missed last two seminar meetings

Hey guys, I was wondering whether anyone could help me out and tell me what I have missed the last two seminar meetings, the one on the 18th and today, the 20th. Sorry about missing class, but I have just fallen sick and have been getting high fevers the past couple days so I was a bit under the weather. If anyone could tell me anything important I missed, such as any information regarding the project dates and presentation, and anything else would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks again

Aman

Project Progress Report

For the last week, I have been researching the sustainable activity of the De Neve Dining Hall by seeing whether the dining hall has recycling and composting techniques in the kitchen and throughout the dining hall for all the extra food waste and other food material. First and foremost, the dining hall does have various large recycling bins and large recycling chutes for excess waste of food that is either somehow reused, from what I was told from one of the people working in the kitchen, and also how some of the waste is composted. However, I still feel that there can be more done to provide for a better sustainable future within the dining hall by at least promoting more recycling and having more recycling bins and trash bins necessary to separate specific items and form an inventory for all such items so as to provide a more efficient and sustainable environment. Next, I observed how much food was wasted and even partially eaten in the dining by just visually seeing all the trays that were placed in the kitchen when people were done eating. The point was to see whether, given the current meal plan system at UCLA, that such a system only promotes wasting of food by not charging more for specific items and instead, only charging one fair amount, or swipe, for all the food. I hope that in this observation, I can compare to other systems at other schools, such as Berkeley and Irvine, and see whether their food systems have better ways of having less waste of food.

I have gotten into contact with the De Neve Dining hall food manager and have set up a meeting for an interview to discuss the various sustainability efforts at the dining and the specific ways in which they promote sustainability. Moreover, I will be asking questions regarding the ways in which the kitchen collect excess waste for other purposes besides recycling, and whether they have a way of reusing food and other waste for other purposes. In addition, I am still working on obtaining a meeting with Rob Gilbert, the sustainability coordinator for housing, and discuss all these issues, as well as taking a tour of the dining hall kitchen and facilities to better understand how the dining hall system at de neve works and maintains, if they do, a sustainable atmosphere.

Response to Radical Simplicity: Too Radical For A Beaver

Jim Merkel's Radical Simplicity provides an almost engineering approach to the concept of sustainability and the different ways in which of providing a healthy future for the world. Given that he was a military engineer and lived off of multi-million dollar checks before his radical change, one might have thought that the person that Merkel turned into after would never come into existence. One might have thought, in addition, that a person who would give up such luxuries and comforts of such a rich and wealthy life would either be too crazy, or maybe experiencing some god like messiah coming to their doorstep and preaching the harms of and greed. Maybe the second part may or may not have happened, but given Merkel's lasting impression on the reader in his book, it is safe to say that he may be calling for changes outright revolutionary, or too radical even for a small beaver to handle.

Indeed, Merkel's book Radical Simplicity has left an enduring effect for the rest of my life. As I reflect on my life before reading the book and after, and seeing myself ten years from now, I see that how I have been before reading Merkel's book has been quite un-sustainable and damaging towards the beautiful world and the local environment. After reading Merkel's book, I have become more aware at how much waste I produce that degrade the environment, as well as how much my own cultural and materialistic values play a part in my wasteful behavior.

First, lets see what my lifestyle will be like in 10 years after reading Radical Simplicity. After learning of all the sustainable ways of living in areas that don't have the luxury to live off of even the basic resources people in America take for granted, such as basic running water, oil guzzling cars, or even plastic items, I have finally realized that my wasteful actions cannot continue. In addition, after learning that my primary areas of waste are in paper and plastic items, as well as in transportation type services that emit large quantities of carbon dioxide and other harmful emissions, I plan that in ten years I reduce the amount of paper I waste by using less paper and other paper items, as well using more sustainable, aluminum type items for drinking water or other basic needs instead of constantly relying on plastic bottles for water, which eventually get thrown away in large amounts. Moreover, concerning my other materialistic value of emitting a lot of greenhouse gas emissions by constant use of transportation, such as buses, trains, cars, and other modes of transportation, I am hoping that in ten years or even less I become more of an efficient driver by only driving when I need, or also by using more carpooling services so as to limit the amount of driving, and greenhouse emissions, that negatively affect the environment. In addition, I am hoping that in ten years I can drive more of an efficient, energy saving vehicle that has much of a less impact on the environment than do oil consuming vehicles. All in all, after reading Merkel's book, I am hoping that I become more a sustainable and environmentally friendly person by consuming less and wasting less, thereby reducing my impact on the environment.

