Clarissa Hand

Mid Journal 4

Word count: 516

Overall, I am really struggling in trying to figure out the balance between all of this. I think it is supper interesting how there are certain components that I forgot were part of the challenge. For example, the whole food diet had just bounce part of my daily life. This great because that is why I choose that to be my goal in the first place. 

With that being said there are definitely components of the challenges that I forget about in my day to day life. For example, I forget about how long I should take showers for. It is typically part of the relaxing section of my day so I am not thinking about school. This moment and others when lifestyle interests with my academic commitments definitely diminish my success in those challenges. 

I definitely want to make powering down my computer a common habit. Being a student, I am always using my computer so it is hard to determine when that is the case. However, when I have classes for going to bed, basically any time when I have a strong understanding when I am going to use my computer next, I have found it very helpful to power down my computer. It also minimizes the amount of time I have to spend looking for a computer charger.

It was difficult to determine what cleaning products the custodial staff uses. I also do not know what the legislation and policies are in determining what cleaning products are used. All I know is that it has a very aggressive smell which does not smell natural in the slightest. I think it would also be interesting to look into initiatives for cleaning products for the custodial staff. This would be a helpful initiatives for environmental change as well as the en

There also was an article illustrating the more sustainable alternatives between various appliance that are common in a dorm room. I found this to be particularly interesting considering our current state. For example, they recommend that I replace a microwaves with an electric kettle if I am using iit to boil water. Also I really want to get a Smart Power strip where the individual outlets are allocated to specific energy output.

Also the EWG has a guide with the top sustainable and green product appliances that I sent to my mom.  I Think she appreciated seeing these alternative. I personally found it difficult to do a cleaning audit since I do not use the cleaning products in the dorms, but my mom uses these cleaning products. I would like to think that I have control over that and can influence her decisions given a cleaner alternative. I definitely want to make this choice a more permanent one. I also did some outside research and there is a lot of chemicals that are thrown away if the packaging is damaged. I think it would be a great way to reduce the waste of perfectly good cleaning supplies that I could also get at a discounted price.

(Word Count: 608) This week, the additional daily challenge I decided to embark was going on daily walks. While I do always walk to class, by allotting twenty additional minutes a day to walk around campus and enjoy nature, I found it to be quite relaxing. With this being a fairly stressful time of the year, having some time to walk around Bucknell’s beautiful campus, listen to some of my favorite songs, and get a small workout in proved to be quite therapeutic. With regards to one-time challenges, I finally mustered the courage to call the health center to get a check up! As someone who’s not the biggest fan of going to the doctor’s office, I admit that I often put off going to the doctor’s office until it’s absolutely necessary, or when I was younger, when my parents made a call for me. Thus, I decided to overcome my fear and finally scheduled a check-up for Tuesday. While I was admittedly nervous to enter the office, there was definitely a relief in knowing for sure that I was perfectly healthy, and I decided to get a flu shot as well to ensure this health. Another one-time challenge I embarked on was hosting a viewing party with my four closest friends on campus. Last night, since my friends and I had all finished our midterms for the week, I figured a good way to unwind and spend quality time, all the while informing my friends on an environmental issue I grew quite passionate about was hosting a viewing party for Food Inc., of course with healthy snacks such as veggies and hummus! With several of my eco-challenges focusing on eating more sustainably and making changes to my diet, whether it be cutting down on sugar or eating more meat-free meals, I wanted to inform my friends as to why I have been making such diet changes, since I have received a few questions about my diet these past few weeks. The party was overall a success, and while we all did admit that we were not fully ready to completely cut out processed foods or go vegetarian or vegan, what we can do is grow more conscious of our eating habits, and make efforts to eat more sustainably and support local businesses and farmers.

The only real barrier I face in making these lifestyle changes permanent is weather with regards to having daily walks. When it’s snowing outside and below freezing, even walking to class through ice can be a great challenge, so walking for an additional twenty minutes is not very feasible. Meanwhile, in the middle of summer, walking for long periods of time can not only be extremely uncomfortable, but increase sunburn risks without proper protection. However, I do want to take more time in my day to go on walks, and unless there are extreme weather conditions, I do want to make this a permanent part of my life, especially upon reading about the health benefits of doing so from Prevention.com. An effect they list is that it proves to boost your mood and help fight off seasonal depression, which is easy to fall victim to during the cold winter months. I have noticed that on days where I’m in the dumps or extremely stressed about schools, taking the time to relax and walk around campus has definitely improved my mental state. Additionally, going on these walks has physical health benefits such as contributing to healthy weight loss and an improved digestive system! It’s also a great way to get a rather low-effort workout in. Thus, I definitely want to integrate daily walks into my life.

