brooke shepherd

The two daily challenges that I added on to the last week was writing down three things that I’m thankful for or sending a text a day thanking or praising someone. It felt good to add this to my daily routine in order to add a positive aspect to my day. It’s very easy to get caught up in the same routine of doing work and going to class, which can take a negative toll on your day. However, after writing down three things that I’m grateful for it has added a positive peace of mind to my day. Also, I reached out to my mom one day, my grandparents another day and caught up with a few of my friends from home. Normally during my day, I feel like I’m too busy to make the time to have a 15-30 minute conversation with people. However, I felt that this was easy to incorporate into my day and I think that I will consider adding this challenge to my life to some extent. The other daily challenge that I added was taking a 10-minute walk each day. I felt that it was nice to walk around without class being my end destination. I decided to walk downtown to Amami with my friend. It was cold, but it was also a nice break from riding in a car. Also, not riding in a car saved miles and further helped the environment without me trying to. One of the one-time challenges that I decided to add this week was exploring a new nature walk. The walk that I went on was called the Rail Trail, which I have heard great things about. It is on the road as if you were going to Ards Farm, which is not that far from Bucknell’s campus. It was relaxing to have an out of Bucknell experience, and would definitely recommend people to take this walk. It was a very aesthetically pleasing scenery with the farmlands and the openness of the trail. For my other eco-challenge, I read about the additional sources for food deserts. Food deserts are described as an urban area where it is difficult to buy affordable or good quality fresh food. One of the sources that I read was about how people can bring good food to poor neighborhoods. One of the ideas that I found interesting was incorporating a farm to school program in urban areas. Many of the food programs that schools use consist of unhealthy and unsustainable food options. However, farm-to-school programs aim to make lunches more sustainable and more appetizing by sourcing ingredients from local farms. One of the other resources that I spent time researching was for Goal 2: Zero Hunger. This goal stated as “By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular, the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round”. One of the main problems that we have today in the world of food is figuring out how to combat the present issue of hunger, while also making our food processing methods that we use today more sustainable. I thought that this was a very entertaining topic to learn about and I’m glad that I spent my time researching it. Overall, I’m proud of my accomplishments that I have done throughout the eco-challenge. Towards, the end, the biggest challenge was making sure that I remembered to complete all of my daily challenges. After this week, I couldn’t imagine adding more challenges to my daily routine. Some of the challenges that I have completed can be added to my life, as they proved to be feasible and not too much of a burden.

Going into the new challenges in Week 3, I have found that the challenges from early on have become second nature for me. The new daily challenges that I added this week were helping 3 people each day, taking 5-minute showers and 2-sided printing. One of the ways that I helped one of my friends was peer-editing her paper. She needed someone to look over her paper for grammatical errors and transition sentences, so knowledge about the subject of the paper wasn’t necessary for me. It felt rewarding to help her with her paper and she appreciated that I was willing to devote my time to help her. One of the additional sources for this daily challenge talked about how a neighborhood created a fix-it shop for broken items. The “repair cafe,” was when once a season locals can bring broken household items like vacuums, bicycles, and clothes for repair. This allowed for community members to interact with each other, while also saving the money and energy to buy a new item when it could be fixed. The other source that I read talked about how people are working with immigrant families to create contingency plans if their family members were to be deported. The combination of two groups of people helping each other is inspiring for the future. The 5-minute shower daily challenge is feasible to complete, but I won’t continue it after the eco-challenge is over. Normally I try to take shorter showers anyways, but 5 minutes leaves me a little on edge when taking a shower. I don’t like feeling like I’m on a timer when I’m in the shower, which is why I won’t continue it after the challenge is over. The last daily challenge that I decided to complete was switching to 2-sided printing. Many of my classes require readings for homework, so I felt better about printing large amounts of paper with it two-sided. In the future, I will continue to print 2-sided because it was easy to incorporate into my routine. One of the one-time challenges that I completed was learning about food sovereignty. The documentary that I chose to watch was based in Haiti, and it talked about how food sovereignty was the way to rebuild their country after it was struck by an earthquake. Their main crop in Haiti is rice, and over 80% of it was being imported into the country. The farmers wanted food sovereignty to make rice production more local and be able to produce their own crops. Also, with the localization of agriculture production, there will be less energy wasted on importing goods. I found the topic of food sovereignty to be very interesting and I’m glad that I got to learn about it. The second daily challenge that I completed was learning about native communities. One of the sources discussed how a man made it possible to tag indigenous names to your hiking location, which allows hikers to connect to the history behind their hiking trail. The other source that I read talked about how learning about native movements can benefit activists today. We can learn about native-led movements in environmental activism and the tactics that they used in relation to movements today. Overall, I feel as though the new challenges are hard to balance with the older ones, but not too difficult as some have become second nature. I’m looking forward to pushing myself in the last week of the eco-challenge to see how environmentally friendly I can act.

