Indoor Air

I was very pleased with the results of the Indoor Air Quality Assessment Checklist. Lauren and I do not have any health symptoms both described within the first part of the assessment, nor anything that we could think of that was not listed. The only areas that pointed some concern was section B: Tight Home Syndrome. We live in a small apartment and I have noticed that there is a lot of condensation that builds up around the windows that stimulates mold growth. I am sure it is nothing major, and thankfully we will be moving soon to a newer apartment with updated appliances and ventilation systems, however if we were to stay here longer I imagine I would pose a problem to our health. Also, there has always been a leak in the pipes of the sink ever since we got here. This is a problem that I am sure the owners of the apartment complex are aware of as there is a bucket that sits below the pipe with the leak, but I have to regularly keep an eye on how much it fills and dump/clean it out to...
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Home Energy Audit

I am married and my wife and I currently live an apartment. The energy consumed by most of our items we can change to more energy-efficient product. What I found out about the energy consumption of everything in our home is that our appliances cost the most. This was a surprise to me as I never would have guessed that most of what I pay for is in the kitchen, but it makes sense as the fridge is running 24/7. Also, we are fortunate to not have a washer and dryer which I think would increase our energy bill quite a bit. My total was about $113 a month, which is not correct. I may have overestimated on the amount of hours that we use some devices and maybe I fibbed on some of the data collected, but I felt that I had fairly accurate data representation. The electric bill averages about $75 during the summer and $90 during the winter. Looking at my data on phantom loads, I was able to find just about everything by looking at if they still consume power while they are "off"...
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Ecological Footprint

Your ecological footprint is unique for each person. It is something that is determined based on every decision we make that would have some sort of effect on the environment; from buying that organic fruit to eating at Burger King. Everyone makes their "footprint" on this Earth, so why not make it as small as possible? Calculation wise, it is important to understand what category of our livelihood makes the most impact. For myself, food and mobility are the top two with food almost doubling mobility. I would need 2.9 Earths and my Earth overshoot day would be May 6th. The calculator itself was very thorough in what it asked for to determine my ecological footprint. Was it accurate? I had to guestimate the transportation portion of the calculator to the best of my abilities, but I believe it is pretty accurate. Just as a thought about overall footprint including at work, we do not recycle anything other than cardboard(which I am a little surprised with how much we use p...
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