Meet Yue, a fellow sister-in-arms in the sustainable living movement. She blogs at Sensible Sustainability, a writing space she pens with humility, grace and nuance. { My favorites : 100 things you can do. 9 places for high quality environmental news. What I learned from not buying clothes for 3 months. } I have always been interested in views of women who are mothers/warriors/advocates of climate. How do they make sense of their impact on the biosphere, is something I have been curious about. Introducing Yue’s perspective :
“Take the footprint quiz so you know where you stand,” I always tell people who are just beginning their environmental efforts. Little did I think about taking it again and again, as a way to assess progress (or lack thereof). Encouraged by the year end assessment posted here on Of A Certain Vintage, I re-took the quiz recently to assess my 2019 footprint and to establish a baseline for 2020.
Food
I eat mostly plant-based meals when I cook for myself, but my partner and I do cook dinner together on weekends that often includes meat (he works in the restaurant industry, so he rarely eats at home during the week.) I’m lactose-intolerant, but I do eat eggs often. This year we started purchasing regeneratively raised meat and eggs, but the costs are high so we aren’t fully there yet.
“Occasionally” is my best guess, though “Food frequency questionnaires” are problematic (I went to school for nutrition). How frequently and how much one eats something are related concepts, but not the same. For example, earlier in the year I bought 1lb smoked ham hock and made
beans and soups for many, many meals. In this case, the frequency was high, but the actual amount was low. In 2020, quantifying how much animal products I consume would be a good goal. I also hope to continue reducing the amount we consume, and buy offcuts and regionally-sourced products raised using sustainable practices more often.
Local food is abundant in the summer in New England, but the
growing season is short. I rarely purchase offseason local produce that is
grown in energy-intensive greenhouses. We eat “fresh” foods mostly, but even some fresh foods are packaged (tofu). My best guess is 50%.
Housing
We live in a duplex built in the 1920s. The previous owners renovated about 15 years ago, so we have decent windows, insulation, and central air. A friend gifted us a smart thermostat this summer, which has made it easy to adjust temperatures when we are away. With help from MassSave, we’ve made every easy change in the house (efficient power strip, LED blubs,
low-flow faucet, plastic cover over windows during the winter). Our energy supplier regularly sends us assessment reports, which place us in the “above average, but could do better compared to super-efficient neighbors” category. The electricity guzzler in our house is the basement space heater. We spend a lot of time there, and while it’s wonderfully cool in the summer, it gets quite cold in the winter.
This one is interesting. Unless you have solar on your roof, it’s actually impossible to know exactly how much renewable powers YOUR house.
Buying electricity from a grid is like drawing from a lake; there is no way to
know which stream fed the water you drew. Based on our electric supplier’s 2018 report (page 18), I put 25% for 2019. We are actively researching a 100% renewable supplier to switch to this year, and will likely go with this
program. Massachusetts has relatively progressive legislation in this area compared to other US states (and runs an excellent consumer-facing website), but we have to get to 100% renewable faster.
Waste
Aside from the kitty litter that we take out more often, we
throw away on average one bag of trash and one bag of recycling per month. Unavoidable soft plastic is either reused or taken to grocery store recycling bin. Contacts and cosmetic packaging are recycled through TerraCycle. Detergent, soap, etc are refilled at a local shop. All organic trash is composted through Bootstrap Compost. (Fun fact: I heard about Boostrap because co-founder Igor and I were in the same internship in 2011. I signed up as soon as I could, and it’s been such a pleasure watching his business grow and flourish.)
Under “details to improve accuracy”, I found the categories
quite interesting. In the social media zero waste world, there is a huge
emphasis on bulk shopping and replacing single-use items with reusables. Buying less new furniture, gadgets, appliances and physical reading materials are rarely mentioned. The only electronic item we added to the house in 2019 was a burr grinder (yes, I acknowledge my coffee snobbery), purchased secondhand from Ebay. I have a Bon Appetite magazine subscription, but as a beneficiary of our amazing local public library system and the Minuteman network, I haven’t bought new books for years. I’m able to get 80% of my books delivered straight to my kindle; the rest comes from the library, book-sharing hutches, thrift stores, swaps, and the occasional online purchase.
In the material category, clothing is my vice. I don’t buy new from fast fashion retailers anymore, but I made several new purchases this year (a suit, a pair of loafers, shirts, and socks). I enjoy secondshopping in person or on Poshmark, but being a size xxs and size 5 for shoes makes this challenging. My goal is to be 100% secondhand (underwear aside) this year.
Transportation
This one was easy to estimate. I have a driver’s license but
haven’t driven since I got it in 2012, so I don’t exactly trust myself driving
in a city with a very aggressive car culture. I commute on bike (6 miles each way), and use public transit when it’s rainy, snowy, or icy. I put in some car-pooled mileage for when my partner and I drive to the grocery store or his family for the holidays in a nearby state. I use ride-hailing apps if I’m running late, or when my partner doesn’t drive (e.g., if we have drinks at a friend’s house).
Here comes my GHG budget breaker: flying. Last year I
visited family in China (28 hours of flying), took a work trip to DC (3 hours),
and went to a wedding in Chicago (6 hours). Offsets were purchased, but so? Carbon emitted was carbon emitted. Buying offsets is like saying “I won’t change my flying habits, but here’s some money so someone less privileged can.” I could adapt work travels, but I’d be lying if I said I’d stop flying to see family. There were 4 years where I didn’t leave the US (for visa reasons, not environmental reasons), and that was really, really hard.
Tally
Ouch. Seeing the number induces both guilt and motivation.
If I had not gotten on a plane in 2019, my footprint would drop immediately to 1.2 Earths. Nothing else I do matters as much. But since I can’t completely
give up flying, food, clothing and renewable energy will be what I focus on next. Outside of individual efforts, I also hope to expand more community-based actions, which I wrote about here.
Here’s to 2020. To learning more, engaging more, and finding the strength to do more.
Yue, thank you for sharing with us. I feel like I know you better now that I got a tour of your every day life and the efforts you make. I am glad you talk about systemic change/policy and go the mile beyond individual actions. We should get a “Climate Beer” sometime. Hello there ! If you are reading and want to share how you make sense of your ecological footprint, do write to me at neela.ofacertainvintage@gmail.com.