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Reducing your ecological footprint doesn't just involve electricity or water. Food and wastes are also a very big aspect in reducing your footprint. I personally recycle and for the most part I can say that I dispose if my wastes properly.

When recording my food and waste reduction for my baseline I already was off to a great start. I started off recycling things like my water bottles and plastic containers. I would also eat a bunch of highly processed foods which is something I still need to work on.

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I drive a Jetta,  it’s pretty standard as a commuter car as far as gas mileage, 28-30 mpg.
I drive about 30 miles round trip to school and about 16 miles round trip to work.

While I was recording my baseline I did more driving than strictly necessary, making my average energy usage 189,873 BTU.
Most of my energy usage was due to my driving.

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Because so much of my energy usage was because of my driving I decided to plan my driving better, If I didn’t need to drive somewhere I didn’t.

I didn’t think it would make too much of a difference because I live on the outskirts of San Antonio and to get anywhere I have to drive.

However, I planned well enough and I carpooled a couple times greatly reducing my mileage. My average energy usage went down to 80,808 BTU.

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While trying to find different ways to reduce my food and waste I did some research and discovered that you shouldn't recycle something if it contains food leftovers. For example, a cardboard pizza box is recyclable but when buy a pizza and try to rid of the box you shouldn't recycle it due to the oil that seeps into the cardboard.

I thought I was disposing of my recyclables properly but from my first baseline sheet to my last I've done my research.

I started to clean everything I recycled before I put it in the bin. I also tried to eat less highly processed foods and more locally grown. My waste intake reduced after I did that and I started recycling smarter when I stopped recycling used plastic cups and plates.

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I tend to take 2 shower a day for 15 minutes each. I take 2 showers a day because, I usually go to the gym after class and I would then go  back out and I would have to shower again.
Before I tried saving water I would spend on average 15- 30 minutes in the shower. Every minute in the shower is a estimate of 2.5 gallon of water used. Which means I used  37.5 to 75 gallons of water every time I took a shower and 66,000 BTU TO 132,000 BTU , and I took two of those everyday.

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To reduce my water use I changed my shower habits. Going to the gym is now the last thing I do so  I can now shower for 10 minutes everyday at the very end of the day.

I will not continue to take two fifteen minute showers. Instead, I will take one ten minute shower which will only use 44,000 BTU per shower and 25 gallons of water.
Reducing the amount of time I use showers reduced the BTU by 22,000-110,000 BTU and 2.5 to 45 gallons of water.

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Electricity is a big part of everyone's lifestyles in this day and age, and that includes me as well. Though I did not realize how much I was unnecessarily using until I did my baseline footprint.

When I recorded my baseline footprint I was not very aware of how much I was using, because at the time I did not really care nor do I think that it had any real impact on anything in the world so as a result of that my average energy usage was 5,602,575 BTU which actually isn't a lot but that is because I don't drive and do other things that many other people do.
Reduction Of Footprint
Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement. I started with the simple things that I never noticed before, I always left my light and ceiling fan on when I left my room to go to class for absolutely no reason so opposed to using my fan and light for 16 hours I cut each in half to 8 which brought the total BTU for both from 7,370 to 3,685.I also left my phone charging longer than I needed to so when I saw that it was charged to a sufficient amount I unplugged it. The hardest one to do though was to reduce the time on my computer. I was using it way more than I needed to, mostly procrastinating on it but in doing so I was wasting a lot of energy so instead I tried my best to get my work done quickly.

Though my initial footprint wasn't extremely high I was able to bring my footprint down to 4,212,114 BTU which is still a significant improvement. From this I learned that to improve your ecological footprint you need to stop unnecessary screen time and just pay more attention to what you are using.