Growing up I lived in a very modern and urbanized town in central Connecticut called Glastonbury. No one I knew farmed, composted, grew their own food, or even recycled for that matter. I drove across town multiple times a day, meeting my friends who also drove to the same location, threw away food that I didn’t end up eating after a meal, ate meat without hesitation, kept my lights/ TV on when I was not in the room, and participated in even more activities on a daily basis that had a negative impact on the environment. My parents grew up doing the same things, and I didn’t really learn much about protecting the environment in school. I always knew that there were more energy conserving ways to go about my daily routine, but I never thought twice about switching things up strictly out of habit and convenience. I was also very naïve about the effects my daily actions actually had on the environment as a whole. Now that I have started to learn more about the environment, and how we all need to do better in order to save it, I have become more aware and conscious about the habits I have and the decisions I make and how these can negatively affect our planet. As I pursue my pathway in Professional and Civic Engagement, I have taken these newfound insights to redefine my professional goals and change my daily habits that have negative impacts on the environment and learn more on how to have a positive impact.
My sophomore year at USC I took comparative literature (CPLT 150) as an easy online elective to fulfill a core credit. I wasn’t planning on being interested in the course material since I never really enjoyed reading and this class had nothing to do with my major, but each week we tied real-life lessons to different stories that we would read. One of the more valuable things I remember from that class is “the land ethic”. The land ethic is a concept developed by Aldo Leopold calling to action the change of behavioral interactions that humans have with the physical land in which we live. The idea of the land ethic is simply caring about people, about land, and about strengthening the relationships between them. In his essay, Leopold expands the definition of community to not only include human interactions, but all other parts of the earth as well, down to the soils beneath the grass. His main focus is for humanity to consider the land as a part of their community. “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” I never really thought about the land/ earth in those terms before the class, it was always just kind of there. I had taken for granted that something so important to my daily life as the land that I never even paid much attention to it at all. After completing this course, I have become very aware of issues such as pollution and climate change. I believe if everyone read and followed Leopold’s idea of the land ethic, a lot of these environmental problems could be addressed and resolved.
Reading and learning about the land ethic definitely helped put my daily actions into perspective. Although I have a very long way to go to consider myself as being extremely energy conscious, I have definitely improved on my habits in small ways to try and gain a bigger and better respect for the environment and create a community with the land that I live on. I bought a separate trash can for recycling, I walk to class (even when I am feeling extra lazy), I portion my food and save what I don’t think I will eat for another day, take shorter showers, reduce my TV time, and open my windows for more natural light so I don’t use energy powered lights as much. These small changes don’t make much difference in my day to day life and do not present any major inconveniences, but they have positive effects on the environment, even if I can’t exactly calculate and quantify their impact. If we all made small changes like these, energy usages could be reduced, and pollution would decrease.
My Blog post for my class explains in detail Leopoldo’s concept of the Land Ethic and how I assessed its utility in explaining what I considered my community before this lesson, and what I now would consider as a part of my community. I also talk about my land ethic and my opinion on how everyone else views land. My blog post below from January 30th, 2019 elaborates how I consider my friends as a main part of my community, and I now consider land to be a large part of my community after learning more about the Land Ethic. I then go on to discuss that the average person probably would not consider the land to be a part of their community, and their relation to land is strictly economical and entails privileges, but not obligations.
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Me: Post beach clean up in
Honolulu, Hawaii
When I went abroad the spring semester of my junior year in 2020, I spent a day in Hawaii where I was able to participate in a beach clean-up with one of my classes. We met with a local resident of the island who participates in weekly beach clean ups where he told us a lot of information about the increasing pollution of our oceans and the effects that it has on the animals that live in the oceans and the beaches. One thing we learned about was the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which we actually ended up passing through. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest accumulation of plastic in the world and is located between Hawaii and California. There’s approximately 80,000 tons of plastic that float in this area and has an extreme effect on not just marine life, but humans as well. He told us about how we need to start treating marine life as a part of our community, which made me think about Leopold’s land ethic, and how animals are included as a part of “our” land that we need to start respecting and loving.
Over the past few years, as I have adopted Leopold’s land ethic to include the environment in my definition of community, I have consciously switched my consumption habits and products that I use in order to do my part in helping preserve the environment. For example, my dad put me in charge of finding a pet friendly outdoor rug because he knew I had a passion for decorating. I personally couldn’t care less what rug we put on my patio, but I became interested when I saw that they sold rugs made out of recycled soda bottles! I showed my dad, and he also loved the concept (and the price). Pictured below is the rug that we bought (in a different color) and my dog enjoying it:
It is very fascinating how this rug was made from recycled bottles. Just like the description said, who knew recycled bottles could look so good? The outdoor rug is just one example that you don’t have to sacrifice design, looks, or even price of products to make the switch to a more environmentally friendly option. As a result, I was able to share my formulation of Leopold’s “land ethic” concept to my dad and even my dog, who loves the rug.
My goal and dream ever since middle school has been to open my own clothing/ beauty store in the future. When I entered college, I kept this dream in mind when deciding to major in entrepreneurship and marketing, and minor in retail. Whenever people ask me what my plans are after college my typical answer is “I have no idea, but I just want to make enough money to be able to open my own store one day”. After seeing all of these innovative, cool, and practical products that have positive effects on the environment, I have expanded on my goal into opening my own store where nothing is tested on animals or caused any harm to our land while being made. This has become a core value for me as I plan my future professional goals. I think that it is important that I keep this aspect of my goal for not only my piece of mind, but also to make my dreams have a bigger and more important message and meaning. I believe that everyone should make it a goal to try and treat the land like they’re a community in the spirit of Leopold and be more conscious of the energy that they are using. Doing this will not only benefit you, but the world we all live in.