Earth Camp Commitment

My Earth Camp Commitment is to lower the overall waste I produce.  There are many ways to do this, such as not eating out at fast-food places, conserving water, recycling more, composting, and many others. But the one thing that I will be focusing on the most is using products that did not take a lot of waste to be made, packaged, and transported.  

On the first day of camp, we watched a video about a man who called himself “No Impact Man”.  This quote from his blog explains his project quite well: “For one year, my wife, my 2-year-old daughter, my dog and I, while living in the middle of New York City, are attempting to live without making any net impact on the environment. In other words, no trash, no carbon emissions, no toxins in the water, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no plastics, no air conditioning, no TV, no toilets…”.  No Impact Man inspired me to look for ways in my own life that I can lower my net impact.  Another thing that was a real eye opener to me was the fact that so much waste is generated for such a small outcome.  For example, it takes 120,000 gallons of water to produce one chicken egg. Not one hundred chicken eggs, not one pound of chicken eggs, not even one carton of chicken eggs. Just one tiny little egg, not even a full breakfast, took 120,000 gallons of water to get to your refrigerator.   

There are many tools I can use to accomplish my goal of reducing my waste.  For starters, there is a very helpful website call GoodGuide.com.  GoodGuide.com uses scientific evaluations to rate products on how healthy a product is, its waste impact on the environment, and it’s impact on society.  I think that I should get my family to start using this website as a regular way to look up the products that we are wearing, buying, eating, and feeding to our pets.  This way, we would be reducing our waste before we even bought the items we use.

I am just one person, so it is hard to believe that I alone can change the world.  A lot of people get stuck in the mindset of “Why should I try, if it won’t make a difference?”.  But I think this story of a monk does a perfect job of explaining how my tiny actions can have a ripple effect and make change on our planet:

“I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world."

By changing my actions to be more eco-friendly, I will be impacting the actions of my family also.  My family and I have many people in our life, and we will be a model to them of what they can do to reduce waste.  If our town is able to band together and become an example to our nation, with a dramatically lower waste output, then maybe we can influence the United States who really does have the capabilities to change the world for the better. I will be a leader for a shared planet and like dominoes my small actions will trigger reactions that can eventually make a whole chain of large events happen.

Because my commitment has a very helpful tool involved, I am going to utilize that tool to the best of my abilities.  The website GoodGuide.com can be used every day by my family and I.  To ensure that this happens I am going to take every computer, desktops and laptops, and make GoodGuide.com the home page of all the internet browsers.  This way, every time anyone in my family uses a computer, we will be reminded of the fact that we should be aware of the products we are using and try not to buy things that use a lot of waste to produce.  If we really persevere in this commitment, we will be able to make less impact on our planet, and in time, we just might change the world.