re-calculated ecological footprint

Above is a picture of my original ecological footprint that I calculated 10 weeks ago when I first started this blog. The biggest area of the ecological footprint, besides services, was food. My goals centered around bringing my food section down this quarter. I chose to eat less meat by doing meatless Mondays, get most of my produce at the Bellingham Farmers Market, compost all of my food waste, and support local businesses.

Below is a picture showing my revised ecological footprint after 10 weeks of lifestyle changes. By doing these small things I was able to decrease my planets from 4.1 Earths to 3.6 Earths! Its easy to tell from the pie chart that most of that reduction came from reducing my food footprint, which is great since that was my focus.

This was not an easy process. Composting proved to be pretty disgusting since I didn't have composting bags when I first started. The process has improved considerably since I got bags and have been working on a better nitrogen ratio. I can't imagine not composting now that I've started. I also started saving my vegetable scraps in the freezer and I'm going to make broth once I get enough. Food waste has just taken on a different meaning since I started composting it.

Meatless Mondays went really well and often bleed into the rest of the week. I found that I was eating better foods and my meals were much more creative! I definitely wont be planning my meals around meat anymore. I'm no vegetarian, I'm just feeling "veggie positive". 

Shopping at the farmers market helped me to achieve meatless Mondays because I always had fresh, tasty veggies. It's really expensive though and I found myself having to steadily cut back because of the price of local produce. I don't think I'll be able to continue that particular goal, my wallet can't take much more. I love going to the market every Saturday, I'm just not sure I can continue buying most of my produce there, not on a college student budget.

Supporting local businesses proved very easy to do, especially since I live in Bellingham. I ate out at local restaurants rather than international chains and I've loved it! The food was better and I was trying to go to businesses that buy local ingredients like Woods Coffee and Aslan Brewing. I'm for sure going to keep this up. It was probably my easiest goal to follow through with and the most enjoyable to do.