After 3 months, I have successfully reduced my carbon footprint!

3 months... I better have reduced my carbon footprint!

 This is a picture of my carbon footprint at the end of the Fall 2013 quarter:

Just in case it appears slightly blurry, the second image says "3.1" planet Earths to provide enough resources if everyone lived like I do. This decreased by 0.8! Ideally, there would only be a picture of one planet Earth - or maybe even less than a planet! Hopefully I will get there someday. Like we have talked about in class, this may be due to the fact that my geographic location is the United States and on average, Americans have a higher footprint when it comes to the "Services" category. It is interesting to me that the percentage of services I use increased in comparison to the other categories. I drive more because it's cold and wet outside more often than in summer. Energy usage, although it is still my highest category, reduced. This excites me because I tried very hard to be conscious of every little way that I was using energy and tried to adapt my ways to reduce this usage.

As far as the other goals go:

The idea that I had to save the extra receipts that are printed to recycle them instead of throwing them away proved to be challenging. The waitress apron and booklet that I have is only so big. I was talking to a co-worker one day about what I was trying to do and she suggested that instead of just holding on to them to recycle, I should use the back of old receipts to take future orders on. She was already doing this on a daily basis. I was shocked that I hadn't thought of this before or hadn't seen her practicing this. I immediately started collecting as many receipts as possible and turning them to the backside. Not only does this save the paper from being thrown in the garbage can, but it reduces the amount of paper I end up purchasing for the exact same purpose!
**I will continue this practice for as long as I work in a restaurant and continue to find ways to reduce paper use/restaurant waste.**

Participating in the Mug Challenge has gone pretty well for me. The mug is easy to use on campus because the system set in place is very easy to use and takes care of the cleaning dishes aspect - who could argue with that?!
**I could improve on this goal by purchasing a travel mug to take with me when I plan on purchasing coffee off-campus. It might be a difficult habit to form, but I already make sure that my BPA-free water bottle goes everywhere I go, why not a coffee mug too?**

Before taking this class, I tried to be aware of my impact on the environment. After taking this class, I will not only be aware, but I plan to actively seek out measures that I can take to reduce my carbon footprint. It's important for the environment, it's important for future generations, and it's certainly important to me.