2025 Sun Sept 21

The fight against climate change can feel overwhelming, but individuals hold significant power to drive meaningful change through conscious and collective action. By making informed choices in our daily lives, we can collectively reduce our carbon footprint and contribute to a more sustainable future. This guide outlines key areas where personal efforts can make a substantial impact.

High-Impact Lifestyle Changes

Recent studies have highlighted several high-impact actions that can drastically reduce an individual’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. While not feasible for everyone, understanding these can provide a framework for prioritizing efforts.

• Living Car-Free: Transportation is a major source of emissions. Choosing to live without a car, or significantly reducing its use, can save a substantial amount of carbon dioxide each year. Opting for walking, cycling, or public transportation are excellent alternatives.
• Adopting a Plant-Based Diet: The livestock industry is a significant contributor to methane and other greenhouse gases. Shifting towards a diet rich in plants and reducing meat and dairy consumption can dramatically lower your personal carbon footprint.
• Avoiding Air Travel: Aviation has a disproportionately high climate impact. Reducing the frequency of flights, especially long-haul trips, is one of the most effective ways an individual can cut their emissions.
• Making Your Home Energy Efficient: For homeowners, investing in energy efficiency can lead to significant long-term reductions in carbon emissions and energy bills. This includes proper insulation, sealing drafts, and upgrading to energy-efficient windows and appliances.

Everyday Actions for a Greener Lifestyle

Beyond these major shifts, a multitude of daily habits can collectively contribute to a more sustainable way of life.

In the Home:

• Conserve Energy: Simple actions like turning off lights when not in use, unplugging electronics on standby, and using energy-efficient LED light bulbs can make a difference.
• Mindful Water Use: Reducing hot water consumption by taking shorter showers and washing clothes in cold water saves the energy needed for heating.
• Switch to Renewable Energy: If possible, switch your electricity provider to one that sources power from renewable sources like wind or solar. Installing solar panels on your home is also a powerful long-term investment.
• Reduce Waste: Practice the “three R’s”: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Minimize packaging, opt for reusable products over single-use items, and properly sort your waste. Composting food scraps can also significantly reduce landfill methane emissions.

On Your Plate:

• Eat Local and Seasonal: Purchasing food that is grown locally and in season reduces the carbon footprint associated with transportation and storage.
• Minimize Food Waste: Plan meals, buy only what you need, and find creative ways to use leftovers. Wasted food represents wasted energy and resources.

As a Consumer:

• Buy Less and Buy Better: Resist impulse purchases and invest in durable, high-quality products that will last longer. This reduces the demand for new manufacturing and the waste associated with disposable items.
• Support Sustainable Businesses: Choose to support companies that are transparent about their supply chains and are committed to sustainable and ethical practices.
• Embrace Secondhand: Thrifting for clothes, furniture, and other goods extends the life of products and reduces the environmental impact of producing new items.
• Choose Eco-Friendly Transportation: When a car is necessary, consider electric or hybrid vehicles. For shorter distances, embrace cycling and walking, which offer both environmental and health benefits.

The Power of Collective Action and Advocacy

While individual actions are crucial, they are most powerful when they contribute to a larger movement.

• Talk About It: Engage in conversations about climate change with friends, family, and your community. Raising awareness can inspire others to take action.
• Advocate for Change: Contact your elected officials and demand policies that support renewable energy, sustainable transportation, and corporate accountability.
• Get Involved: Join local environmental groups or participate in community initiatives focused on sustainability.

By embracing a combination of these strategies, individuals can move beyond feeling helpless and become active participants in the global effort to combat climate change. Every conscious choice, no matter how small it may seem, contributes to a larger wave of change that is essential for protecting our planet for future generations.

1. Food Waste

The local food banks and other distributors have worked out agreements with restaurants to help eliminate waste by taking foods they cannot sell due to sell by dates and redistributing the foods. Globally, the issue of waste is a large one.

World Wildlife Federation has covered the topic in its Fall, 2018 magazine.

“Today, 7.3 billion people consume 1.6 times what the earth’s natural resources can supply. By 2050, the world’s population will reach 9 billion and the demand for food will double.

