Nina Benson

Word Count: 568

 
In the third week of the Eco-Challenge I decided to explore my area, fix a leaky faucet, add 2 more servings to vegetables to my diet a day, adopt a “needs vs wants” approach, and meditate for 15 minutes a day in addition to challenges from the previous weeks. The tasks I added this week are all things that I should and want to be doing but have difficulty in finding motivation to do so on my own. That makes this challenge a great opportunity to get into habits that I want to continue past this challenge. 

            
The one time challenges I picked to fix a leaky faucet is something that recently came up, so I put in a work order and it was fixed surprisingly quickly. In terms of exploring the area, I went to a trail about 10 minutes away that looks over the Susquehanna. I don’t remember the name of it, but it had a great view of the water and the trail itself was very well kept which made me happy. I have gone up one other before since being at Bucknell and I enjoy exploring the area, sadly I just don’t have a lot of time to do so. 

            
Last year I started going to yoga on Monday nights and it was something I really enjoyed starting my week off with. At the end of every class we would do 15 minutes of mindfulness, so I thought this would be a good thing to incorporate into my daily challenges. The challenge I can think of as to why I would not continue to do this is time and stress. While I know taking 15 minutes and practicing meditation would relieve stress and it realistically doesn’t take that much time, it still is a lot when the only thing on my mind is the 100 other things I have to do afterwards. However, this isn’t always a bad thing as meditation isn’t clearing one’s mind, it is instead paying attention to what is happening now and how I am reacting or feeling about it. (Gelles, How to Meditate) This can often make stressful situations less stressful as you’re forcing yourself to think calmly about it as opposed to panic and often times it ends with me no longer thinking about whatever has been stressful.

Adopting a “needs vs wants” approach when buying items hasn’t been that challenging, I just have to stay away from online shopping. However, while this isn’t a big deal to me, and is actually saving me money, I am also doing my part to combat consumerism which is big in a world where the idea of sufficiency has almost completely gone away. (ZeroWasteSG, The idea of sufficiency) Adding two extra servings of fruits and vegetables a day, to me means, ordering a fruit or vegetable with for every meal. This has been good for me as I have been needing to eat more vegetables, but I often find myself at the end of the day thinking about what I ate and then having an apple or banana if I haven’t had enough. This is something I may keep up after the challenge as it has made snacking healthier. The only barrier that will come up is when I run out of them in my room and they aren’t on the top of the list or a good enough reason for me to go to the store and buy more. 

 

 

The New York Times, How to Meditate. David Gelles, https://www.nytimes.com/guides/well/how-to-meditate

 

ZeroWasteSG, Buy and Use Only What You Need. 2008, http://www.zerowastesg.com/2008/12/08/buy-and-use-only-what-you-need/

 

Word count: 595

 
Leaving the second week of our Eco-challenge the one difficultly that stood out to me is as simple as not remembering all of the tasks I was to complete in a given day. A lot of the tasks I have chosen, such as offering to help 2 people a day, aren’t something difficult to do, but the issue lies in remembering to do it. The one-time challenge I chose this week was to switch to cold water when washing clothes. This is an easy thing to do and even good for your clothes, but it once again, before doing my laundry this week I almost started my machines without making the switch. This says a lot as to why more people aren’t as environmentally friendly as they could be, it inconveniences them. While there are many small things that will make a big impact in the environment people don’t want to spend the extra energy to inconvenience themselves for the good of the environment if they don’t see the immediate benefits. 

As a computer science major the task that I thought would help me make the largest impact on the environment is powering down my computer when not using it. I have always been in the bad habit of, once I’m done with my work, close the lid of my computer, not shut it down completely. However, the misconception that because applications aren’t running neither is your computer, is false, your hardware still is and using energy that could very easily be conserved by just powering down (Smarter House 2015, Give your laptop a rest). While this is annoying when I go to use my computer and then remember that I must turn it back on again and wait for it to rebook, I see this as a task I will continue to do after the challenge. I have been finding that my applications run much more smoothly, my battery lasts much longer, and I am taking “a student’s biggest energy hog” out of the equation for more hours of the day (Smarter House, 2015, Give your laptop a rest). 

