Karen's Low Impact Goals, Day 1

My four goals for lower impact:
1. I want to actually use my paper recycle, which would involve collecting all the paper that I cannot use and making sure it gets to the basket, as well as keeping all other material out of the basket.
2. I would like to reduce the amount of pages I print per night to as little as possible, so that I am not printing out multiple times like I usually do, and I am printing double sided. I also want to try to reduce my paper usage by using less paper for homework and keeping and reusing old paper that is not ruined.
3. I will try to put my computer in the "sleep" mode whenever I am not using it, and try to use the computer as little as is possible.
4. Finally, I will try to eat everything on my plate, and eat leftovers more than store bought snacks. I will try to work towards less processed foods.

Yesterday, I cleaned out my paper recycle and separated out all the trash (glass, thumbtacks) to place in a separate waste basket. I also made a pile of paper that I had used once, but which I can always use as scrap paper later. These were my efforts to begin working towards the first goal. My second goal was more difficult, as I had to print out my spanish story to hand in. I made sure not to print multiple drafts, however, which I often do. I also discovered very late at night that I had to put one more label on my junior seminar poster board, which required me to print out two almost blank pages with just the title on them, and waste a lot of paper that way. I even had to cut up the paper, so it cannot easily be reused. I did try using much less space in doing my homework today, and I only took up half of one page, when I usually take up two and do not write on the back. Before I learned about the sleep mode of the computer, my goal was to turn off the computer any time I was not using it, which was what I was doing all lost night. It was tedious because I always needed the computer for something else after I had finished one task, and then was made to turn it on and log on again. I found out today that this actually does not save energy because of the power required to start up the computer again and again. Tonight I intend to try the sleep mode in stead. As far as eating, last night I chose a snack of leftovers instead of a more processed food like Cheezits. I will try to continue this tonight, although I already anticipate encountering difficulties because it is so much easier to eat processed food than to prepare something. I wish that I could find a healthy, unprocessed snack, which would fill me up, and that might be one of my next goals. However, to some extent I have to eat what my mom provides for me, because I usually do not have time to make meals myself. Overall, the first day of working with these four goals was not extremely challenging, because I have not really started to use the processes, like paper recycling, putting the computer in sleep mode, or finding alternatives to the food that I eat. The one real conflict I have come across is that doing less printing might mean using the computer more, but one of my goals both for this project as well as for my life, is to use the computer less, and I would not want to do all my work on it. I need to be environmentally friendly without compromising other goals.