EcoChallenges Week 4

Muxi You Due 3/7/19
Word Counts: 643

 

The EcoChallenges I have picked for this week is “go by bike” and “go for a daily walk”, which are not challenging at all because I selected them only because I need a challenge from the transportation/ nature category and there is no specific a suitable challenge for me to take at this point. (I do not drive, and only live 5 minutes walking distance from the classroom, there is also no need for public transportation in the recent year.) 

 

Although the two selected daily challenges are pretty much already involved in my daily life, the provided reading links of the articles of transportation and the value of walking in the nature are still interesting. Especially when I saw that “Half of all trips are three miles or less, but fewer than 2 percent of those trips are made by bicycle, while 72 percent of them are driven”. And this just makes no rational sense for people who concern about the environment, but it is understandable from a cultural perspective when ones believe that cars are among one of their most basic life components and drive them as drinking a bottle of water. 

My earlier experiences with bikes and cars, are slightly different from the mainstream culture in the some of the developed countries. On the one hand, I also grow up in a city and my parents use cars as vehicles once I got memory, but I have spent most of my time living in the boarding schools, so I may only sit in cars during weekends or holidays. Moreover, the transportation system in Beijing has gotten better as I grow up, in additional to the fact that Chinese people are only allowed to drive after 18, so I have learned and more get used to public transportation systems (subways and buses) as a teenager (13- 18). And there were a few years when the government try to encourage the citizens to use more public transportation system, so they keep the price of the transportation system super low (2 RMB, which is slightly more than a quarter to move any place available in the city). So, it was common for the young people to travel by subways even if they are rich. I also loved to spend time outdoor as a kid, so I always have the preferences of biking, because it is the cheapest, quickest and easiest method to get moving in a short distance. Thus, the culture that heavily relaying on cars as the major vehicle may seem a little bit no sense for me, even though I appreciate the efficacy of increases in productivity that cars have bring the Americans in the history, I still believe that it is not a great sustainable culture to keep in a longer time, and large scale. From my perspective, I feel that the driving age for Americans is slightly too young to spread out this culture.

 

The one time challenges I have chosen for this week is “watch a documentary about food sovereignty”. I watched Food Inc and learned about the food producing system in a Capitalism society. I love this film because it gives a more overall review of the producing process instead of focusing on a certain type of food. And even if I have separately read sources of plants and animals producing process, this is the first time I put them together and think about the in-between relationship as well as the food culture we are in. As we are grown up learning to have a favor eating meat, not much education has been done on the producing process of our daily consumption, which is an area that I feel some future cultural wise revolution or regulation is needed, guiding people to eat more sustainably without much awareness, just like how subway systems can be coded into one’s daily habitat using the low price guiding strategy.

This week I added the daily challenges of exercising daily, enjoying the sunrise and/or sunset, cooking 1 meal a day with zero-waste, and conserving toilet water. I also added the one time challenges of using a resource to find where I can forage for my own food locally and spending at least 10 minutes finding out where to recycle the recyclable items that I can not put in my curbside bin.  I challenged myself a little bit more this week and it was exciting. Once again, I surprised myself by how much I liked sticking to more difficult challenges and at my own success rate with completing them. 

            There are a couple barriers I face in making the most recent challenges a permanent addition to my life. To be able to enjoy either the sunrise or the sunset, I either have to wake up very early, or have available time at the very specific time of sunset. Some days I may simply be too busy to see either, but I could definitely commit to this challenge on a weekly basis   rather than a daily basis. Cooking one meal a day with zero waste also has its barriers. Some days I may not have time to cook for myself, let alone cook with zero waste. Conserving toilet water on a daily basis was more difficult than I thought, solely due to the fact that most of the toilets around campus and all the ones in my fraternity house are automatic flushers so it was out of my control.

            After having watched the resource video “How to Not Waste Your Extra Vegetable Parts”, I am more willing to make this lifestyle change permanent. It also entices me to learn how to cook better and eat healthier all in the same fell swoop. I have been struggling for quite some time to make myself go and exercise every day. The resource entitled “How to Make Exercise a Daily Habit” really helped me stick to it each and every day. It gave me really good tips such as setting a time to go and sticking to that time until it is an ingrained daily habit.  This helped me not shy away from going and putting it off until a later hour which is something 
I usually do when attempting to go to the gym. Also, another resource told me that a simple walk through nature could improve my mood by quite a bit so that is something else I would like to adopt as a permanent lifestyle change. After having read the resource entitled “Do I need to flush every time?” I am also quite committed to saving toilet water and making it a permanent lifestyle change. The resource told me that it is not unsanitary nor unhealthy to wait and to flush less often. It also told me that it can save up to 3.2 gallons of water per night, 22.4 gallons per week, 89.6 gallons per month, and 1,075 gallons a year if I flush every third time. 

