Growth

I thought I'd share what's been in the student gallery on campus this week:

The print installation was called "Growth" and was put together by 4 or 5 students. They filled the gallery (aprox 20' x 15' if not larger) with hundreds of trees. It was pretty cool to walk through, especially since it looked like WA to me! They put a lot of work into it- I saw them secretively building for like 4 or 5 days beforehand. They painted the walls blue and even made a wall in front of the gallery doors so it was a surprise when you walked in.

The reason that this is considered a print installation is because everything was printed on- the paper/trunks of the trees, the "ground", the background mountains, etc. Quite a lot of work. Each tree is about 3.5 feet tall.

The installation opened on Earth Day, last Thursday. Clearly, they wanted to make an environmental statement, but I couldn't help but chuckle that a lot of trees were used to make the installation!

Here's a closeup of a tree- note that the tree, trunk, and "dirt" were printed by hand:

Closeup of the trees and mountains on the walls:

When you have a cool backdrop, you gotta take a pic with it:

In other earth news, it's been interesting being in my Environmental Issues class. I like learning about what specifically/chemically happens to form ozone depletion, etc. I was raised in WA, where people are generally more environmental and it's something that I have always thought was important long before it became popular to be "green".

 Lately we've been talking about what happens to our solid waste, i.e., garbage. It's easy to feel like you are awesome because you recycle, but it's important to remember that recycling is third on the hierarchy list.

Guess what comes before? Reducing and Reusing! I'm not saying that we shouldn't recycle, but it's not the cure for everything. We live in a material economy, where it's buy buy buy. But if you don't buy something in the first place, then it won't have to be thrown away. It's not that I never buy anything, but I try to buy things that I know I will want to keep around for awhile. Sometimes it's worth it to pay a little more for something that will last longer. Retailers want you to buy the latest and greatest, and it drives me crazy when they make shoddy things so that you will have to buy a new one, or they keep improving and improving their product so that you're never satisfied with what you have. Apple drives me crazy with this- every week it's a new ipod or phone. Businesses have the right to grow and improve, but overdoing it drives me crazy.

I'm not perfect, but I try to be happy with what I have. I have had the same phone since 2007, and it doesn't even send/receive pics! It calls/texts so it meets my needs and I don't have the desire to go buy a new phone every six months. We bought our desktop computer in 2007 as well and we plan on owning it for awhile. I'm a total magazine nut, and I feel bad for killing trees, so I try to buy only magazines that I will want to keep for a good while (sewing, etc)- and I try not to buy the celeb mags that will be obsolete in a day.

I'm passionate about reusing items so that they don't end up in a landfill. I like to find creative ways to reuse things. I prefer to shop at thrift stores for decorative items/furniture. Not only are you saving money, you're not causing new materials to be manufactured. When I have a home of my own, I will stylishly outfit it with vintage furniture/items and very little new. Who wants to have a cookie cutter living room anyhow?

It's important to recycle because you are saving things from being in a landfill, but it's also important to remember that 1) it uses energy to break things down and process them and 2) with a lot of materials (like plastic and paper) you still have to add new material to the recycled material because a lot of materials break down and degrade in the recycling process. Reduce and Reuse!

There are companies like Terra Cycle that manufacture items from garbage-I find this concept to be really interesting. Instead of manufacturing items made from recycled products, they are cutting out the middle man and making products straight out of garbage. Like shopping bags made from potato chip bags or pencil cases made from Capri Sun packages. They have a low overhead for raw materials and energy isn't being used to melt/reform recyclables.

One thing that's been cool for my family since moving to PA is that we are able to have a pretty big garden, which I love. It's been great having homegrown stuff for the last two summers. It tastes so good and it's great knowing that pesticides haven't been used on things. And it's local! Also this year we bought a lot of beef (which we froze) from our Branch President, who is a farmer- it's cheaper than the store and we're buying locally. It's good stuff too, we use it on a regular basis and it's nice knowing where it came from.

I'm not trying to nag, I just wanted to share what I've been learning. I have things to work on too when it comes to the environment.