Martin Kozakiewicz

November 8, 2000

When I picked the actions I was going to perform for this sustainability project, I did not think of how I was going to measure the effectiveness of these actions. I picked the actions more to save myself time and money, two things that college students just do not seem to have enough of. I also found myself doing other things that are making my lifestyle more sustainable and I found myself doing more to help sustain the environment around me. For example, I recently helped an on campus organization pick up trash on the side of the road. I have also helped influence some of my fraternity brothers perform more sustainable actions by showing them that they could save time and money by doing things differently then they are used to. As for the results of the actions I personally chose to do the results are contained in the following paragraphs. Some of the items worked out well others did not.

I will first tell about the mail preference service. When I found out that one could write to this service and have their name removed from junk mailing lists I was ecstatic. First of all nothing annoys me more than going to my mail box and finding a bunch of mail there that I have absolutely no use for except to line my rabbits cage. Before I wrote this service, I would get between four and eight pieces of junk mail in my box everyday. Now about the only "junk" mail I get is from the campus or a flyer from the local grocery stores telling me what is on sale. I really don’t mind getting these items because sometimes they can be useful by telling me of events around campus, and my rabbit loves to make beds out of those grocery store flyers.

Another action I did for this sustainability project was to use less laundry detergent when I washed my clothes. Throughout a semester, I usually buy three or four containers of laundry detergent. This semester though I have only purchased two containers and the second one is still half full. Since these bottles of detergent average about six dollars I figure I have saved about twelve dollars by doing this. It has also cut down the amount of phosphorescent chemicals that I have personally released into the environment.

For this project I also said I would clean the coils of my condenser on my refrigerator. It is hard to put a quantitative measurement on anything saved from this. Although when I did it the refrigerator froze everything in the top two shelves in the normal part at the same level of cooling that it was originally set at. So this allows my refrigerator to work more efficiently.

Recycling my glass and aluminum was the next item I planned to do. When writing my original paper I planned on getting recycling bins put on my hall for everyone to use. When I asked about it I was giving an excuse that putting more bins on the hall would prove to be a hazard for the fire escape routs on our hall, but there were already recycle bins located on the floor above us. I took advantage of the bins already located in the building and even got some of my brothers to do the same. I personally would fill a twelve-gallon trash bag with aluminum cans in about two weeks, and the others on my hall would do about the same. I told them that if they would fill the bags and leave them outside their doors then I would carry them to the bins myself. By the end of last month they were taking the bags up for themselves and I think everyone had a feeling of accomplishment from their actions.

The last thing I planned on doing was turning off the water when I brushed my teeth. When I normally brushed them I would leave the water on full blast while I brushed, and I tried just turning off the water but I found that for some reason it bothered me to do so. To remedy this problem I stared opening the faucet a little less each time I brushed and now I am almost to the point of it not being on at all. I really could not tell how much water this saves because I do not pay my water bill, but I am sure it saves a sufficient amount.

Through this month, I have also done things I did not plan to do originally. I eat a lot less meat now. There are two reasons for this. The first is I have found that a big salad with some cheese on it will satisfy me hunger just as well as a hamburger will and secondly fruits and vegetables are a lot cheaper. I also volunteered a couple of afternoons for trash pick up alongside highways.

This project has shown me that it really is not hard to lead a more sustainable life. Most of the things are relatively simple and they can also save money and time, and as I said before college students do not have much of either.