“So how do we produce more food for more people without expanding the land and water already in use? We can’t double the amount of food. Fortunately we don’t have to—we have to double the amount of food available instead. In short, we must freeze the footprint of food.

“In the near-term, food production is sufficient to provide for all, but it doesn’t reach everyone who needs it. In fact, one-third of the world’s food—1.3 billion tons—is lost or wasted at a cost of $750 billion annually. When we throw away food, we waste the wealth of resources and labor that was used to get it to our plates. In effect, lost and wasted food is behind more than a quarter of all deforestation and nearly a quarter of global water consumption. It generates as much as 10% of all greenhouse-gas emissions. As it rots, it pollutes water and soil and releases huge amounts of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases.

“Another negative aspect of food waste is its connection to species loss. Consider this: Food production is the primary threat to biodiversity worldwide, expected to drive an astonishing 70% of projected terrestrial biodiversity loss by 2050. That loss is happening in the Amazon, where rain forests are still being cleared to create new pasture for cattle grazing, as well as in sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture is expanding rapidly. But it’s also happening close to home.

“These wasted calories are enough to feed three billion people—10 times the population of the United States, more than twice that of China, and more than three times the total number of malnourished globally. Wasted food may represent as much as 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and is a main contributor to deforestation and the depletion of global water sources.

“By improving efficiency and productivity while reducing waste and shifting consumption patterns, we can produce enough food for everyone by 2050 on roughly the same amount of land we use now. Feeding all sustainably and protecting our natural resources.”

South Korea has a system that keeps about 90 percent of discarded food out of landfills and incinerators, has been studied by governments around the world. But the country’s mountainous terrain limits how many landfills can be built, and how far from residential areas they can be built.

Since 2005, it’s been illegal to send food waste to landfills. Local governments have built hundreds of facilities for processing it. Consumers, restaurant owners, truck drivers and others are part of the network that gets it collected and turned into something useful.

In the case of a restaurant when it gets to a plant. Debris — bones, seeds, shells — is picked out by hand though most facilities are automated. A conveyor belt carries the waste into a grinder, which reduces it to small pieces. Anything that isn’t easily shredded, like plastic bags, is filtered out and incinerated.

Then the waste is baked and dehydrated. The moisture goes into pipes leading to a water treatment plant, where some of it is used to produce biogas. The rest is purified and discharged into a nearby stream.

What’s left of the waste at the processing plant, four hours after Mr. Park’s team dropped it off, is ground into the final product: a dry, brown powder that smells like dirt. It’s a feed supplement for chickens and ducks, rich in protein and fiber, said Sim Yoon-sik, the facility’s manager, and given away to any farm that wants it.

For consumers, at apartment complexes around the country, residents are issued cards to scan every time they drop food waste into a designated bin. The bin weighs what they’ve dropped in; at the end of the month they get a bill.

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A focus in the Season of Creation is considering how we interact with the natural world and where we need to change our relationship to it. This book covers both of these.

We are looking at notes from the book We Are Eating the Earth The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate by Michael Grunwald, published 2025. Grunwald is a journalist who has has worked at Politico Magazine as well as newspapers the Boston Globe and Washington Post.

Food is a necessity but we are challenged by an expanding population. We can cultivate more food on farms but his causes increases in our carbons emissions. We can clear more land to increase lands under cultivation but this affects deforestation. Trees are a carbon sink storing up food rather than releasing food into the atmostpher. Moreover as we expand our cultivated land, food production generated a third of our carbon emissions affecting climate change.

Grunwald says “We are eating the earth”.We have to fix our food systems to ultimately benefit our climate.

The core challenge involves closing three “gaps” by 2050:

• The food gap: Farmers need to produce about 50 percent more food to feed a global population expected to reach nearly 10 billion, with almost 1 billion people already hungry.
• The emissions gap: Agricultural emissions, including those from farms, pastures, and deforestation, need to shrink by about 75 percent (from 15 gigatons to 4 gigatons) to meet the Paris Agreement goals.
• The land gap: Agriculture’s footprint must stop expanding, requiring farmers to produce significantly more food without clearing additional forests. Current trends suggest an expansion equivalent to at least a dozen more Californias or nearly two Indias.

