Ecochallenge.org

Campus Ecochallenge

Riley DeBaecke

ENST 246: Spring 2022

POINTS TOTAL

0 TODAY
0 THIS WEEK
943 TOTAL

participant impact

UP TO

1.0

advocacy action

completed
UP TO

47

conversations

with people
UP TO

540

gallons of water

have been saved
UP TO

49

miles

not traveled by car
UP TO

610

minutes

spent exercising
UP TO

175

minutes

spent learning
UP TO

352

minutes

spent outdoors
UP TO

1,656

minutes

being mindful
UP TO

200

pounds of CO2

have been saved
UP TO

1.0

public official or leader

contacted

Riley's actions

Simplicity

Go For A Daily Walk Outside

I will take a walk outside for 10 minutes each day.

COMPLETED 37
DAILY ACTIONS

Community

Join my Student Government or Local Group

I will join my neighborhood association, student government, or another local group of decision makers.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Food

Try a New Way to Prep

I will try a new method of food preparation, such as canning, pickling, or baking bread.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Health

Learn About Local Environmental Justice Concerns

I will spend 5 minutes researching environmental justice and environmental racism concerns in my region, who is affected by them, and local initiatives to address these concerns.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Health

Happiness

I will write down three things every day that I am grateful for, or send one email every day thanking or praising someone.

COMPLETED 17
DAILY ACTIONS

Transportation

Advocate for Greener Vehicles

I will spend at least 8 minutes assessing the vehicles used by my company or college and advocate for a purchasing policy focused on fuel-efficient vehicles.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Transportation

Drive Less

I will cut my car trip mileage by only taking necessary trips.

COMPLETED 25
DAILY ACTIONS

Transportation

Work from Home

I will work from home 3 day(s) to avoid my commute's carbon output.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Transportation

Learn More and Advocate

Access to public transportation is a social justice issue! I will learn about the need for public transportation in my community and tell 2 friends or classmates each day about the issue.

COMPLETED 25
DAILY ACTIONS

Waste

Learn About & Practice Sustainable Fashion

I will learn about sustainable fashion and begin trying to practice it in my own life.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Waste

Prevent Recycling Contamination

Contamination prevents what is recyclable from being recycled. I will spend 3 minutes researching which materials are accepted by local haulers or drop stations in my community and recycle only those items.

COMPLETED 25
DAILY ACTIONS

Waste

RESEARCH LOCAL WASTE SITES

I will spend 15 minutes finding out where landfills and/or toxic waste sites are situated in my region and which communities are most impacted by these sites.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Energy

Switch to Cold Water

I will switch to washing my clothes in cold water, saving up to 133 lbs of CO2 a month and 1,600 lbs of CO2 over the course of the next year.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Energy

Learn About Renewable Energy

I will spend 15 minutes learning more about renewable energy alternatives (i.e. solar, wind, biomass) in my region.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Water

5-Minute Showers

I will save up to 20 gallons (75 L) of water each day by taking 5-minute showers.

COMPLETED 27
DAILY ACTIONS

Simplicity

Meditate

I will meditate or create a moment of silence for 5 minute(s) each day to reflect on things important to me.

COMPLETED 33
DAILY ACTIONS

Simplicity

Core Values

We may find more meaning and joy in life when our actions are aligned with our personal values. I will determine what my top 3-5 core values are so that I can better align my actions with them.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Nature

Practice Gratitude for Earth

I will spend 5 minute(s) per day outside, practicing gratitude (prayer, meditation, journaling, etc.) for Earth and my natural surroundings.

COMPLETED 35
DAILY ACTIONS

Energy

Adjust the Thermostat

I will adjust my thermostat down 2 degrees from usual when I use the heat, and up 2 degrees when I use air conditioning.

COMPLETED 32
DAILY ACTIONS

Simplicity

Eat Mindfully

I will eat all of my meals without distractions, e.g., phone, computer, TV, or newspaper.

