My Energy and Water Usage

My water usage and perhaps my energy usage are what I consider to be lower than average. I found a useful site which helped me to quantify my water usage per day, month, and year. It turns out I use:

67 gallons per day

2037 gallons per month

24455 gallons per year

That's a lot of water. My yearly amount is enough to fill a swimming pool that is 19' long, 38' wide, and 4.5' deep and then some. Chances are, at some point or another, I will swim in the water that I have used. Whether or not it is in a pool of that size is for me to decide.

Here is a graph I made to quantify my daily water usage by category:

As you can see, the majority of the water I use per day is spent either in the shower or hand washing dishes. I have never been one to take very long showers, but I am regardless surprised at the amount of water a 7 minute shower, once daily, requires. In general, I clean myself too much. I don't believe that I actually need to shower everyday. It is most often a matter of waking up in the morning, or comfort at night.

The fact that hand washing dishes uses the second largest amount of water is also somewhat surprising. My family did not get a dishwasher until I was a teenager, and even then the thing started to break down soon after we bought it because our water is very hard. I have a vivid memory of my Uncle Kevin teaching me how to correctly wash the dishes in a two part sink: one side is filled for sudsing, the other for rinsing. That always seemed to make sense to me.

The dishwasher I currently have is not nearly as large as the one I have at home, uses half as much water, and doesn't need fixing every 8 months. So the fact that it uses very little water on a daily basis does not surprise me one bit. I just need to break my habit of washing some dishes by hand. Not too easy.

My energy usage, on the other hand, was harder for me to quantify and visualize. My apartment as a whole used 273 kWh during the month of February, or 3276kWh per year. Divided by four that number is roughly 69 kWh. According to this, that is roughly one average lightning bolt's worth of energy, or half of the energy in one gallon of gasoline. Using that much energy is the equivalent of releasing 50 kgs of CO2 into the atmosphere. That means that I release, on average, 600 kgs of CO2 per year just from energy I use at home . That number is roughly the long-term limit that every person in the world should release per year to stabilize climate change.

That is a scary thought. As a rising "environmentalist," I feel as though I should be using waaaaay less energy.

Our average energy usage, like most other people, fluctuates on a regular basis. The majority of the energy used in my apartment is used by the larger appliances, i.e. the washer/dryer combo, the stove, the fridge, and the dishwasher. The other major usage of electricity in my apartment is due to lighting. I, along with my roommates, am pretty adamant about turning off lights when they don't need to be on.

We most certainly could do a better job making sure things are not plugged in when they don't need to be, despite the fact that this generally does not use too much wattage per day. However, it builds up over time.

The true fact of the matter is that the washer/dryer combo and the fridge are the two things that use the most energy. While I can't get rid of either, I most certainly need to rethink my habits, other wise I will continue to cause more harm than good.

My Stuff

It was quite a shock to count all of my individual belongings. Within my apartment, I personally own 727 items.

727?

The main reason that this number seems so ridiculous to me is because of the compartmentalization of my life. Almost all of my personal belongings fit within a room that is roughly 14' wide, 16' long, and 12' high (keep in mind that I also share this room with another person). Somethings are within plain sight, such as my books, and others are hidden away, such as my clothing. The practice of storing things, or even subconsciously hiding them, has multiple layers. Perhaps I would not like to remind myself of the true amount of things that I have; on the other hand, it is somewhat comforting to know that I am surrounded by things, which turn a barren, empty room, into a place that is lived in. A place that feels like it is my home, despite the fact that I know I will not stay there.

Thus I had somewhat of a hard time grappling with my stuff. I generally thought of myself as having relatively few possessions. Most of all, I generally thought of myself as having very few clothes. I was amazed to find out that actually I owned around 180 items of clothing, from 43 pairs of socks, to 80 different shirts (button up, t-shirt, and everything in between). As someone who lives with a fashion designer with limitless amounts of clothes and materials, I naively thought that I, personally, couldn't possibly own 180 different clothing items.

Yet during my counting process, I only rid myself of 20 or so items, all of which were clothing.

Why is that?

Well, it's mostly because those 20 items were the ones that I absolutely did not use. The rest of my 160 items I use quite a bit. Or at least, I think I use quite a bit.

With the exception of my 2 suits, a few pairs of pants, and my coats during the summer, I can say that I wear around half of my clothing items at least once a month. The other half makes an appearance every other month. I don't consider myself to be fashionable (I usually wear the same pair of pants until they are worn to the point of no return), however, I do like to mix it up a bit. So, I can either try to justify the fact that I now have 160 items of clothing, or I can realize that I can still get rid of a great deal of my "standing stock." I think it's about time to get rid of some more clothing. I mean, honestly, a good deal of my clothes have been in my possession for 4 to 6 years, some even longer. And it is those items that I have the hardest time parting with.

It is strange the amount of guilt I feel when I try to get rid of my stuff. One item may have been given to me as a present, and even though the person who gave it to me may be out of my life completely, I still feel as though I would be hurting their feelings if I got rid of it. That is totally ridiculous. What is it about gifts that makes me feel like their value is higher because they were given to me? Sure, some things I could never part with, but holding on to things for the reason that they were given to me is outright ludicrous.

