Sustainable Marketing Update

Things have been going pretty well in my quest to reduce my Ecological Footprint.  Actually, I am not too sure how well things have been on the whole.  There seems to be a bit of gain and loss in certain areas.  I will explain with my bullets from before:

• Turning off appliances and unplugging things:
• Since the beginning of the quarter I have made a concerted effort to keep my energy consumption down and to make sure to turn off the appliances in my home.  I had some issues with the way that energy was being used (misused) by my roommates and I ended up moving a couple of weeks ago.  Since then I have been able to keep a better handle on which appliances remain plugged in while there isn't anyone home.  Score one for me.
•  Eat less meat/pork/poultry.  At least not at every meal.
• Since the beginning of the quarter I vowed to do a little bit and help out in the meat department.  This has actually been the easiest for me to control.  I would normally eat meat about twice to three times a day.  I stopped purchasing sandwich meat and have gone on an Almond Butter and Jelly/Preserves lunch diet.  In doing so I have noticed that I eat a lot more sandwiches in order to feed my fat belly.  
•  Pay more attention to origination of my food purchases
• I have been able to keep my eye on where my food is coming from, and honestly, most of my fruit is still being produced in Southern California (Limes for the Tequila and Cervesas) or imported from other countries (I love me some bananas!)  I would like to reduce the amount of travel that my food has to go through before I get to it, but in the case of fruits and veggies during the early Spring and Summer it is pretty hard to do while keeping a well rounded diet.  I guess I am just not that hip to what can be substituted in our local markets.
• Try to use less heating energy. (This one I know will work out this quarter!)
• Ahh, the heating issue.  I have managed to put on a few extra clothes during the colder days and kept my hands off the thermostat in the house.  At my new pad I have baseboard heaters and a fireplace.  I haven't really had the need to use either.  I am not super stoked on baseboard heaters as it is, but from what I know about energy use they are inefficient.

So, I guess you could say that of my goals I haven't really been too awesome.  Now that snow season is coming to a close I have been using a lot less gasoline to get my butt up the mountain.  That helps, right?  Although, I did make a solo trip down to Steven's Pass for the filming of the WildCard movie to be released this fall, "The Saturday Night Ride".  Here is another point to note: professional snowboarding is not exactly a sustainable practice.  There are some aspects of the sport that if done in conjunction with a minimalist alpine attitude can be quite sustainable.  A major problem that I found is that for a large scale film shoot there is a lot of fuel consumption (generators, flood lighting, snowmobiles, transportation of talent, etc.)  I hope to be able to redesign and streamline some of these financial and natural resource expenditures for future projects.  For now, all I can say is that we make sure to pack it in and pack it out!

For the rest of this quarter I am adding to my list of things that I am trying to be better about one more item:  I am going to try to use a lot less water.  After moving from my old place to the new place I ended up doing a whole lot of laundry and bed clothes washing.  It was necessary, but I seriously believe my lady and I had the washer, dryer, and dishwasher going on a constant cycle for the better part of our first week in the pad.  Yikes!  Quite disconcerting.  I am usually pretty good about my water use and I am going to be a lot more consistant with my conservation practices!