Now, lets see what my lifestyle will be like 10 years from now if I had not read the book. Seeing this in perspective and realistically, I would be choking the very breath of the world. I would be practicing such wasteful behaviors, such as continuing to waste large quantities of paper, plastic, and other items that may have a dangerous impact on the earth. Furthermore, I would be consuming so many resources in many different categories, such as paper, food, stocks, transportation, etc. that I would need more than 6 earths to adequately provide for my un-sustainable living habits. I would still be practicing un-sustainable actions and hurting the environment by continuing to waste large amounts of paper, large amounts of plastic items, as well as not caring how much greenhouse gas emissions are emitted and driving more gas guzzling vehicles that will continue to hurt the environment and the people around me. Furthermore, ten years from now, I might use up more acres of land and more resources than the environment around me can handle, which will also cause a negative effect on the environment.

Now, after looking forward ten years in my life and seeing whether Radical Simplicity has an immediate affect on my life, it is safe to say that indeed such a book has left a lasting impression on my wasteful patterns and has already changed me as a person to not waste and to consider more how my actions are negatively or positively affecting the environment. However, the ways in which Merkel lives and seems to promote his ideals of the perfect, eco-friendly environment appears too radical for many readers, and me. His idea that everyone should have a salary of no more than $5,000 seems a bit too extreme. First, a lot of people would find such a limit extremely harsh for any basic luxury, and even might disagree entirely that such a salary limit will help sustain environmental safety. I mean, if such a limit was established, people all over America will complain that the basic luxuries cannot be bought, such as that nice car, or cool boat, or even those cool plasma screen 43 inch televisions that makes everyone happy. In addition, the $5,000 limit will also hamper the poor. How can the poor, who live maybe their entire life without such basic necessities, improve their living habits by having such a limit. I think that such salary is too radical in a way that it will promote more class conflict that sustainability. There will be more people who will live with such a limit in poverty and without basic needs, and their will be that small, rich class at the top that are already well off and have lived the life with vast wealth, such as Jim Merkel, and won't necessarily be affected by such a change. I feel like Jim Merkel's advocation of such a salary limit is the main radical obstacle that might bring people to the edge of whether they would like to live in such a limited way.

Project Proposal

During my days at UCLA and at the Deneve dorms, I would always eat at the Deneve dining hall and experience the mass chaos of hundreds of other starving students collecting together to furiously eat all they could eat and gather around tables as quickly as possible. At the end of my meal, I, as well as other students, would collect our trays and place them on the turning tray collectors for the people in the kitchen to clean and dispose of uneaten waste. However, as I always put my tray in the tray collectors, I was always intrigued at how the Deneve dining hall staff would handle all the excess food waste and liquids that the students didn't consume. Did the staff just simply throw all the waste away, or was there some sort of sustainable practice that the staff use while throwing away the waste. In essence, my project will cover the ways the Deneve Dining hall staff practice sustainability, and, if they do practice sustainability, the ways in which such waste can be, or is, reused for either the benefit of the enviroment, or for the benefit of the school, and the different ways in which such waste is collected. In addition, I will also be examining the ecological footprint of the Deneve Dining hall and see if such a footprint has a major impact, both negatively or positively, on the enviroment and comparing such a footprint to the ordinary American.

There will be multiple procedures and ways in which I will examine whether the Deneve Dining Hall practice sustainability. The first way will be whether the dining hall do infact practice sustainability and how such waste, food, liquid, napkins, etc, are collected and thrown away. I will show the ways in which the dining hall collect such waste by creating a trash inventory of just a simple, ordinary day for the staff at the dining hall and see whether there is a form of sustainability seen in such a way. The second way will be to calculate the ecological footprint of the dining hall and compare with a simple ordinary American and see which wastes more in one day. The third, and final , procedure will be to examine ways in which the dining hall could improve sustainability efforts, if none are seen, or by just improving on modern practices.

