Kristen Benedict

I definitely felt the uptick in these challenges that I did this week as the number of challenges I was doing grew more. The challenges that I added to my plate for this week, to bring the total number of challenges I was working on to seven, was choosing two-sided printing, learning about and practicing sustainable fashion, and a car share. The challenge that I felt was an easier one of the three was printing two-sided paper when I printed out various assignments for school. One of the classes I take this semester calls for a lot of items to be printed out for class, which I find frustrating because I can easily access the documents on my computer, but making a conscious effort to print less paper by using double sided printing. While I am still using paper, I am not nearly using as much, which makes me feel much better. The most surprising thing I learned from this week’s challenges is the ease at which carpooling on campus is. I felt this way because in many instances my roommates and myself are going to the same location around the same time on campus or off campus so it makes things much better to go all together. We specifically used this more in off campus situations though because a lot of the time walking to class is totally feasible. I think that carpooling has huge benefits but also I think it could be a difficult thing to integrate into my everyday life because there are often situations where people are not able to carpool, but for the most part I would say this is a very good practice to integrate into my life, especially in situations where I am unable to walk where I need to go. 

I think that the challenge this week that I learned the most from this week was to learn about and practice sustainable fashion. I definitely think that this challenge provoked a lot of thought for me because I definitely love fashion and clothes and to learn about how much these products can affect our lives is really transforming, but obviously very believable. Fashion is such an important part of American culture and image of what it means to be American. I think this can even be linked back to the article we read titled “Gas Masks, Pogo, and the Ecological Indian: Earth Day and the Visual Politics of American Environmentalism” as there are images shown to invoke fear in the american people about the pressing issues of climate change in the 70s. The image shows a woman, in a fashionable trench coat with a gas mask on. The contrast here I find to be extremely interesting as this is calling for protection of the environment with the gas mask, but also the fashionable outfit also speaks to fashion, when a lot of the world uses fast fashion and corporations do not pride themselves on using sustainable materials for fashion. I feel as though this image contradicts the importance of protecting the environment while keeping up with fashion trends. 

In learning more about fashion and sustainability, one resource provided through the EcoChallenge helped me to further understand the importance of sustainable fashion. The Fashion Revolution calls for a way to show consumers more ethical ways to fill their wardrobes and further hold companies accountable for accelerating climate change. A fact that blew my mind in my reading was about how 60% of synthetic fabrics are made of fossil fuels and that 85% of materials will end up in landfills as they will not decay and not decompose.  The fashion industry holds a lot of power and thus need to harness that power to make this world a more sustainable and clean place by providing their consumers with sustainable choices. 

For this week of the ego challenge I focused on shutting off the water when I brush my teeth and keeping lights electronics and appliances turned off when I’m not using them. I found these challenges to be more demanding than the meditation and daily walks I focused on the previous week alone. I don’t know if this was just because I was only doing two activities a week ago and now I’m doing four, but I definitely felt myself being more aware of the activities I was doing. I think that I also enjoyed these challenges more deeply because I felt myself making more of an impact. The challenge in turning off the water and turning off my appliances when I was not currently using them, made me realize how careless I am with turning the water and my devices off when I am not using them. I found that these challenges made me even more aware of my surroundings, something that mediation and my daily walks began to make me feel more aware. 

I would say that my greatest surprise as a result of doing these challenges is just how careless I am with these things I take for granted. I never realized how much turning off the water and my devices can make a fundamental change and can really help our environment. I believe that this week has made me far more aware about how I can easily make a difference, especially since there are people across the world who do not have access to fresh water. I need to make an effort to not take these things for granted and work to conserve the things I use in my everyday life. 

I do not really feel that I will have many difficulties trying to integrate these changes into my life. It is truly just a matter of being more aware in my everyday life of my surroundings and working to make any changes I possibly can. I am definitely willing to make these changes more permanent in my life as I really think it is an easy, but also essential way to make a change. As I thought about whether I can make these changes permanent in my life, I thought about the earth day video we watched for homework. As I thought about this video, I was constantly thinking to myself, why don’t we make the changes we focus on for Earth Day an every day goal? It does need to be a drastic change in lifestyle, but it made me feel that there really are everyday changes and adjustments that can be made that really can make a huge difference in our lives. In addition, the Earth Day video made me privy to the fact that we have had so many goals for the earth for so many years and really not much has changed to better our planet, however, by turning off the water and devices, we are all capable of making a change, a change that can help the rest of the world. It really is in our hands. 

I feel that my campus ecochallenge is going pretty well so far. I think for this beginning week I picked activities and challenges that I felt would be easier for me to complete as I begin this journey. However, I have found myself being way more conscious of my actions as I go through my day because of this challenge. More specifically, one of my challenges is to walk for 15 minutes a day, and normally I would go about this every day without really thinking much of it, but I think because of this challenge I have become more aware of this. I definitely think I need to be better at remembering to check in with this website because I often do the challenge and then forget to log it into the website. But I am really glad to have this opportunity to take this challenge and I can only see myself benefitting more and more from it as I add on more challenges.