Keep in mind that out of 727 items, 250 are individual comic books. That's around 33%. I could most certainly part with at least half of them; the largest problem I have with getting rid of them is dealing with the fact that I have already sunk my money into the purchases, and would at least like to get some cash back. Finding the time to do so, on the other hand, is another story.

Clothing and entertainment by far outweigh the rest of the categories of my personal belongings. And as you can see in the spreadsheet, I counted the comic books as entertainment.

The things I value the most, however, tend to be things that are somewhat transient. These include my toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, and mouthwash in the hygiene category, artwork, and my computer, ipod, and headphones, in the electronics category. They are also they things I use the most. If I could not use my toothbrush, I would go insane.

I also realized that I share almost as many items as I own (613). That was not as much of a surprise to me. In general, my 3 roommates and I share without discretion, with the exception of a few personal items. I grew up in a household in which we would have any number of guests either staying or living with us at any time. This conditioned me to the fact that sharing, as they say, is caring.

Below is a link to some graphics I have created that illustrate my belongings, both personal and shared, in terms of their usage, value, and need for. It also illustrates my belongings by quantity and category.

http://imgur.com/a/In1q1

As you can see, the three categories don't always match up. Some of the thing I own I use infrequently but place a high value on. Others I need to have, yet place little value upon.

For instance, I have been socially conditioned by my mom to value my books above most of my other possessions. My mom literally has a library, thousands of books, all of which she has read, most more than once. I therefore place high value on my books, but use them rarely, and have little need for after the first read. Some I can return to more than once, but most would ultimately be better off in another person's hands.

Among the things that I share, I place a high value on appliances, artwork, and plants (the two of which are under misc. category in the above album). These appliances, with the exception of a blender, a crockpot, and a one touch chopper, are not personally owned by anyone in my household. Yet they play a significant part in my weekly/daily life. Although the fridge, stove, dishwasher, washer, dryer, and toaster oven are inanimate objects, I consider them to be my friends. They put in more work for my personal gain than I do myself. I value them, use them frequently, and need (most) of them. I feel that having laundry within my apartment, however, is a little selfish and wasteful. Though I do not use them with my hands, the plants and artwork in the apartment provide more comfort to me than most of my belongings. I feel as though they commit services to everyone in the apartment.

Looking at minimalists websites has been somewhat discouraging to me. The fact that some people can live with only 100 (or even 50) personal items only, seems to me both inspiring and impossible. I would have to put most of my things in storage and travel the country with only a backpack with my things inside, and perhaps a bike, to reduce my standing stock to that sort of level.

But ultimately, the point of this exercise is to not have to go to one extreme or the other. The point is to realize that ultimately everything I do, consume, own, and throw away has an effect upon the place that I live (or don't), and the person I am.

My Waste

Here is a short stop motion video I made that chronicles two weeks worth of my waste:

http://www.vimeo.com/21725238

The assignment did not require me to collect my food waste, for sanitary reasons. I began to collect my garbage the day before my 22nd birthday. Two weeks later, I was surprised to see the amount that I had accumulated. Let's take a look at the actual numbers:

11 cardboard boxes/pieces of cardboard

5 pieces of styrofoam packaging

1 piece of plastic packaging

37 beer cans

1 glass container

6 glass bottles

3 large mailing envelopes

1 egg carton

1 pack of cigarettes

1 broken wind chime

21 large assorted pieces of paper and/or newspapers

19 small assorted pieces of paper

1 gum package

14 gum wrappers

122 items. Wow.

I am not sure whether or not this could be considered my average for two weeks considering the fact that it was my birthday and I received quite a few packages. I also did quite a bit of celebrating. Excuses, excuses

Here's how my waste breaks down in terms of content:

As you can see, the majority of my waste was made up of recyclable items, as only 7% of it eventually ended up in a landfill (if NYC's recycling service does it's job properly). Now I could give myself a pat on the back and say, "Good job! Most of what you consume is eventually recycled!" but I realistically I still consumed 122 items within two weeks, or almost 9 items per day. 3 of those daily 9 items were beer cans. The average industry brewery uses 8 pints of water to brew a single pint. Not to mention the ingredients in the beer must have a large footprint (where they came from, I have no idea), and the fact that most of the beer I consumed came from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is 741 miles away.

Truthfully, the same could be said for almost every item that I consumed. I received at least two boxes from home for my birthday, which is 1700 miles away, and another from L.A., which is 2500 miles away. I used a lot of paper, most of which was either wrappings, newspapers, or other, small miscellaneous pieces. While paper can be recycled, it doesn't go too far before it eventually ends up in a landfill.

Furthermore, the items that made it straight to the landfill were pretty toxic, and HARDLY biodegradable (I hate styrofoam).

While most of my consumables could most certainly be reduced (especially the beer and paper categories), the items I received for my birthday either in the mail or through friends were greatly appreciated. It's the stuff they were packaged in that was the main problem. The social practice of packaging presents for someone's birthday inherently creates more waste than necessary. The packaging within the packages I received was a bit of overkill. Yet the air of mystery that surrounds the fact that you have to wait to see what you are receiving is one of the enjoyable aspects of getting gifts. Yet there is always an alternative.

Overall, the company I enjoyed during the course of my birthday ultimately means more to me than the gifts I received.