Achieving these goals requires a multi-faceted approach, involving significant changes in both food consumption and production patterns.

Here are the most impactful and feasible strategies identified:

Transcript

Inevitably, we’re sitting there at the end of the meal, they’re pushing food around their plate, they don’t want to eat, and they’re looking at me with some awkward excuse. And I say, like, we can’t eat our way out of this. This is a systems problem. And it’s just way too big. How big?

It’s the size of the entire United States. It uses three times as much water as the whole country. And it grows food all year long, and when harvested, produces enough to fill 100 tractor trailers every minute, all year long. Those trucks then drive, fly and float all over the world. Except instead of going somewhere to be eaten, they go straight to landfill, where the food rots and produces nothing. A powerful greenhouse gas. Seems crazy, right? But that’s effectively what we’re doing, from science experiments in the back of our refrigerators to truckloads of products that are too close to some arbitrary expiration date

Globally, 1 billion meals are wasted. Go any in every single day. That’s more than a meal per person for everyone on this planet who faces hunger. Not to mention it’s worth $1 trillion. And this whole ridiculous exercise has five times the greenhouse gas footprint of the entire aviation industry.

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Can I Recycle This? A Guide to Better Recycling and How to Reduce Single-Use Plastics by Jennie Romer is a comprehensive guide to understanding the complexities of recycling and reducing single-use plastics in the U.S. Romer, an attorney and sustainability consultant, is a leading expert on single-use plastic reduction and recycling

The book is divided into two parts. The first part is an explanation of recycling and the process.

It explains the seven Resin Identification Codes (1-7), often enclosed in chasing arrows. Many consumers mistakenly believe the chasing arrows mean an item is automatically recyclable, but the number only identifies the type of plastic resin. Only PET #1 and HDPE #2 bottles and jugs consistently meet the FTC’s definition of recyclable.

While many remember the “3R’s” “recycle, reduction and reuse”, the latter two are far more important. Recycling itself consumes significant resources (fuel, water, greenhouse gas emissions), making reuse and reduction better for the environment,

The second part, the longest section is a look-up designed to be a handy reference. Some key points:

Most Recyclable (Green): Metal (especially aluminum cans), paper products with long fibers (cardboard, paper bags), bottles and jugs. Steel cans and clean cardboard boxes are valuable.

    ◦ Recyclable, but have issues (Yellow): Glass bottles (issues with mixed colors, transportation costs, regional variations). thermoforms (less valuable than bottles, not accepted everywhere).

    ◦ Not Recyclable (Red):

        ▪ Tanglers: Plastic films/carryout bags, clothing hangers, clothing/fabric, garden hoses, extension cords, Christmas lights.

        ▪ Smalls: Plastic straws, colorful plastic party cups, orphaned bottle caps, plastic forks, coffee pods, condiment cups.

        ▪ Mixed Materials/Multilayer Packaging: Juice pouches, cocktail peanut cans, chip bags, candy wrappers, baby food pouches, toothpaste tubes, cell phones, laptops, eyeglasses, blister packs.

        ▪ EPS/Foam: Foam coffee cups, foam egg cartons.

        ▪ Other Not Recyclable: Batteries (fire hazard), light bulbs (mercury/fragility), dirty/waxed paper, face masks.

The book is not just an encyclopedia of what can and can’t be recycled, but promotes understanding of the recycle process which most of us are involved with on a daily basis. Thus, the book is highly recommended.

The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.” –Dietrich Bonhoeffer

1. Creation is a reflection of the glory of God to be good stewards of God’s creation, which includes all of us who live within it

2. Climate change is a spiritual challenge.  Handling climate change is part of how we live our faith.

3. We have a responsibility to care for the least of us. The poorest amongst us bear the greatest burden and risk of climate change.

4. We are called to respond to what we see around us. We are moral messengers for the common good, translate  compassion into action.