Footprint of the ecological

Living as a college student, I thought my environmental impact would be minimal in comparison to what it was while living at home with my mother and father. I thought that by living with two other people in a cramped, triple room (with a bathroom :] ) would make me become more environmentally friendly or help me change my sustainable behaviors when it comes to how much I impact the environment. However, after reading Jim Merkel's Radical Simplicity and completing my very own ecological footprint, the smile that was wide-eyed across my beautiful face sharply fell to an ashamed form of pity and disgrace. I am single handedly killing this very own planet I take for granted every day. This might seem as a harsh statement to some, but given the calculations and data showing my footprint and how much energy and harmful items I consume that help degrade the environment, such a statement might seem more honest and truthful after all.

First, lets break things into context shall we. The average American ecological footprint is 24 acres per person. That number combines food, shelter, mobility, public transit, motorbike, car, air travel, goods, and services all added together to roughly equate the average amount of impact a normal American might have on the environment. In essence, that number roughly equals about 5.1 planets needed to help sustain everyones living habits. My living habits can be seen mainly by food, transportation, goods and services, stocks, and waste. Although I eat a lot of food, and consume a lot of waste, I rarely use any sort of transportation, because I am a college student without a car, although I do use the rail and bus transits quite frequently, goods and services, and stocks.Therefore, you would think that by having only a footprint based on those categories it would be small and minimal right? Haha... not quite. I am a very wasteful person, and it's not that I want to be, it's just that I have been raised culturally by my family to always use as much as possible and never think that there isn't enough for my needs. If only I knew I much I was wasting before, I would have changed my habits radically.

As such, my ecological footprint, based on food, transportation, goods and services, stocks, and waste, was a slightly higher than the average American footprint. My ecological footprint was, after summing all the categories, 28.83 acres. Now, let the deserved bashing take its place. At first, after summing up and calculating the numbers in each category based on acres, I was shocked, and also felt a little depression, which caused me to have a little Dr. Phil moment and collect myself that such a number is false and cannot be true and that I was only kidding and blah blah blah... Well, as much as would like it to be untrue, the fact remains that 28.83 is my real ecological footprint for a week. Compared to the average American, I waste way more and practice hardly any sustainable behavior in helping the world. Compared to the average American footprint, which is 24 acres and would need 5.1 planets to help sustain life and all the waste, my footprint was 28.83 acres, 4 whole plus acres than the average American, which would need about 6.1 planets to help sustain just my living alone. I'm sorry world, but I think I am killing you single handedly. I mean, after looking at that number and comparing it to the average American, I just felt horrible. My footprint alone measures roughly around 120% of a US footprint. I had thought that my footprint would be considerably lower than the average because of my status as a college student and living in a compact three person room, while having no car for my personal transportation. However, I realized that I waste and degrade the environment way more than I anticipated.

Looking at my data for the specific categories, food, transportation, goods and services, stocks, and waste, I was intrigued at to how my footprint was so large. I realized that my food and waste footprints were slightly more than the average, with 4.04 acres and 5.93 acres respectively. This didn't surprise at all given that I do like to eat a lot of food, meat in particular, as well as veggies, potatoes, and fruit, and that given my waste accumulation of paper products and plastic items and other forms of waste, I was hardly surprised. What surprised me the most was that the category I thought would have no affect on the outcome of my footprint actually was the biggest factor. Transportation. I know that since I am a college student having a car wouldn't be the most efficient to have, given that that I can't even find a parking area for at least a day here at UCLA. However, that didn't eliminate my rides on buses and trains that I usually take to go home or to visit other areas. Looking at my transportation footprint, which was 10.29 acres, I was surprised at how often I do take the bus and train. In addition, during the week that I was calculating my footprint, I had taken a flight to Berkeley to visit some friends and just take a break. Even adding just one airplane flight into my total footprint for transportation had an enormous affect on the outcome of my total footprint. All things considered given the results of transportation footprint, lets just say I wont be flying or taking the bus or train for a very, very, very long time.

