Being Aware

Greg and I have been renting documentaries from our local library, to become more aware of issues that we should be. We watched a documentary this weekend put on by National Geographic. It was called Human Footprint. They went through each stage of our lives as an American, beginning with what we consume as infants through elderly. The average lifespan is 77 years. In 77 years we consume 64 tons, as far as they could identify. It was really incredible when you look at it in stages. First they took as an infant, who uses diapers, you use like 4, 337 diapers in 2 years. But those diapers consume trees, water, plastic and then you think about how much it took to get all those resources to the factory to make them and then to distribute them to your individual store you purchased them from. They kept using the phrase, "before you even got these (diapers, jeans, car, etc.) it already had thousands of miles on it. But even cloth diapers as I use, they said use up water to wash them. If we think about how much water we use to wash clothes, take showers, wash our hands throughout the day, wash dishes, make meals, our water consumption is unreal for an average American. This does not include the water it takes to produce food, make clothes, drinks, water our plants, grass, etc.

One quote in the movie that is powerful is we in America have 5% of the world's population but we use 30% of the world's resources. And we are totally dependent on motor vehicles. We have the most and we have the most domestic air travel in our country as well.

They talked about all the food we eat, like bananas, oranges, eggs, meat, in a lifetime. Fruit we eat in season is easy to get, but fruit we eat out of season has a price on it that we take for granted. On average we each consume 5 bulls, 7 or 8 pigs, and like 100 chickens or something, each of us. Not even counting the milk we each consume that's in our cereal, yogurt, ice cream, cakes, etc. They talked about cars, appliances, products like shampoo, toothbrushes, hairspray, soap, all kinds of daily things we consume that we never think about what that adds up to over a lifetime for just one person, let alone the millions of people who live just in America. It really is so overwhelming to think about and how often do we actually think about it, hardly ever. Everyday we live as if our actions are not affecting the next generations to come on this earth. We live for the moment, and everything around us tells us this is what we should be doing. How did the world get so selfish?

I was waiting until the end of the movie for some piece of encouragement or information on how we can help, but the movie ended with an unfortunate, depressing conclusion; that we use up 64 tons. The second most depressing part of this situation is that what we consume, so much of it we end up throwing away. Who ever thought of teaching people it was normal to wrap everything in the grocery store in paper or plastic and then put that all into plastic bags that we throw away in our plastic bags inside our trash cans in our kitchens? A lot of our problems came when everything had to be clean, sanitary and shipped around the world twice before it got to our homes.

I think as Christians especially we are responsible to change some of these actions. When you look as just being one person in the mix your response does not seem like quite enough, but as we each change, we affect others to change. I believe that as Christians we should be the ones using resources wisely, because God commanded us to take care of his earth, we need to be honoring the God that created us and gave us this huge responsibility in today's world. It is another way for us to be an example, and why do we do it, because we love the Lord and his earth. Consuming resources for our own satisfaction and convenience is probably not the kind of stewardship he had in mind. There really are so many ways to take small steps in this area as well. Most of the time we just do not allow ourselves to think about, probably because its easier if we do not. Part of Christian stewardship I think is not allowing ourselves to put these things our of our minds. We need to learn about them so we can act.
These are some ways I try to practice that might get ideas flowing. I would love to hear more ideas of how I can practice this stewardship, I know there is so many more out there.

-thinking about where a product came from and if it is good for the environment.
-thinking about if we really need something we want to buy
-not living as if each household needs it own everything, share, borrow, lend out, buy used
-recycle, reduce and reuse... be creative with this, the ideas are endless.
-give up the need to always have everything clean i.e. kitchen counters, do the dishes once a day at most. - sanitary all the time, germs can be good for us too
-conserve water by adjusting and thinking about all your personal uses, exclude some of them. (My mother in law always taught her kids, especially when they are little, when they used the restroom to use this idea: If is yellow let it mellow, if its brown flush it down. This may be over the top for some, but why? Flushing the toilet uses a lot of water, anything can help reduce.)
-washing clothes only when they are really dirty - reuse
-using environmental, natural cleaning products - vinegar, borax, olive oil, baking soda, hydrogen peroxide
-use cloth grocery bags, if you can't sew them yourselves ask a friend who sews to help you. If you can't buy fabric new, even better idea is go to a second hand store, buy some old curtains or something and reuse that fabric. Or just take your plastic bags back to the store and ask them to use them again for your next set of groceries.
-use less electricity. limit time at the TV for your kids and yourself. turn off lights, appliances when you are not using them. Appliances can use electricity even when they are not being used, but plugged in. Greg and I have a techno fast night every Wednesday night. We don't use any electricity, and we use candles for light, its creative, fun, romantic, and energy efficient.
-When your light bulbs burn out, buy energy efficient bulbs the second time around, they might not be as cheap, but each bulb helps to change.

What are we willing to sacrifice in our lives to change things? What will we give up? How will we help? These are the questions we can ask ourselves everyday.