COMPLETED 37
DAILY ACTIONS

Participant Feed

Reflection, encouragement, and relationship building are all important aspects of getting a new habit to stick.
Share thoughts, encourage others, and reinforce positive new habits on the Feed.

To get started, share “your why.” Why did you join the challenge and choose the actions you did?

Riley DeBaecke 2/21/2022 5:16 AM

Surprisingly, there is no concrete definition of sustainable fashion, but Make it last believes Green Strategy’s definition of “more sustainable fashion” (because the fashion industry relies on fast consumption) is a good start:

“More sustainable fashion can be defined as clothing, shoes and accessories that are manufactured, marketed and used in the most sustainable manner possible, taking into account both environmental and socio-economic aspects. In practice, this implies continuous work to improve all stages of the product’s life cycle, from design, raw material production, manufacturing, transport, storage, marketing and final sale, to use, reuse, repair, remake and recycling of the product and its components.” (Make it last, “What Is Sustainable Fashion?”)

As you can probably surmise from the last sentence, doing “continuous work to improve all stages of the product’s life cycle” is strenuous, and many companies are unwilling or unable to afford putting forth efforts to do so. Moreover, the ones that do are unaffordable for me.

Committing to the practice of sustainable fashion has often seemed out of reach for me, partially because a friend has always given me her clothes when she’s done with them, and I’ve accumulated so many that it feels like I don’t need any more. They also feel “new” to me, and I recognize that I am lucky to have such a constant influx of durable secondhand clothes. However, I have now begun to accumulate many of her clothes, and I still have some she gave me years ago! Once I stop wearing them as much, my two younger sisters usually don’t want to wear them because by that time, they are out of style. Therefore, I am stuck with an ever-growing wardrobe, unwilling to part with many clothing items but running out of space. I am unwilling to part with the items for the common reason of “but what if I need to wear it somewhere someday!”, in addition to my low budget for buying new clothes to replace them (and my internal opposition to buying new clothes unless absolutely necessary).

Based on my research this week and my circumstances, it sounds like I should definitely look into local consignment and thrift stores and make a conscious effort to go through my closet and separate the clothes I haven’t worn in months or years from the ones I wear regularly. This will be my first step towards parting with them. Then, I will take them to Community Aid in Selinsgrove, or one of the new secondhand boutiques on Market Street. It seems that I will also make a little bit of money from selling these clothes, which I can then save to buy more sustainable clothes. I am committed to doing this because I participated in a clothing swap event with the Environmental Club in which I donated an entire bag of clothes in the fall, only to find later that they were taken to Goodwill because it was “easier.” My research tells me that Goodwill often throws away their clothes because they have an overflow of clothing donations. Last year, it trashed over 13 million pounds of waste (NPR)! Goodwill is in a difficult position because they don’t want to discourage donations for fear of not getting enough, but people donate broken, disgusting items—their garbage, mostly—that cannot be reused. Government-sanctioned municipal education programs training citizens how to properly recycle and reuse their household items could be really valuable in curbing this wasteful practice and teaching people how to upcycle their items into new, useful goods.

There are seven forms of sustainable fashion, according to Anna Brismar of Green Strategy. I attached her pie chart delineating these forms to my post. She recommends that all garments involve each of these 7 elements in their life cycle to achieve more sustainability. Right now, clothes from giants like Shein and American Eagle will never fit into many of the categories (much less the first one), but can consumer pressure force them to conform to the sustainable fashion movement beyond empty claims of ethical practices?

Finally, for the Transportation category, I emailed Dr. Victor Udo of the BCSE to ask for the Winter 2021/February 2022 sustainability report and BCSE’s consideration of electric cars or lower parking pass prices for students who bring electric cars to campus. Among the information I shared with them about Lewisburg’s transportation issues, my friends were most surprised to learn that the average Lewisburg household owns two cars, and most Lewisburg residents spend 20 minutes commuting to work (Data USA).

