Ben Clark

The two daily challenges that I added for this week were to eat two meatless meals daily as well to walk at least two miles daily instead of driving. The two meatless meals has become something that I have been able to take pride in and has been less difficult than I imagined. What I have done is eat a salad with a lot of seeds / nuts for lunch which has served as my second meatless meal of the day. Similarly, I now look for vegetarian options whenever we go out to eat. While I am bad about logging what I have written, when I take the time daily to write down 3 thinks that I am helpful for, I check off my daily challenges. For my one time weekly challenge last week, I challenged myself to go paperless. Where I found this most difficult was while cooking and my use of paper towels. My house usually buys the recycled / compostable ones. However, we went and purchased a lot of hand / dish towels that we could wash as an alternative to paper towels. 

While not one of my one time challenges last week, I took the time on Friday morning to to Bald Eagle State Park and fish Penns Creek. Fly-Fishing is something that I have been doing for 10+ years now and it always serves as a great way for me to get back to nature and clear my head. I drove out at 5:30am so I could experience the sunrise out on the water. What made the trip so great is that as I walked down to the water, I saw a black bear on the other side of the river. However, when they heard me he/she ran back into the woods. Ive only seen a bear one other time out in nature so it was a really cool experience. 

This week, the two weekly challenges that I added were to switch to cold water. While the eco challenge calls for switching to cold water when washing your clothes, I am going to try to switch to cold showers as well. I have heard that there are numerous other benefits to taking cold showers so I am excited to start incorporating that into my daily routine - for at least one shower. The other daily challenge that I did was adjust the thermostat. I have a window AC unit in my house and am very conscious to turn it off whenever I leave the room. Similarly, as it beginning to cool off, I haven't had my AC on and I've just been using a fan to cool off my room. 

The two one time challenges that I have decided to do this week is to learn about sustainable fashion as well as find a local recycling depot. Sustainable fashion is something that I have known and practiced for the last few years. I buy a significant amount of clothes second hand and resell stuff online or at local thrift stores when I am done with them. The part of sustainable fashion that I enjoy the most is that often there is a great back story to a lot of the pieces that you buy and there is a community of people who buy and resell vintage clothing. The other one time challenge that I am taking on for the week is to find a local recycling depot. Recycling is something that our house struggles with as not everyone in the house is conscious of what is recyclable and we do not have recycling at our house so we have to take our stuff on campus or to a recycling facility for stuff to be properly recycled. Hence, this is something I am excited to see if I can make a difference in our house regarding our recycling efforts. 

For the first week of our eco-challenge, I choose to consume two meals every day that had organic ingredients as well as a personal goal of writing down three things daily that I am grateful for. Purchasing organic ingredients is something that I do regularly. Hence, I just worked to be slightly more cognizant of it while shopping for groceries. Similarly, I though a good way to do this was to go to the local farmers market which I plan on doing this Wednesday morning. My goals for the first week of the eco-challenge go hand in hand on Wednesday mornings as my grandparents actually live locally and going to the farmers market on Wednesdays is something me and my grandpa have been doing for the past year. Its something I am very thankful for. For the rest of the week, I attempted to write down three things that I was thankful for which was a nice way to take a step back and not live in the moment as much. I've been pleasantly surprised by the campus eco challenge. At first, I thought it would potentially turn into a nuisance. However, I have gotten a lot of personal satisfaction from completing the daily challenges. 

This week, the two new challenges I chose to implement into my daily routine was to consume one meatless/vegan meal a day and to walk instead of drive for at least two trips daily. Last year I attempted to consume two meatless meals daily for a month straight and it proved much more difficult that I had imagined. However, I now have access to a kitchen living off campus which I'm hoping will make completing these challenges significantly easier. Similarly, when you are at the store purchasing you (organic) groceries, its easy to plan out meals while accounting for the eco challenge goals. Implementing the walking goal I believe will be difficult for me. I ride a moped around campus which is incredibly convenient. However, It's currently not working hence I thought this would be the perfect time to implement this challenge. I'm very cognizant of the carbon footprint that my car has as well. Therefore, I do try and always carpool places or not drive. While I'm at home in Atlanta this is very easy as Midtown is very walkable with decent public transportation options. However, Lewisburg is much more spread out in comparison and walking places becomes more of a hassle / too time consuming. On the positive side, I believe walking will be a nice way to slow down and take some personal time. Quarantine has given me free time that I have never had while in college, so I took up skateboarding again which has proved to be a nice new way to get around campus. 

The one time challenge that I decided to do this week was to go paperless. For me, this will be most difficult with books. I really enjoy reading paperback books vs. reading off of a kindle or my computer. I generally print off all of my readings for class so I can annotate/take notes on a hard copy. I know all of this is do-able online, however its a habit I've become accustomed too. I like to tell myself that if environmental books, such as the green new deal, offer paper copies, than the impact can't be that severe.