Sources:

Compared to the EcoChallenges that we participated in last week, this week added another layer of difficulty with the additional EcoChallenges. The three daily challenges that I participated in this week were weekly meal planning, reducing animal consumption and meditating. These two challenges were easy to incorporate into my daily life, even though they have a large positive impact. For the weekly meal planning challenge, when I went to the grocery store at the beginning of the week I was more mindful of what I was purchasing. I decided to make a list of everything that I actually needed, in order to prevent myself from buying excess goods. Especially when it comes to produce items, they can go bad easily and then it ends up in the trash can. Also, having a list prevented me from buying additional snacks that I didn’t need. When I walk around the grocery store, it is easy to pick up items that I think look good, even if I don’t actually need them. For my other daily challenge, I decided to eat a vegetarian meal at least once a day. This challenge was not too difficult for me to complete because I usually eat around 2 meals a day with snacks in between. The meal that I choose to eat vegetarian is usually lunch, and then I include chicken in my dinner meal. The last daily challenge that I chose to participate in was meditating for 5 minutes daily. I chose to do this challenge at night, which is a nice way to disconnect before I go to bed. Emily told me that she meditates every day, even before she started doing the EcoChallenge. She told me how it is a nice way to ease into going to bed, instead of staring at a screen. This challenge also coupled with my reducing screen time. Before starting week 2 of the EcoChallenge, I minimized my screen use by 30 minutes in the morning by delaying checking my phone. After adding the meditation practice to my daily challenges, I’m further advancing my minimization of screen use. The daily challenge that I decided to complete was replacing 2 incandescent lightbulb(s) with Energy Star-certified LED bulbs. For this challenge, I simply bought new lightbulbs online and replaced them with the two light fixtures that I have in my room. I chose to read the additional resources for my daily challenge of limiting my meat intake. One of the resources, titled “Meat Eater’s Guide” talked about how eating less meat has significant impacts on climate-saving actions. Meat production creates several greenhouse gas emissions that negatively contribute to the overall wellness of our atmosphere. The transportation, waste, and processing of meat all release harmful emissions. One fact that I found interesting from the article was how if I eat one less burger per week, it’s equivalent to taking my car off of the road for 320 miles. This statistic made me feel satisfied in my daily challenge because this statistic referred to once per week, and I am completing this challenge everyday. The other resource that I read for this daily challenge was Chef Bryant Terry’s books on animal-free cooking. The variety of these books show how adapting to a meatless diet is not such a daunting task. I always thought of veganism as a radical lifestyle change, but after reading additional sources on adopting a meatless lifestyle, it doesn’t seem like such a drastic change. Although I’m not immediately going to change the way I eat entirely and cut out meat, it could seem like a potential option in the future. After participating in week 2 of the EcoChallenge, I am eager to continue adding on daily and one-time challenges to further benefit my ecological footprint on the environment.

Experimenting with the daily and one-time challenges this week was not too difficult. Before we started the EcoChallenge, I described my one-word feeling as “nervous” when we had our class discussion. After this week, I see how it can be feasible to incorporate these challenges into my life. The two daily challenges that I have been completing are de-cluttering my dorm room and limiting social media by decreasing 30 minutes. De-cluttering my dorm room has definitely made my room feel bigger, which is important when my room isn’t that big to begin with. Getting rid of unnecessary clothes and buying fewer items to put on my dresser has made my room feel more spacious. Also, underneath my bed and inside my closet tends to get cluttered with items that I don’t need. The other daily challenge that I have been completing is spending 30 minutes less on social media. Normally when I wake up in the morning, my first instinct is to check my phone to see my notifications. After starting the challenge, I have been waiting until after 30 minutes when I originally wake up to check my phone. I have liked completing this challenge because I feel a sense of stress when I check my phone and remember all that I have to complete that day. Being disconnected from social media in the morning allows for a smoother transition into my day. I was pleasantly surprised by how much more relaxed I felt after not waking up and immediately checking my phone. These two daily challenges have not provided any barriers that would prevent me from completing them in the future. They have been easy to incorporate into my life and I plan on continuing them even after we complete our EcoChallenge. The one-time challenge that I had completed was going paperless. I tried to limit the number of readings that I printed out for classes and read them online instead. Even though I don’t enjoy reading off of a screen, it makes a big impact when I have to use paper to print out a 30-page paper. After reading the additional resources for limiting social media use, I think that I can make this change more permanent in my life. One of the sources that were helpful was “6 Apps and Programs That’ll Help Limit Your Time on Social Media”. One app that caught my attention was the “Offtime” app. This app helps limit your social media time by disabling notifications which will help you remain more focused on your work. I think that this app can be useful when I need to complete a large amount of work and I don’t want to be distracted. The idea of disconnecting from social media when doing work could lead to better work. This concept was further explained in another additional resource for limiting social media, “The Top 10 Things I Learned From Limiting Social Media For 2 Weeks”. This article talked about how without technology, John Domingo was able to complete his tasks more productively. He quoted “With this separation from the phone, I was able to complete a project in two days that would have normally taken a week”. In our daily lives, we are subjected to checking our phone very frequently, even if we don’t realize it. My positive experience from minimizing my social media use was parallel to the additional resources that I read for my daily challenge. Overall, I’m looking forward to continuing with my challenges and adding on more as we progress in our course to see how eco-friendly I can make my life.