 

            

Things definitely were amped up this last week of the challenge, but we made it through!

One challenge I chose to do this week was a personal waste audit. I had already done the carrying trash around challenge, and noted that I actually wasn’t ending up with all that much trash, meaning that most of my waste must be in recyclables. Because of this, I wanted to take a look at just how much plastic I was using and putting back into the waste stream, so I thought this would be a good way to do that. Rather than taking out our trash/recycling from our room, I told my roommate to just let it build up this week and that I would deal with it at the end of the week. The result was a little alarming, and I’m not sure my roommate was particularly appreciative of the waste corner that developed in our room. I found that, as I had predicted, I was using A LOT of plastic products each day, the majority of which was coming from the food that I was eating. I also found that a lot of the plastics we were putting in our recycling were not cleaned particularly well, and might in fact be contaminating the entire load of recycling. It definitely helped me to conceptualize where my waste production was coming from, and moving forward how I can start to reduce that impact. 

One of the daily challenged I did this week was purchasing/researching about buying used clothing instead of new clothes. My research took me down a whole rabbit hole of sustainable clothing options. At first, it seemed like used clothing is absolutely the way to go, in terms of sustainability which makes complete sense. But then I started to get into some info about synthetic materials, and was pretty devastated to learn that not only are my beloved fleece layers releasing microplastics into the ocean every time I wash them, but pretty much all older, more worn clothing is doing this too. So it seems that there’s a bit of a tradeoff here. If you buy used clothing, then you are not putting more material out there and reducing emissions that would have been created during the production process, BUT by buying older clothing you’re purchasing materials that are more worn down and therefore more likely to release these microplastics when you wash them. So what to do? So far I’ve come up with no answers, other than to never wash your clothing, especially your fleece, which I can’t say seems like a particularly viable option. I found information about someone trying to design a filter of some sort for your washing machines that will catch these plastic fibers but so far there does not appear to be anything actually out there to use. I’ll definitely continue to keep my eye out though!

Mid Journal Unit 2 

This week, I added going strawless, paperless, and decluttering my room to my challenges. Paperless was a one-time challenge where I was supposed to sign up for electronic mail instead of paper mail but since I live at school I have yet to figure out an alternative to this, so when I go home I’m going to talk to my parents about applying this at home which I think they will be really eager to do/ help me with. Going strawless has been kind of a challenge if I want an iced drink from seventh street or the library because they really isn’t an alternative to this besides getting a hot drink or buying a reusable cup with a reusable straw. I have to find out if they would even fill one of those up for me or if that isn’t allowed. If they don’t fill up reusable mugs or cups that is definitely something that should be fixed on campus. Since I couldn’t fulfill my one-time challenge just yet, I decided to reduce my daily paper usage instead until I complete the one-time challenge. This challenge actually made my life so much easier because I never had to worry about rushing to find a printer on my way to class and it saved me money since I don’t have to pay to print out documents in color. This is definitely a change I’m going to make permanent in my life. Obviously, I am going to have to print out some assignments and papers but will definitely avoid this whenever I can. Additionally, this week I came to the realization that I have almost completely given up meat in my diet. One of my challenges the first week was to not eat meat for one to two meals a day and now gradually I have almost completely cut it out. When I am home this week I think my meat intake will increase but overall, I am so used to not eating meat now it will definitely decrease in general. 

Finally, my last daily challenge this week was decluttering my room and up keeping its cleanliness. I genuinely have felt the positive effects of this already. For example, it feels so satisfying walking into my clean room after cleaning it. It feels so chaotic when clothes are everywhere and I can’t step on the floor without stepping on something. According to usnews.com, decluttering your home or room has been proven to improve decision making, decrease stress and anxiety, and helps to be more efficient and productive. My personal experience definitely lines up with these studies. I notice a big difference walking into my room after a long day when it is clean as opposed to when it’s messy and cluttered. When it’s cluttered it gives me anxiety and immediately stresses me out, whereas when it’s clean I feel refreshed and peaceful walking in. Additionally, according to mindbodygreen.com, decluttering your space makes sleep deeper. Although I don’t think I have personally noticed this, I have never had problems or trouble falling asleep so I don’t think I would notice this in any situation. However, I’m sure for some people this makes a huge difference in their sleep habits. 

