As I continue in my sustainability journey I have relearned what it means to be mindful and how it relates to the sustainability. Mindfulness is awareness of what is around you and how you relate and coexist with them. When you are mindful and pay attention to the world around you can truly see how you effect it and how it effects you. When I tested my carbon footprint I was truly shocked. I always try to be conscious of it, but I guess I never realized how much actually goes into the foot print. I always try to use reusable water bottles, recycle when I can, and pick up trash as I go. I didn’t realize how much other stuff I needed to be doing. Like energy your house and car use and gas! I didn’t really think about how gas and car emissions contribute!!

All of this is kind of like what Marc Cohen spoke about in his Ted Talk. Are we doing enough? How much more can we do? It was really another wake up call on how little I actually am doing. On the flip side of that does every little thing not count? We should do everything we can even if all we can do is use reusable water bottles and recycle. Something I discussed in activity 2 was how it is virtually impossible to use all of the unused raw materials. However, you’d think people would reuse what they could. However, something I’ve learned is that people still don’t do even the minimum

Some people expect us to do 100% to the wall sustainability, and get upset at those who do as much as they can who only can do so much, rather than encourage the people who are not doing anything. I have caught flack for the things I am not doing, rather than what I have been. I used to drive a jeep, which obviously isn’t the best, but is the only car I had. I also used to have a sticker on their that said “love your mother” with a globe on it. I used to get crap for driving a bad car with a “hippie sticker”. However I did everything in my power outside of what I drove to make up for it. But all of those things were over looked because of the one bad thing. I was mindful of the bad I was doing and tried to make up for it by doing the good I could. I think that is what is important, not being 100% perfect (lord knows this class taught us that there isn’t really a perfect solution) but rather being as perfect as you can. Even if that means just recycling when you can. Mindfulness means sustainability… or at least as close as we can.