Behavioral Changes

The most important thing to me in choosing my semester long ecological and social goals was to pick something that i actually could see myself doing. It is very easy to have big fantastic ideas but never actually go through with them, therefore i thought a lot about things that i could work into my already established lifestyle.

First off for my ecological goals, this was much easier for me to outline for myself. I have chosen to make a huge push for waste management and recycling efforts within my house. I love with six other college age kids and after our first week at school we had amassed six can of trash. With a lot of effort of reusing plastic bottles weeding through teh trash for anything that can be recycled we have minimized teh trash down to two can maximum. I have also made a very large push to support the local economy specifically agriculturally. I have begun to buy as many of out fruits and vegetables from local sources i have even started to drive out to small family farms along 89 in order to directly support them. The food is always much better and i feel better about what i am putting into my body while helping the progession of Ithaca at the same time.

My social goals were much more difficult for me to outline. I have decided that as an interior design student i am going to bring the information and thought that i gather in CRP back to my major. We have a semester long project based out of Rochester, NY where i am doing an adaptive reuse of an old clothing factory into a hotel, restaurant, and fitness center my goal is to make the entire facility sustainable and LEED CI certified. My goal within my industry is to show people that luxury and style do not have to be compormisd for sustainability. I plan on doing a lot of research and brining the information that i gather into my class to further their knowledge of the topic. At this point the project is just underway and i have done a lot of gathering of previous examples of hospitality facilities that have been designed and opperated with sustaiability in mind.