Blog 1: Mansi Parekh

January 5, 2015

This course, Zero Waste and Ethnic of stuff, has done nothing more than make me think of ways that we can make the place we live in better, and how by doing simple things we can conserve energy. The three readings we read were very interesting and did a very good job in informing the audience about waste and how we can help change the way we waste our stuff. To start off, the text Story about Stuff does a very good job in showing what the issue is about

waste and the problems that are arising over the years. Annie, the author, does a good job in

making the statement of how we waste a lot but it is because we also consume a lot, and since we start the problem its an issue the whole way; since the way we dispose items is wrong and often companies put our garbage in landfills, which is toxic. This leads to other problems and thus the cycle of problems. Also, what is upsetting is the recycling: Annie mentions how recycling helps the problem of waste but is not as efficient. This problem is here in Greencastle! Students at DePauw do not know how to recycle because often times they are confused, I can relate to this because when I am confused I do not whether the stuff is recyclable or not I just choose to put in the trash, but today I found out that “when in doubt just recycle it!” I learned this simply by someone explaining to me and not heavy text books. This leads to the other text, Civic Virtue and Classroom Toil in a Greenhouse World, this article did a very good job in discussing the realistic approach to the many environmental issues we are currently studying. The author explains important statistics about Americans who are well aware of the global issues and want to make a change, and surprisingly that number was very high. However, an interesting fact was that not many Americans had the actual drive to get up and make a change and he labeled this the “curious gap” this is because not many people know what do or exactly where to start. Many few people actually have a plan and that was the family in “No Impact Man” who did a very good job in living a healthy life and conserving energy. It was amazing what the family accomplished and it would be amazing to try something out like that. Although, living without heat in the winter does not sound so fun, but the rest of the healthy options was much more attainable. My next step now is to figure out what I can do so that people and I can do thing to live much easier and save our world. I will keep Annie’s goal mind which I found most important and that was “value time over stuff” I hope this course makes me understand that its not the materialistic things that is most important.