Removing a straw from my lifestyle a day is the 3rd daily challenge I decided to adopt this week as I already don’t use straws very often and have many reusable ones in my room. This has been an easy fix and now that I am aware that over 500,000,000 plastic straws are used each day, I do not want to be a part of that number (plasticpollutioncoalition, 2018, The Last Plastic Straw). I had already known that plastic destroys the ecosystem of our oceans, but I did not realize the large portion of that destruction related to plastic straws. It is so easy when buying a drink to say, “no straw please” and instead bring one from home or take the lid off and drink it straight from the container. This is another challenge that I think I will continue to do after our Eco challenge is complete. 

Beginning this week, I added the challenges, saying no to 1 plastic straw a day, powering off my computer when not in use, offering to help 2 people a day, and switching to cold water when washing my clothes. Once I got past the initial forgetfulness, I started becoming more aware once these situations arose and it was easy to act in response. Turning off my computer has become the easiest task as this is something, I do every day, and once I got in the habit makes complete sense. However, remembering to use cold water when washing clothes has been the most difficult as this is something I have to do only once a week. 

 

Smarter House, Shrink your Dorm Print, 2015. https://smarterhouse.org/resources/shrink-your-dorm-print

Plasticpollutioncoalition, The Last Plastic Straw, 2018. https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/no-straw-please/

 

 

Word count: 667

 
Leaving the first week of the Eco-Challenge I chose to eat 2 meals a day either vegan or vegetarian and write down 3 things a day that I am grateful for or send one email and the one-time challenge of watching 2 documentaries on food sovereignty. I watched an episode from the episode series Rotten: Cod is Dead, on Cod Fishing and an episode from the series Cooked, Fire on how people have evolved and now cook food.

The daily challenges I chose this week I found surprisingly more difficult than I had anticipated. I am not a big meat eater to begin with, so I didn’t think it would be difficult to get rid of meat from 2/3 of my meals a day. I have been successful with this since the beginning of the challenge, but I find myself being more mindful of what I put in my body. This just shows how unconscious we are of what is in the foods we are putting in our bodies. Writing down three things a day I am grateful for was definitely good for me at the end of the day, even though it may not be easy to come up with. It is so easy to say that today has been long and awful after school, practice, and knowing you still have so much to do, so it was good for me to sit down and come up with 3 things I am grateful for. As the week has progressed, I found myself noticing little good things that I may have not noticed before. The documentary I watched on Cod Fishing really opened my eyes to the abusive nature of fishing. Everybody knows that animals cultivated to be eaten usually live in bad conditions and are neglected, but nobody thinks about fish. The sheer amount of fish that are caught per year is more than people would ever be able to eat. This abundance then caused fish to be used in animal foods and other products that we wouldn’t necessarily expect. Eventually we saw that this would drain the oceans of all fish. The argument between money and the environment once again came up and was brought to Congress, however it is impossible to know exactly how many fish are in the seas, making it hard for Congress to place regulations that work both for the environment and fishermen that rely on this trade. The next documentary I watched on how humans have evolved to cook with fire explained how, after centuries of humans cooking their food before eating it, humans have become dependent on specifically soft foods. This dependency has made it so that if humans lost the ability to make fire the would not survive.

In terms of continuing on with these challenges I don’t think I will continue to write down three things a day that I am grateful for, but I do want to continue to be able to after a long day sit down and think of with three things that have happened that I can be grateful for. As I said before I already don’t eat much meat and after looking at an article from The Meat Eater’s Guide, I’ve learned that if every person went one day a week without meat and cheese it would be the equivalent of not driving 91 billion miles. A day a week without meat and cheese doesn’t seem like much, but if everyone were to do it, it would make a monumental difference. (Environmental Working Group, 2011, 1) As well as the impact to the environment it is healthier to not eat meat as you aren’t consuming secondhand the toxins that are fed to the animals we consume. By switching to a vegan or vegetarian diet $1 trillion could be saved in healthcare. (Project Drawdown, 2014) After learning about how much eating meat impacts the environment and my health, I can see this being something that I will continue after this challenge has ended. 

 

Meat Eater’s Guide. Environmental Working Group, 2011 

 

Plant-Rich Diet. Project Drawdown, 2014 https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/food/plant-rich-diet