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- Jacqueline Rounsavill 2/24/2022 8:17 AM
  
  Riley,
  
  I also researched sustainable fashion, and I think that you are doing a really good job with this practice. Getting most of your clothing from your friends, rather than spending money on new clothing, is beneficial because it does not require the production of goods (and it also eliminates waste, as your friend gives her old clothes to you instead of throwing them out). I think it is a great idea for you to give some of your clothes to different thrift stores in the area. We have many thrift stores around Bucknell, and I know that “thrifting” is gaining popularity among college students, so this may encourage others to stop buying new clothing as well. I never knew that Goodwill threw out so many of their donations. I have known that clothing makes up a large percentage of our municipal waste, but I never thought that Goodwill contributed to this. I agree that we need to have better education programs so that people are informed about what can be donated. The chart that you provided is really interesting! Large corporations are definitely not deemed sustainable. Through my own Eco-Challenge last week, I actually learned about a new Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act that is trying to get passed in New York. This act will force corporations to disclose 50% of their supply chain and material production volumes and to explain where their supply chain is the most and least sustainable. If they are found to violate the law in unethical practices after a year, they have to give 2% of their revenue to the Department of Environmental Conservation. Hopefully this act will get passed to help mitigate the problem of unsustainable fashion!
  
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- Andrew Stuhl 2/22/2022 1:47 PM
  
  Whoa, so cool Riley! Thanks for this very interesting and well-researched Journal. I really appreciated hearing about your personal connection to donated-clothes and, ugh, how heart-breaking about the donations to GoodWill that end up as trash. Disappointing. Obviously GoodWill is not the problem - the fast fashion industry is. And re: Lewisburg's driving culture -- yikes! A 20 min commute? I wish there was more public transit here. Actually, one form of public transit just started up in our region, tho it does not serve Lewisburg -- it serves the Sunbury / Northumberland / Shamokin Dam / Selinsgrove area. It is called "Stop Hopper" and is free for those 65+ - check it out: https://www.rabbittransit.org/schedules/microtransit-stophopper/
  
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Riley DeBaecke 2/14/2022 4:30 AM

I really struggled with this week’s daily and one-time challenges overall. One of my Energy challenges required me to turn down the thermostat two degrees, which was manageable. I have poor circulation in my hands and feet, so I am glad I rose to the challenge to get this one done. However, I only met the Water challenge I chose once during the whole week, and I came close to it on Sunday night.

Everything is converging at once for me right now: internship choices, a scholarship application I’ve been working on for months, and my application to study abroad. The pressure of completing all of these and the mental and physical energy required to do so is incredibly overwhelming and exhausting, and I’m not doing well physically or mentally. Therefore, even taking a shower is a huge task for me, and my challenge was to take a shower in five minutes every day this week. I have had difficulty keeping my shower time to a minimum in the past, but it has never been as bad as this week, which is of course the week I chose to challenge myself in that area.

I have ADHD, which often causes brain fog and makes completing even small tasks very difficult. When I’m in the shower, I’ll often finish washing one part of my body and then fail to remember whether or not I washed it, prompting me to start over and causing me to spend more time than necessary in the shower. Intense brain fog made showering very difficult this week, and I am embarrassed to even say how long one of my showers was. Nonetheless, I brought the average time down as the week progressed and look forward to hopefully incorporating five-minute showers into my daily routine. It excites me that we do not only have one week to complete a challenge, but if we fail during our chosen week, we can always get back up and do it again next week because the challenge builds on itself.

I also used cold water to wash my clothes, which washed them just as well as warm water would have. I plan to also instill this into my weekly routine because I often have a lot of laundry because I work out so much, so this is a really good thing for me to start doing every time I need to do laundry.

Among the Eco-Challenge resources I read this week, my favorite was an article summarizing Americans’ annual showering water usage. I cannot find the one I read, but it states that Americans use 1.7 trillion gallons of water on showers each year, and Pennsylvania uses 68 billion. Individual actions to abet climate change seem really important in this situation, and I hope to better do my part in that.

Since this challenge inspired me, I plan to be much more conscious about my energy usage and will hopefully perform an audit on my dorm room. Right now, it is difficult to incorporate these into my daily life, but I am optimistic knowing this is a lifelong commitment.

