Jacob Wilson

My apartment in Westwood is really old with poor insulation; that coupled with it being shaded from the sun most of the day means it gets really cold during the winter, especially in the mornings and at night. In general I will turn on our central heater in the mornings and at night in an attempt to keep from being cold (I absolutely hate being cold). After using the heater liberally all through January we got our gas bill and I knew something had to change. The massive bill is what initially made me look for other solutions to my apartment's climate issue, but after starting this class I looked into the ecological impact of using a heater. According to the EPA, the burning of coal, natural gas, and oil for electricity and heat is the largest single source of global greenhouse gas emissions, about 25 percent of emissions in 2010. I l got a small heater but it used a lot of electricity and didn’t really heat up the room at night the way I wanted. I came upon a heated blanket. This made me more than warm enough at night and used way less energy than the personal heater. I felt like a slice of bread in the toaster every time I got into bed. It is seriously amazing and is much better than using the central heater. Why would I need to heat up the entire house (kitchen, bathroom, ect.) when the only place I was going to be was in bed?

    For the mornings when It was cold I found that I couldn’t always take my blanket with me around the house so I found another solution. I would go into our backyard and just lay in the sun like a lizard and warm up. It might sound goofy at first, but after a week or so of doing it two of my other roommates would do it with me. There was something about the sun warming you up in the morning that makes you feel really good. Obviously I couldn’t do this everyday (maybe it was overcast or I was in a rush) and I would have to turn on the central heater. Nevertheless, there was a sharp contrast in how much gas I have used this winter compared to last and I plan on using my heated blanket until it dies on me!

    

    According to the EPA driving accounts for about 29 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the US (www.epa.gov). The typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of CO2 per year, given they drive around 11,000 miles per year. There is no question that people in California love their cars, but they are currently one of the largest contributors to climate change. I think a lot of this stems from the fast paced lifestyle most Californians live in tandem with poor public transportation options (compared to other countries). I always felt like having a car was a necessity for me as a student-athlete; I have to bounce between class and practice and I don’t always feel like I have the time or energy to walk. I wanted to see if there was a way I could make changes in my life that limits how much I drive my car, given the impact it has on the environment. 

    I currently live with three other track athletes and figured there wasn’t any reason we couldn’t carpool to campus on most days. Over the last few weeks we have been going to most practices together, with one person driving the other two on rotation and it has been great! There are so many other benefits to carpooling than just saving the environment, especially for a student in westwood. For one, anyone who has a car here knows how awful parking can be. I regularly spend 5-10 minutes just searching for a parking spot only to get frustrated while I make my third attempt at a parallel park. Another obvious benefit is we all save money on gas. With gas prices at an all time high, even saving a few gallons a week is extremely beneficial. On the days where my practice doesn’t line up with my roommates I have been walking to campus. The walk only takes about 15 minutes and it is actually really nice. I use the time to make calls to my family and friends who I don’t get to see very often or just enjoy myself while I listen to country music. Now I only drive my car probably once a week, opposed to basically every day before I started doing this. I have saved myself so much headache of LA driving and can feel good knowing I am helping the environment. I think that more people could easily arrange carpools with their peers but just don’t because they haven’t thought of it before. It never made sense for each of my roommates to be driving separately to practice but it's just what we had always done and we thought it was easier. I feel that many changes that benefit the environment (such as limiting your driving) come off as a burden. The reality is that many of these changes can make your life better and more stress free.

As an individual and a consumer you have a lot of power over what products you choose to spend your money on. If you want to make an impact on climate change by lowering your carbon footprint, a good way to start would be to be mindful of the items you choose to buy. I eat a lot of food and my diet is relatively high in protein, and because of this I would usually buy anywhere from 5-10lbs of red meat every time I go to the grocery store. What I didn’t know then is just how much emissions are produced in red meat production and that there are much better alternatives. This is a chart I found a few weeks back from a study that compared the greenhouse gas emissions from common protein sources and vegetables:

Obviously Beef is a poor choice of protein if you are concerned about your carbon footprint. So for the last six weeks I have not bought any beef and instead got my protein from: chicken, eggs, peanut butter, milk, tuna, and yogurt. While these are not the most sustainable options, for me it is a big step in the right direction. To my surprise, I feel a lot healthier now than I ever did when I was eating red meat. Red meat is high in cholesterol and fat, and when compared to other meat it is much less healthy. I only intended to cut out beef for maybe a month max, but now I don't think I really ever want to go back to eating it. 

I think that changes to your diet can be difficult especially for college students who tend to eat the same meals over and over again. If you choose to make one change (in my case stop buying beef) at a time it becomes much easier than trying to alter your entire diet. I would love to become the most sustainable eater I can, and I think the best way (especially for college aged individuals) is to make small changes over the course of months or years. 

As an athlete I drink A LOT of water on a daily basis and most of the time I would drink out of plastic water bottles because they seemed cheap and convenient. I would easily go through a pack of 32 plastic bottles in less than a week but I never really considered the consequences of my actions. Just to put how much plastic I was throwing away into perspective I calculated how much plastic was necessary to feed my water bottle addiction. I weighed in an empty bottle at 12 grams (for the brand I buy) multiplied that by about 6 bottles a day and 365 days per year comes out to 26 kilograms (58lbs) of plastic per year. 

This was very surprising to me and led me to do some more research on plastic bottles. I felt that because I made sure to recycle the plastic bottles that my environmental impact would be null, but unfortunately that's not the case. Most plastic bottles are less than 10 percent recycled plastic. This is because the type of plastic used (PET) can be recycled, but it is difficult to be reused on bottles because the plastic needs to be clear and free from imperfections. Most recycled plastic is used for synthetic fibers, which are terrible for the environment to produce and will probably end up in landfills eventually. So the bottles I thought I was recycling actually ended up in landfills anyway. 

After learning about this I decided I would exclusively use a reusable bottle. I chose to get a hydro flask because they are a sustainable company that is partnered with ecological restoration groups. Using it throughout the last couple weeks has actually been a big step up from water bottles. It holds much more water, I can add ice to make it cold, and I don’t have to worry about getting bottles from the store. To anyone who drinks out of plastic bottles I highly recommend getting a reusable bottle. They are healthier (no microplastics) for you and the environment.