What's Necessary?

You know how you have a ton of clothes and other random stuff that are completely unnecessary? Things that you buy that are clearly just frivolous spendings and not needed to live? We all have them, so our class tried a small experiment and we each wrote up a list of only a 100 things (or less!) that are truly necessary to live. Items like a toothbrush, a few shirts and other articles of clothing, a cellphone, laptop, some books,  we continued to make a list until we thought we had everything that is important. When I finished the list I ended up with about 83 items. I was pretty impressed with myself until my teacher assigned us to go home that night and count all the items in my room.

The number of clothes, electronics, hygiene items, and other knickknacks completely blew me away as I actually took stock of everything I possessed. The number of clothes alone embarrassed me. I only use a portion of them and this was a perfect opportunity to donate the rest to charity. When I counted and estimated every single item in my room, it exceeded everything that I expected. With over 400 possessions, I can say that I am absolutely mortified with myself. I would never have believed that i alone could have so many things and this is just the things in my room. I have books scattered all over the house and the rest of my family has an embarrassing amount of things too. 

Our next project was the "Mapping the Impact" assignment, which had us map the journey of one product. Our group chose a simple ballpoint pencil and discovered that it came from over 5 countries. Its ink came from India, the tungsten balls come from China and India, the crude oil for the plastic came from Saudi Arabia, and the copper and zinc for the brass is mined from Chile and Australia. Finally, it's all assembled in China and shipped to the United States. It was astonishing to see that a such a common item had to go through such an enormous process and leave such a carbon footprint. It's unlikely that we actually think of how things are processed, but after this project I know I'll always be curious to know how my possessions are processed. 

The next step was judging our own foot prints and how many earths it would take to live the way I do. Horrifyingly, "if everyone on the planet lived my lifestyle, we would need 5.3 earths!" I never would have expected that but the number was so obscene that I feel like i really have to change many things about  my self. It's going to be difficult to do that while living with a family but I definitely want to change a lot of things around my house.