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- Joelle Kim 2/14/2022 12:08 PM
  
  Hey Riley Thank you for sharing your week.
  I was right there with you when you shared about so many things piled up at once that you barely had time to be mindful of something other than your work/deadlines. I am sorry that you are going through a rough time. Yet, I am inspired by you that you kept making throughout the week to remind you of these habits. That is a huge commitment, and it shows that you are capable of fulfilling and even expanding these goals further and longer.
  Also thank you for sharing these statistics. I was also shocked to see how much water is spent each year. Thinking how much of them is not actually being used for the good, but rather wasted while other countries are in lack of water made me reflect back on my habits as well as a room for improvement.
  Definitely being a college student, while looking for opportunities beyond campus, is not the best position to be in to incorporate these practices into our lives, especially that most of us live in dormitories where students do not have control over most of the stuff. I also am frustrated to see communal bathrooms with lights on 24/7 or less control over thermostats. However, like I said before, with your authentic and optimistic attitude, I believe you will be able to achieve far more than you are doing right now.
  
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Riley DeBaecke 2/07/2022 4:29 AM

I really enjoyed and benefitted from this first week of the EcoChallenge, and it is heartening to see that my classmates did, too. I have a lot on my plate in these first four weeks of school, and taking the time to meditate for five minutes and spend five minutes appreciating nature each day has kept me grounded and reduced my stress immensely. On Thursday night, facing a looming deadline, I closed my laptop and meditated for five minutes because I had not yet meditated that day, and I inspired my partner to do the same because he could see how calming it was for me. I hope our class activism will inspire other members of the campus community to be more mindful as well.

On Wednesday afternoon, I left the KLARC and stopped by the Lewisburg Cemetery on my way home. I walked up the path dividing the two sides of the graveyard, taking this trip partially to try to make myself more comfortable with the idea of death. This short journey was a combination of meditation and walking in nature, for I was also trying to conceptualize the ways graveyards are natural spaces. In a tech-filled world, they seem so natural to me because the graves are made of stone instead of plastic or metal. It is incredible to me that some of the gravestones in the Lewisburg Cemetery were created as early as 1820, and their inscriptions are still legible. I also tried to think about whether or not I want to be buried after death, and I wondered whether or not the many square miles of graveyards in the US occupy land Indigenous peoples previously lived on—and whether or not that land could have been designated for a more environmental purpose. Graveyards are probably great ecosystems, but I think that if forests were cleared for the creation of graveyards, then the original state of the land is more environmentally valuable. I think about this in conjunction with urban sprawl, for which the same argument can be made; since building housing and businesses seems pretty non-negotiable at this point, I wonder if we must start thinking about how we use other spaces like graveyards that are lower on the priority list of land usage.

On that note, I look forward to expanding my mind and knowledge of individual environmental practices during these next few weeks of the EcoChallenge. I wish to challenge myself more; this week, I chose challenges I knew I’d be able to complete. Eating mindfully, too, boosted my week; like Dr. Stuhl, I often work while eating, and it was quite humbling to have to sit alone with my thoughts for a few meals.

My one-time challenge for this week asked me to think of my top 3-5 core values and how I can incorporate them into my daily life. I often did this during meditation, and the writing I’ve been doing lately has also forced me to understand myself better in this way. I centered on compassion, balance, and understanding, and I will specifically work on balancing my commitments better this coming week. My chosen activities combined perfectly in my period of mental unrest, in which I was “in a funk about myself and what I’m achieving, or, rather, not achieving, overwhelmed by the obstacles and complications of life” (“If Meditation Is Not Your Thing, Try a Walk in the Woods”). I am not opposed to indoor meditation, but I did recognize an overwhelming sense of peace when walking through the graveyard and appreciating the icicles on the crab apple trees on Friday night. I know this challenge will teach me to exist more mindfully in nature and use it to benefit my mental and physical health throughout the rest of my life.

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