Sustainability Blog Post #3

Last week was an important week for sustainability and helping the environment. There was Earth-day and the sustainability fair at our school. Earth-day wasn't very popular or advertised, but the sustainability fair was a huge success. At the fair there were booths that promoted all kinds of suggestions and ideas to make the word more sustainable. It ranged from buying organic food to cut down the costs of importing to reusing your shower water. It also helped support some businesses like one I saw that takes down houses piece by piece and then sells, but ultimately reuses everything in other houses.
In the past week, I have tried talking to my parents about alternative sources for the electricity in our house. I am trying to advertise solar energy because of the effect it will have on our energy intake and electric bill. Over the weekend we also bought compact fluorescent light bulbs and are beginning to install them.
For water conservation, it is hard because I cannot control how long they are in the shower for but I found this video that shows what happens if you are in the shower too long. {http://youtube.com/watch?v=eKYdmZ-FTV8&feature=related} We have also been air-drying all of our clothes instead of using the drying machine. I already thought of this for something my family should do, but an idea for our school to help our energy costs would be to spend a day without using any. This would probably be hard and miserable because of no air conditioning but it would raise awareness throughout the whole school.

Sustainability Blog Post #2

Over the past week, not much of my energy or water consumption has changed. I have tried to turn off lights in rooms that aren't being used but my little brother and sister keep going back into those rooms and turning them on. I will have to do something about that. Also, I realized that the light in my room stays on for quite a long time after dark because of how late I am staying up. A solution for this will be somehow convincing my teachers to give less homework. I have a fan in my room that I don't use very often but I opened my windows to let in a breeze so that if it does get hot I won't be tempted to use the fan. Since I have a lot of chargers, a radio and a lava lamp I took a power strip from my sister's room because she is on a trip. Now when everything is finished charging and I am bored of watching my lava lamp I can just unplug the whole strip.
Luckily, as for water usage, it has rained a couple of times on my hill so we haven't had to use too much water to water our plants and yard. Also, to lessen my water usage from showers I have started to take them in the morning. The reasoning for this is that instead of having no time limit to my showers at night, taking showers in the morning forces me to take a quick one so that I get to school on time. A suggestion I have for Punahou this week is to do something about the locker room showers. There are at least 30 showerheads in the locker room and after sports they are filled with people. If the people in the locker room did something about the time spent in the shower it might help their water use.

Sustainability Post #1

My definition of sustainability is, "The ability of a community or the world to be able to keep running on its own power if all outside sources fail." This means that a society can provide its own food and energy for a substantial amount of time without destroying our planet.
My family is not very great at conserving energy. We regularly have our lights on and they only go off when there are termites or during the night. We remind each other to save electricity but still don't turn out the lights if no one is in a room. Recently, my family has started recycling cans and glass or plastic products. At times it seems like it just isn't worth the labor of sorting them and taking them to the recycling trucks but its not all about the money. For water usage, we try to turn off the tap when brushing our teeth or when it is not being used but we could still lessen our showering time. For traffic I think that my family is doing quite well. We live very close to Punahou so almost everyday we walk down the hill instead of driving. We have been trying to eat healthier and add more vegetables and fruits into our meals but there is always room for more broccolis! My mom also usually buys her fruit from the farmers market in Manoa marketplace and we grow our own bananas, papayas and citrus fruits.
The two areas of improvement picked are energy and water. I picked these because they are the two with the most area for improvement. I also picked these because energy if such an easy thing that you can improve but no one really looks into it. I also chose water because Hawaii is getting desperate to lessen water usage, as it is a pure source that is beginning to diminish. To improve my energy use I will enforce turning off lights in unattended rooms and also unplugging appliances that are not being used. I could also set up a day once a month or once a week to we live in old times with no energy. As for water consumption I will set time limits for showers, dry laundry outside instead of in a dryer and regulate plant-watering times. If everyone in my family agrees with these terms we can start a new household sustainable way of living.