Divya’s PSP

My goal is to carefully monitor the trash that goes into my personal trash can in my room, and to reduce that over the next 9 weeks through a concerted effort to recycle as many different types of materials as I can. The first step is to become aware of exactly what I throw away everyday in my trash can. Then I need to explore what exactly I can recycle, how to do so, and make sure I do so on a daily basis. In addition to the usual paper and bottles, I hope to discover how other materials like metal or electronics can be recycled. I have never made a considerable effort to recycle in my life, and I hope this will lead to an enduring inclination in me to do so. I also hope that a secondary effort of my trash monitoring is that I will find new ways of reusing items or doing activities that produce less trash.

-Divya

Peter’s PSP

While I’m already pretty good about recycling and composting (we easily fill up a curbside recycling bin at home each week), I realize that I only tend to think about recycling when it is time to dispose of something. For my PSP, I’m going to start thinking about the implications of disposal at the time of acquisition or purchase, and modify my behavior accordingly in order to “reduce”.

Among other things, this means buying more food and supplies in bulk, avoiding products with unnecessary packaging, and choosing reusable products and containers instead of disposable ones.

(A good example comes to mind as I type this at the cafe in the Stanford bookstore while sipping a coffee and eating a muffin: I could have brought my own coffee mug and metal fork, refused a paper bag for the muffin, and taken one napkin instead of four).

Over the course of the term I will record any choices that I make, and quantify how much was reduced. I also hope to see a noticeable decrease in the amount of material that ends up on the curb each week, both in the trash bin and the recycling bin.

Rishi’s PSP

I’ve noticed that I’ve been increasingly drinking coffee or tea at
some point throughout the day to help me stay awake. There are
various places I have been getting my drinks from – the Bookstore, Old
Union, Peet’s in Tressider, Moonbeans, and Starbucks. When I was at
Starbucks the other day, I noticed that even if I tell the cashier
that my drink is “for here” instead of “to go,” the barristas still
put my drink in a plastic coffee cup. It makes more sense, from a
sustainability viewpoint, to make those drinks in rewashable coffee
mugs.

For my personal sustainability project, I plan to buy a travel mug
that I can carry around with me wherever I go, so that when I order
coffee or tea anywhere, I can ask them to put to coffee in my own
personal mug instead of wasting plastic coffee cups each time. It is
interesting that many coffee stands on campus give discounts if you
ask them to put the coffee in your own personal mug, but I feel as
though these deals are not well advertised.

Nick’s PSP

For my personal sustainability project, I am changing my laundry habits. Currently, more than half of my laundry load comes from basketball shorts and shirts and socks. I always separate clothes by color in the wash such that instead of one full load, I have two medium loads. When take it to the dryer, I always set it to 45 minutes to ensure a complete dry. I realize that regardless of load size, the washing machine will use the same amount of water. So my first step is to put all my clothes in one big load, and if there is too much, I will take out non-necessary items for next week since my load size vary from week to week. I will also only use cold water as water heating requires a lot of energy. Finally, I will dry clothes for 15 minutes only and air dry the rest.

Over the course of this quarter, I plan to track several parameters. First, the amount of electricity, water, and detergent I’m saving by changing laundry habits. Second, I will track the change in time spent on laundry and the difficulty or possible annoyance that may arise. Finally, I will track any change in clothing quality.

Tommy’s PSP

Compared to most people I know, I drink a lot of water. I usually end up buying a bulk pack of 20 bottles every 1-2 weeks. My first goal for my PSP is to see how much water I drink on average and look at how many bottles are used. After I get a general idea of my consumption, I want to switch to a reusable bottle, like a nalgene. I can see how many bottles I saved and what the environmental footprint of the bottling, packaging, transportation, etc. of those bottles were.

Secondly, I want to look into the water itself. Is bottled water that much different from drinking Stanford tap water? If it is, how does the bottled water’s environmental footprint compare to that of using a Brita system and its disposable filters? Hopefully, through all this I can find the best way to keep myself hydrated.

Elyse Marr’s PSP

For my PSP, I am changing my wash cycle from warm cycle to a cold cycle. This way, I hope to track how much energy I will save by not having the water heated to a hotter temperature. In addition to changing the way I wash my clothes, I am going to do a quick dry (for 15 minutes or less) and hang dry the rest of the time. This action will cut my drying time to less than half.

Along the way, I am going to see if there is a noticeable difference between the quality of my clothing. Do my clothes feel different? Do they feel less clean? Are the colors fading less? Is it lasting longer without the tumbling of the dryer?

Through this process, I will also pay attention to whether or not my clothes needed to be washed. I tend to wash everything after one wear. Of course there are items you must wash every time, but I will pay more attention to items such as towels and jackets to cut down on the bulk of the laundry.

-Elyse