            This week I added challenges to my list in the waste water and energy categories. I also completed my added one time challenge of exploring my area by going on a nature walk or visiting a local trail from last week. For me this meant visiting R.B. Winter State park with a couple of friends. Although it was cold we missed the worst of the weather, which resulted in an incredibly refreshing trip lasting a couple of hours. We all agreed to limit the use of our phones, which was easy without the service, with the exception of some music when we reached a scenic spot. Trips like this are something I have heard great things about but never had the time or drive to do it for myself, which I realize now was a huge mistake. It was incredibly beneficial in that it was an opportunity to let go of the stresses and worries of school and upcoming assignments/projects, similar to how my daily challenge of 15 minutes extra spent outside each day has helped me relax during times of stress. Before an exam I had today I took 15 minutes to walk around campus which immensely reduced my nerves going into the test. Like the challenge of spending more time outside each day, I could also see myself adding a weekly challenge of exploring more trails and parks. I also added the challenge of lobbying for reusables, which we already do in terms of plates and silverware, but the amount of plastic cups and Styrofoam cups we go through each day could be reduced by a lot should we include reusable cups and mugs in our budget.  Similarly, I chose to reduce the amount of single-use materials that I use. While I have always been decent at refilling my own water bottle, I would like to reduce the amount of plastic trays and similar products that I use during the week, specifically at the bison which is an area we have always acknowledged as problematic. Looking at the additional information and tips for how to reduce the use of plastic, I learned more about a lot of the impact I have. This included learning that gum has much of the same chemical makeup as plastic and is a huge problem for the environment, and that plastic lighters are a big source of wasted plastic, while matches represent a much better option. I also plan on starting to buy food in larger quantities, to reduce the amount of plastic each time. Another simpler option for reducing plastic is that of buying glass jars in bulk rather than plastic bags, especially for storing food. Plastic lunch bags are one of my biggest sources of waste when I’m and something I really want to work on reducing. Glass jars also represent an art project for younger kids that could encourage their use. I also had no idea that the chemical makeup of plastic causes it to take 500-1000 years to decompose, which should be enough to convince anyone that it is worth reducing. 

For this week I had chosen two new daily challenges to up my challenges to 10 daily, and two more one time challenges. I decided to choose supporting a sharing economy, meditating 15 minutes a day, trying a new way of prepping food, and exploring my area.  I decided to choose what I believed to be easier daily challenges at this point, as I began to struggle last week with keeping up on challenges. Taking this route had helped me a lot to keep up with my goals, although on Tuesday I had accidentally forgotten about my challenge of two meatless or vegan meals a day, and had meat at breakfast. I believe that meditating had helped me a lot this week, as my roommate in my house is really big on meditation and had advocated for me to do it with him at some point it helped me get to know him better, as well as destress during some of the heaviest workloads I’ve had for ROTC and class this entire semester. I have done meditation before in my past, so it was easy to get into, and I don’t necessarily believe 15 minutes was enough for me to get really into it, but I found myself meditating a little bit longer each day. As for supporting a sharing economy, I have been taking rides from friends whenever I can when I needed to go off campus, and in doing so I cooked for them afterwards.  My favorite challenges from this week were easily from trying a new way for meal preparation and exploring my area. Both on Friday and Saturday, I went rucking off campus, once on the rail trail and once at Cherry Springs. I did an 8 mile trail then a 6 mile trail on these days and it really helped me get back into the beauty of the area around campus, even during this pretty harsh winter. On Saturday I baked bread and pickled some peppers that I had picked up at the farmer’s market recently, which was good experience, but it is something that I do pretty consistently when I am home. I can honestly see myself doing all of these after class is over, as they weren’t too much effort and really involved things that I like. Before meditating I did read the New York times article posted for meditating on the ecochallenge site, but I followed my roommate’s instructions instead, by listening to Tibetan bowl sounds instead. As for canning however, I did follow the resource from yes magazine on canning, and used their recipe list.

