Betsy Surver

My calculated carbon footprint numbers are absolutely massive, and it's because I live in a house with 6 adults under one roof.  If you counted us all as separate households, we'd be doing well, but it's so difficult because we all have adult needs and practices, so comparing with a single family of 6 isn't reasonable.  It is an old house (1960), and the windows are original single pane, painted shut.  Four out of the six of us have cars, which is impressive considering we all have full-time jobs.  One set of people carpool to their workplace every day.  We cook for each other communally, and the lady downstairs takes care of her grandchildren most days and cooks for their parents as well when they come for pickup.  All leftovers get eaten by somebody, and we minimize food waste where possible because we share spices, eggs, condiments, milk, etc. so that nothing really expires on us.  We share one lawnmower which is also used to mow other yards as part of a landscaping company, we have a well for our garden watering, and we have only one set of all household/kitchen goods and furniture (except individual bedroom items).  We already have a high efficiency washer/dryer, and we just replaced all three showerheads with high efficiency showerheads.

A couple things I am excited about doing as the landlord in the near future to reduce our collective carbon footprint are:
- Start a garden to produce fresh fruits and veggies to supplement our groceries
- Replace all windows in the house with energy efficient windows (this is going to be extremely expensive but will happen this summer).  Not only will this help in the summer and winter with insulating the house better, but it will also help in the spring and fall because we will be able to better regulate temperature by turning off the a/c and opening windows at night when it is colder out (right now we can't open our windows, they are all painted shut and the hardware is broken).
- Buy energy on off-peak hours for a/c over the summer (we will all suffer a bit for this but it'll encourage stewardship of the cold air by not going in and out so often).  This will prevent the energy company from having to produce a higher level of power and will do our part to level out usages a bit more.
- Buy a more energy efficient/water efficient dishwasher when the old one poops out.

A couple of things I have personally committed to:
- 2 meatless meals per day
- look into which plastics that I have been throwing in the garbage can be recycled
- learn to mend clothes
- try to keep my activities to at-home activities and limit my trips to the store to happen at the same time to reduce the miles I am driving
- carpool to travel locations when going to the cabin over the summer with family or related adventures
- when my car dies or finishes being the most strategic cost-wise solution, rather than buying another used car, buy an electric vehicle
- hopefully next time I replace my roof, solar panels and batteries are a viable option so that I can charge this future electric vehicle and potentially sell back power during busy times on the grid.

One practice I already have which reduces my carbon footprint is keeping purchases to a minimum.  Almost all of my clothing and furniture is purchased secondhand because I can't justify the cost to the environment of producing something when I can buy something for way cheaper which has a couple of things slightly damaged cosmetically on it.  I am keeping things out of the landfill and then I can actually use the items I buy, because who cares if there's another scratch on this chair that has 50 scratches on it already or who cares if I spill on a shirt that I found from goodwill 4 years ago and have worn fifty times - I can just wash it and if it doesn't come out, convert it to an at-home-only shirt, re-donate it, or turn it into rags if it's in really bad shape.  There are only a couple of things I don't buy from thrift stores or Facebook Marketplace.  These are: underwear and socks (if it's donated, it's not in good shape, and I don't even want to think about who else wore it last - unless it is from a close family member), shoes (except dress shoes) - they lose their insole quality so quick, and I really can't be having health problems with joints from improper footwear, and bedsheets/pillows (unless from a close friend or family member) because I don't want bedbugs.  Another thing I do is to make sure each trip leaving the house is combined with something else.  I get groceries, pharmaceuticals, household items, and do my banking on the way home from work.

One invasive species in Minnesota is the Asian carp.  These carp outcompete the native fish populations and eat up the local food stores in lakes.  Once carp become a problem in a lake, that lake is no longer going to be a good fishing lake because the carp will overrun the entire thing (and carp don't taste nearly as good as, say, walleye).  

Okay so I know this isn't part of the reflection question but who knew that we should be so concerned about feral pigs and swamp rats.  This sounds like the princess bride!

I typically don't shop with the environment in mind.  I am much more conscious of price, nutrition, and flavor.  But looking at those lists, I was very surprised by the spinach and the kale on the bad list and the frozen peas on the good list.  I used to HATE eating peas as a kid, but my mom figured out that I loved them if they were still frozen, so she would take a bowl of frozen peas out of the peas that she was about to cook, and leave it for me to eat as a snack before and during dinner.  My sister and I would fight over eating the frozen peas.  I will definitely buy some next time I am at the store and add this forgotten gem back into my diet.

Meatless meals are not just great for the environment, they are also awesome for your budget.  When I was in high school, I was super hungry after my nordic skiing practice, so I would eat eggs all the time right after school.  We got a rice cooker, and I really enjoyed making an entire basket of rice every single day and eating it all with a little butter and salt.  Then, I started to combine the two.  Now I have the easiest meatless meal ever.  You put on a pot of rice and cook it however you want.  You can also use leftover rice from a different meal for this, which is something I regularly do.  You put some oil in the pan, put in a couple eggs and scramble them in the pan, nothing fancy, don't use a crazy amount of dishes.  Then you put in your rice and chopped up random veggies you have in your fridge.  You can do whatever you want here.  Add in leftover peppers, broccoli, mushrooms, green beans, peas, carrots, onions/green onions/red onions, tomatoes, etc., any kind of seeds you want like peanuts, sunflower seeds, flax seed, sesame seeds, you can put peanut butter in, you can put anything you want.  You can then put in siracha sauce and honey, or random spices like garlic, parsley, ginger, lemon juice, then crack an egg over the top of all of it while it is still cooking so it all sticks and melds together a little more.  Now add in your soy sauce and some more oil.  Congratulations, you've now gotten rid of everything you had in your fridge that you've been avoiding eating, and it's a fresh new meal that you can easily reheat leftovers of for later.  It's like a dollar or less for the meal if you want to do it with hardly any ingredients.  The key tenants are just rice or noodles, eggs, and soy sauce.  You've eliminated food waste, gotten vegetables into your kids, eaten protein, used only one pan (you can even use an old unwashed pan if you don't care about food safety like me), and it's super fast.

I just bought some new shower heads to replace the old, leaky ones in my house for two showers (the old ones were leaking into the downstairs by providing back pressure on the piping).  Learning about water conservation helped me to decide to use more water efficient showerheads when I was replacing!