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. 

The Green Team and Collaborative Consumption

I mentioned earlier that that we moved into an environmental topic with the introduction of the concept of collaborative consumption. We decided to bring it into our school and hopefully, change some things and make the school more environmentally conscious. However, that wasn't going to happen unless we changed ourselves first. Once we embarked on this project, the first thing I did was buy myself my own BPA free water bottle. Like many people, I'm the kind of person that grabs a plastic water bottle every day before leaving the house. But these bottles are so unnecessary and even unhealthy! 

Around the house, I've become more conscious of all the waste leaving the house. At times, there have been instances when I throw everything in the trash just out of pure laziness. Now, I try to force everyone in my family to realize what they're doing. My attitude towards recycling has changed because I was always just thinking of changing myself before. Now, I'm taking steps to actually do things. 

In class, I've learned so much with all the TED Talks and I've been inspired by the things that other people do. The process we're going through to change our school is progressing a little at a time. The Collaborative Consumption team and the Green Team are working really well to implement these changes and I can't wait to see the results. However, its still in progress and I don't feel like I've accomplished anything yet. 

I've been a part of the Collaborative Consumption team and I've been more focused on forming letters to send to administrators and the principal. We don't have the authority to do anything yet without the permission of the administrators and its important to get them to take us seriously with the ideas that we have. That's why a couple of students from our class, including me, are interested in the board meeting. We want to talk to the adults and get them to understand us. 

I feel like the experiences we get now are the kinds of things that would last us a lifetime. I see myself using these skills later and passing them down. The videos and discussions we have in class are amazing. The video we watched in class on Tiny Homes completely blew my mind and this something that I want to definitely try in the near future!