Mr. Gleeson? This is your wakeup call.

As a fifth year marketing student at Western Washington University, I figured that I was obligated to take at least one course regarding sustainability and the environment before graduating and parting ways. Western is more or less endearingly known as a school full of, well, "hippies," whatever that means. As such, our Environmental Science department is fairly strong, we enjoy a reputation as a "green" institution, and (as I know from personal experience) students are looked upon with scorn when they are daring enough to throw recyclable materials away in the garbage.

I suppose that makes me sort of slow learner around here. I have never really placed too much consideration into my own personal impact on the ecosystem, let alone what I could do to reduce it. However, after taking the quiz at myfootprint.org, I discovered that I live in a fashion that would require nearly seven planets to sustain life should everyone on Earth adopt my habits. You can see my individual statistics here: http://www.myfootprint.org/en/your_results/?id=641753

I wasn't necessarily shocked by the fact that I wasn't living in a sustainable manner. I was, however, concerned by the degree to which I was failing to do so. "Miserably" doesn't quite capture the scope of it.

Despite 22 years of habit forming, however, I do sincerely want to improve. I can immediately think of several easy ways to limit my impact, including switching to energy-saving light bulbs around the house, turning off my computer when I leave for school and before I go to bed, and taking shorter showers. My big project, however, is going to be improving my recycling habits at home (read: quit being so lazy about making multiple trips to the dumpster and recycling bins) rather than just recycling at school to avoid dirty looks. The hard part is going to be getting my roommate on board with the idea.