Of the articles that we read this week, “Lessons of Easter Island” was the most interesting. It described the history of Easter Island and it’s eventual demise because of how the people of the island used their resources. Though on a much smaller scale, this is just and insight to the way our society is living now. Many of the ways we are not very sustainable are in our free time. The people of Easter Island were living off of sweet potatoes and chickens only, so they had plenty of extra time for other things. To fill that time they built ahu, which used many resources, primarily trees to transport these large monuments. Present day there are many selfish practices that make things easier on society because of the free time that we have.

We discuss all the time in class how within our fields and in the production cycle we can change our practices to become more sustainable, but I think we need to look more into the social times in our lives. It is not just the duty of the producers, but also the consumer must take responsibility for excessive waste and neglect.

“It starts with you” is a common thing that we say during discussions of sustainability and I think this is reflected highly in what we choose to do in our free time and how we use it.