Now, after evaluating and seeing the horrors of my own personal footprint, I think that from now on I will practice more sustainable behaviors and practices so to limit the amount of my footprint and impact on the environment. Therefore, I will have short, medium, and long term goals so as to achieve my limits. My short term goal will be to radically lower my transportation and waste accumulation my taking the bus and train less and figuring out ways to carpool with friends, so as to lower both fuel consumption and the impact on the environment. For my waste footprint, my short term goal will be to start being practical with my paper and plastic waste and only use a certain amount of paper necessary for school and other needs. In addition, I should start using my computer from now so as to become more paperless, as well as become more efficient and responsible with my note taking. I feel like if these short term goals can be met and reached at the end of the quarter, my total ecological footprint would decrease by a large amount.

my medium and long term goals would be to decrease my food waste by eating more organic and veggie type items instead of meat and higher-0n-the-food-chain type items, which uses more energy. I plan on eating lower on the food chain by eating more vegetarian type items, as well as mixing in a salad now and then into my diet so as to save more energy, and also to improve my overall health. In addition, I plan on eating out a lot less and becoming more self sufficient my cooking more of my own so as to minimalize my total effect on the environment. In addition, for my medium and long term goals, I plan on carpooling a lot more and only using the bus on certain occasions that are necessary for me. Before, I would always take the bus with friends every day because we always wanted to see all the cool places in LA, especially the areas like Venice and downtown LA. However, after realizing the total effect such traveling may have on the environment, I realize now that should travel less on the bus and train and should only travel on days that are deemed important, as well as focus more on taking carpools instead of going home by myself on the bus.

All in all, I hope that, if these goals are met, I will become a better person and more eco-friendly by lowering my total ecological footprint to levels that are, hopefully, below the average American, as well as practicing more sustainable behaviors so as to help the world survive for a very long time.

A Cleaner Dose of Air

After a weeks worth of counting and maintaining a personal account of the amount of trash thrown away, I was shocked and dismayed at the amount of trash I throw away on a daily basis. This exercise certainly has made me a lot more aware of the excess amount of trash that I throw away into the garbage, and, in addition, how I rarely use the recycle bin to throw away most of my paper or plastic products. Moreover, even before the exercise was done, I never really realized how much trash I threw away daily and how I rarely practice any sort of sustainable behavior before. It was so clear in my mind that it was okay to throw away anything because once I was done with something as small as a paper cup, I thought that such an item had nothing more to give and thus deserved to be terminated in the nearest trash bin. I was clearly mistaken. After going through with the exercise, and after reading Jim Merkel's Radical Simplicity, a book discussing the significant benefits of practicing sustainable behavior and limiting the amount of excess waste on a daily basis, I realized that many products I, and many other people, take for granted by simply throwing away in the garbage have a much more significant effect on the outcome of the world in the future.

This exercise made me realize many significant areas of wastefulness I didn't see before. As seen with my attached personal trash inventory, the main areas of wastefulness on my behalf can be seen in the area involving paper. Paper seems to be the largest area of wastefulness seen in the chart, with a total of 16,740 sq. inches wasted from adding napkins, toilet paper, paper towels, computer paper, and notebook paper all together. After calculating the sum, I was very much surprised as to how much paper I waste daily, and also how much waste accumulates over time. In addition, such waste can also reflect many values and ethics I hold dearly while I was growing up, primarily personal, familial, and cultural. As a small boy, I grew up in a family that considered paper a prime necessity for school and everyday affairs. My father, for example, largely influenced me when he used lots and lots and lots of paper for his everyday affairs with his work in chemical engineering. He would stay up all night and day working and writing down lots of numbers on almost hundreds and hundreds of paper. After my dad would finish his work, he would take literally boxes full of the paper he didn't need anymore and throw all the boxes full of paper into the garbage disposal. When I was doing homework for math, science, or writing essays, my dad would always tell me, "Never think that you never need paper, paper is everything for school, use as much as you want and can and never waste an ounce of an idea in that mind of yours". Granted, my dad shouldn't be seen as some ignorant, bad man for his un-sustainable encouragement. In fact, my dad is my best friend and my number one role model in life. However, even at that age and while I was growing up, I never really considered a "wasteful" practice of throwing away paper. I thought it was good to throw away paper and never really reflected how much I was contributing to the degradation of the land and of the world. Using paper for everyday activities in school and for remedial tasks at home was such a familial and personal value that I always considered it good to waste paper because it showed that I was using every bit of my ideas and knowledge on paper and not wasting what I left in my mind. I never really considered the effects of wasting so much paper because throughout my childhood, and even now, I was always taught to use as much paper as I can to store my ideas and clearly write down the answers that were needed for all my school work.

