Living in E6 is myself, Christa Lorusso, Hayley Kelly, and Allie Masson. We all lived in the same hall together last year and were all interested in practicing sustainability. Since we got here, we have been making an effort to live a sustainable lifestyle. We started off buying eco-friendly products over the summer. We have eco pots and pans, green produce bags to make food last longer, reusable shopping bags, and more.
I bring tomatoes, green beans, pumpkins, and other things that my parents grew in our garden back home. Buying or using locally grown products is a lot better than buying produce from a grocery store. This is because those products usually come from around 3,000 miles away. All that travel burns a lot of fossil fuels! Another thing we are doing in our apartment would be that Allie has a drying rack in her room for clothes, so instead of wasting electricity in the laundry room she can conveniently air dry her clothes. We mostly keep lights shut off in our apartment even we are home. For example, my desk has been moved into the closet and since there is a light switch in there, the light in the room can be shut off. We also have power strips that we can turn off when appliances are not in use. If there is not a power strip, we try to unplug as many appliances as we can when they are not in use.
Of course we recycle as well. Michelle Comeau gave us and all the other sustainable living apartments recycling bins for plastic, cans, and paper. We have found ourselves recycling a LOT of paper. Especially when we buy products at the grocery store and they come in a cardboard box. When we use paper plates we recycle those as well. Even though these materials are generally labeled as cardboard, they are recycled with the paper because it is not corrugated cardboard. We also keep track of how many bags of trash we throw away and how many bins we recycle. We hope to cut down on these amounts over time as we become more accustomed to living sustainably.
Over the school year we hope to find new ways to live sustainably. We will be trying out new products and reviewing them. We are hoping to measure the kilowatts we use in each appliance and try to cut use of things that use to much electricity. We will also be trying to cut down on overall waste.
Rachel Moon
Pierce Arrow Blogger Contributor
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