This week was extremely interesting trying to figure out how to fulfill all the challenges I picked since the first week of EcoChallenge, when to fulfill them, and whether I was doing a good job doing so. Picking a challenge from all the categories EcoChallenge offered was a new challenge for me, as it made me explore areas that I was never exposed to, and helped me branch out my options to change my lifestyle that can benefit the environment. Some challenges were easier than others- I had no problem helping out others around campus, identifying my needs and my wants, or look into local recycling depots. The ‘food’ category was a hard challenge for me to embrace since I love food and eating and love to enjoy all kinds of food, from meat, seafood, vegetables, to fruits, etc. I also love to try out new things, so the fact that giving up meat or anything was something I couldn’t wrap my head around for a while. Fortunately, I was able to find a challenge that involved making better choices regarding seafood. I found this challenge interesting at first glance, as I love seafood, since it made me wonder what a ‘smart’ seafood choice is. At first, I thought that it meant to eat fresh, not bad or funny, seafood, and stay healthy. But I was really wrong. A site published by NRDC offered tips for enjoying fresh seafood while minimizing damage to the body and the environment. It was the ‘enjoying seafood while minimizing damage to the environment’ part that I was particularly interested in. Also, the website offered which seafoods contained least amount of mercury, which is harmful to our bodies, and suggested consuming what seafoods to consume to minimize the mercury intake. For example, anchovies, clams, flounders, oysters, shrimps, and scallops had minimal amounts of mercury, while bluefish, king mackerels, marlins, and sharks had the highest amounts of mercury. This guideline is great for those choosing what seafoods to bring to the table, as it reminds us to enjoy seafood that will not damage our bodies. The website suggested consuming American-caught seafoods. Also, the website challenged us to eat different types of seafood, other than the five most consumed seafoods in America: shrimps, salmon, canned tuna, tilapia, and pollock. This is important as those five types can suffer from “overfishing, harmful catch methods, habitat destruction, and overuse of antibiotics,” if we heavily depend on just those five types of seafoods. The single thing from the website that I could not agree on was eating local seafoods. I just couldn’t see myself eating community-supported fisheries when I’m living in Lewisburg. Central PA is not the region I would trust my seafood to be from, and quite frankly, I don’t even think there are fisheries around the area. But overall, this website was full of good information that I could use and remind myself when purchasing seafood in the future. Other than consuming local seafood, I could definitely adopt the information to my daily lifestyle of consuming seafood. 

 

Luke Grover 

March 7, 2019

Mid-Journal Unit 2 

 

This week was especially difficult. I feel and felt like I was overcome with things to do and exams to study for. Unfortunately this weeks Eco Challenge proved itself to be difficult. One new challenge included watching a couple documentaries in order to become more aware of the environment. This was useful because my Earth Day group was thinking about showing a documentary in order to combat student ambivalence towards environmental issues.  This kind of challenge seemed to kill two birds with one stone. But, documentaries are long and spreading them out and watching over a week was difficult and not preferable with all the work given in other classes. Another activity I had difficulty with because of time constraints was to Exercise Daily. This was a real bummer because it really is something I try to do and enjoy doing. I was also slightly disappointed with my simplicity selection. I chose to replace screen time each day with other activities, but I felt this week I have been on my computer constantly doing work or studying. 

            What helped in some of these situations was to “Meditate”. I also tried out Headspace, which was brought up in class. Was different than what I had been doing, but I liked it better. Other successful challenged I accomplished this week were the “Turn it off” and “Use Reusable Bottles”. Again, I feel like I am at least trying to do my part which I may not have been accomplishing without the Eco Challenge. I have been able to remind my roommate to turn off the lights now along with a friend on my hall that seemed to never be in his room even when the lights were on. One of my favorite challenges so far has been the “Eat Mindfully” challenge. This went along with my less screen time but was more useful. I used this challenge to get my friends off their phones too since I do not want to sit alone with a bunch of people on their phones. I guess it could get annoying calling people out to put down their phones so we will see how much longer they deal with it. This does give me a chance to talk again about this class and therefore talk about pollution reduction and transportation on campus (other challenges of mine). 

            One of the challenges I was most excited about and did not get to enjoy as much as I would have liked was the “enjoy the sunrise/sunset”. I knew I was going to miss almost all of the sunrises because I am not an early bird, but I was disappointed in the missing of sunsets due to the losing track of time inside. Bucknell’s campus does truly have some great views especially around sunset and now after this week I would like to enjoy those views (with some warmer weather). 

            Finding new resources that related to my challenges and that I found interesting seemed to get harder to find. I picked “11 Things You Should Do Instead Of Being On Your Phone” and “How To Disconnect From Your Job And Leave Your Work at Work”.  I thought it was interesting that writing down/journaling about stress to let it go came up. I felt this was the same tactic when writing down three things you are happy about in the Eco Challenge. Things to do instead of being on your phone seemed simple but are taken for granted or simple but will do the trick. Some were honestly cheesy like “have a dance party” and “look up”.