Everyday I look out my window and see trash. Everywhere. It’s fast food wrappers and single use coffee cups scattered on the sides of the roads, its plastic shopping bags blowing in the wind wrapping around tree branches and red solo cups scattered around apartment buildings. In case you don’t believe me, here is a picture of a literal bag of 
garbage just sitting in my backyard. College kids are animals. Anyway, the point is that trash is everywhere. We live in a throw-away culture where we value convenience and ease of use over sustainability and the health of the Earth.
I hate the thought of how little we care about the planet. I hate all the plastic, all the trash and the convenience-first (and company first), earth-second way of life. So last semester I decided to start recycling. It was going really well, and I felt like I was making a difference. I made my roommates sort their garbage out into different bins I had in the kitchen and I’d haul it to the recycling center. I felt like I was making a difference. But one day I came to the realization that recycling isn’t the problem, our consumption of plastic is.
Don’t get me wrong, recycling is helping the problem. But the trouble with plastic is, it can only be melted down so many times before it’s useless and is thrown in a landfill (or ends up in the oceans). So that means a good amount of the time I spent carefully rinsing, sorting and taking my trash to the recycling center was a waste (no pun intended). When I found out all plastic eventually ends up in a landfill, I was furious. I felt like an idiot for all the time I wasted recycling and feeling so proud that I was making a difference. I know now that recycling does make a huge difference, but I also know that in addition to recycling, I needed to reduce my consumption of plastic to really make an impact with this problem.
Because of this realization, I’ve decided to shift the theme of my lifestyle blog to sustainable living, which seems fitting since I’m shifting my lifestyle to be a more sustainable person. The aim of this blog is so readers can see there are easy ways to be an earth-friendly citizen, and it’s much more achievable than they think.
Some blogs and podcasts can make sustainable living seem expensive and difficult to achieve. Not everyone has zero waste grocery stores where you bring your own containers, and not everyone can afford a $30 stainless-steel bento box to pack their lunch in, you know? So I decided that I’m going to take it upon myself to learn how to be sustainable in an affordable and easy way, and while I learn, I will share my discoveries with all of you.
I hope this blog will have a rippling effect, and that the changes I make to my life will inspire some of you to do the same. Leading by example is sometimes the only way to implement change, and it is my goal to do exactly that. So, without further ado, you can find my first blog post about sustainable grocery shopping here. Stay tuned for more stories on my triumphs and failures at becoming a more sustainable citizen. Thanks for reading!
THE EARTH'S AGENDA 