I think my wasteful practices of throwing away large amounts of paper can reflect the larger society's pattern of throwing away resources without any second thought. As I used to think while I grew up, people think that such natural resources are so abundant on the earth that even simple necessities like toilet paper, or computer paper, or any other paper product can never run out and are at limitless supply. People, especially in America, are used to thinking that we live in a world where any natural resource that is needed can be taken without any sustainable practice. An example can be seen with a Starbucks coffee cup. Once a person is done with it, they never really have the time to stop and consider the damage they cause by wasting and throwing away the cup into the garbage instead of throwing it away in recycling. The person can naturally assume that one cup wasted won't mean the sudden end of the natural source of Starbucks cups. That is true in one sense, but if you multiply that practice by like a billion plus people throughout the world, then we can safely assume that such practices are indeed a danger to the natural environmental order and damaging to the sustainable practices of saving the natural resources. In addition, such thinking can reflect the thoughts expressed in the book Radical Simplicity, in which Merkel describes the many ways we can preserve and practice sustainable living. One such comparison can be seen when Merkel describes the sustainable behavior of the Indian village of Kerala. There, Merkel describes, people use the natural resources as sustainably as possible. From making shirts, to making local wooden products from coconuts, Merkel describes how the people in the village never consume more or less than is needed, but only enough to provide for all the people in a given day. Moreover, the people in Kerala provide food and other products by using the earth in the most eco-friendly way as possible; without huge carbon emitting machines or large amounts of pesticides that both ruin the atmosphere and the health of the people. The people in Kerala have learned through familial and cultural customs that providing the optimal amount of food and other products through sustainable practices can be a better source of living than by over use and living in excess. If only the people in America can take a trip to Kerala and witness the wonder that is truly being shown there, I think people in America, and the world as a whole, have a much brighter future if we all collectively start practicing more sustainable and environmentally friendly actions in order for the world to breath a cleaner dose of air.

	napkins 5" x 8"	paper towels 8" x 26"	toilet paper 4" x 30"	computer paper 8" x 11"	notebook paper 8" x 11"
Tuesday 3/30/10	5 x 40 = 200 sq. inches	0 x 208 = 0 sq. inches	5 x 120 = 600 sq. inches	32 x 88 = 2816 sq. inches	27 x 88 = 2376 sq. inches
Wednesday 3/31/10	6 x 40 = 240 sq. inches	1 x 208 = 208 sq inches	6 x 120 = 720 sq. inches	11 x 88 = 968 sq. inches	11x 88 = 968 sq. inches
thursday 4/1/10	4 x 40 = 160 sq. inches	3 x 208 = 624 sq. inches	4 x 120 = 480 sq. inches	5 x 88 = 440 sq. inches	12 x 88 = 1056 sq. inches
Friday 4/2/10	7 x 40 = 280 sq. inches	0 x 208 = 0 sq. inches	5 x 120 = 600 sq. inches	3 x 88 = 264 sq. inches	3 x 88 = 264 sq. inches
Saturday 4/3/10	3 x 40 = 120 sq. inches	2 x 208 = 416 sq. inches	3 x 120 = 360 sq. inches	5 x 88 = 440 sq. inches	2 x 88 = 176 sq. inches
Sunday 4/4/10	5 x 40 = 200 sq. inches	0 x 208 = 0 sq. inches	4 x 120 = 480 sq. inches	6 x 88 = 528 sq. inches	0 x 88 = 0 sq. inches
Monday 4/5/10	8 x 40 = 320 sq. inches	1 x 208 = 208 sq. inches	2 x 120 = 240 sq. inches	0 x 88 = 0 sq. inches	1 x 88 = 88 sq. inches
Total	1420 sq. inches	1456 sq. inches	3480 sq. inches	5456 sq. inches	4928 sq. inches