This week I chose the spend time outside and the go for daily walks challenges. These Challenges were actually something I looked forward to everyday. I love spending time outdoors and going on walks especially hikes, however recently being at college it has been really difficult for me to do this especially with track. As a track athlete feeling fresh is really important to do well in meets and practice. Although it may not seem like a big difference to walk the day before a meet however if you are on you feet a lot the day before a meet, it can impact you negatively. Which is a part of the reason why I avoid walking a lot. However recently due to the challenge I have been able to partake in walks with my friends as well as spending time outdoors with my friends often times at night to watch the stars. This has been extremely beneficial to my mental health and has allowed me to relax and have a time to relieve my stress, away from work and technology.  I have also chose to do some challenges that require me to reduce waste. I chose to not use plastic bags and also use reusable water bottles. These challenges have been really easy for me especially because they are so easily avoidable I could have been doing these my entire life and can continue too. In the passage " Defining and Debating conservation, on page 20 it states, "There has come gradually in this country an understanding that waste is not a good thing and that the attack on waste is an industrial necessity". This quote emphasizes how it is factual and common understanding that it is essential to reduce waste being produced so that the environment can be less polluted with waste. I believe that there will be a few challenges that I will continue to do for the rest of my life and some including the spending time outside along with the walks. These challenges are extremely helpful to my mental health and performance especially in track. Running and jumping on a clear mind and also practicing with a not as stressed mind can help a lot especially during training. I believe that these are very beneficial and can help me and my mental health. 

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).

 

            This week the two challenges I chose for waste and transportation were to use a reusable mug and to drive less. I personally thought that using a reusable mug was going to be a lot easier than it actually was. I found that when I was out I tended to forget to bring a reusable mug with me so when I wanted to stop in the library for coffee I could not. There were a few times that I did end up buying coffee in the library because I really needed it but if I was not conscious of using fewer cups I would have bought a lot more coffee this week than making it at home. For my second daily challenge, which was to drive less, I found it actually fun. Instead of running out to do errands whenever I needed something, I made an effort to use my car a lot less or if I had to use it I would bring friends along who also needed something. Piling up my errands to do them only once or twice this week instead of daily was really interesting because it also made me more conscious of how much I was spending at that time. For the instances when I did need to finally go run errands I would bring friends along and this act made the process of running errands more exciting and meaningful. It gave me time to be with my friends where we were more concentrated on being together and achieving something together rather than hanging out while doing our own thing. Now my last challenge for the week, which was a one-time action, was to collect my trash for a certain time period. I choose to do this over the course of two days with the exception of trash that would start to smell or be disgusting if I were to leave it out. Through the process, I realized I tend to throw out the same things every day and even though there was not a huge quantity, the majority of it was plastic. If someone had asked me before this challenge how much plastic I threw out every day I would have confidently said I did not use that much, but now I see that I do use a lot of plastic. Even the little amounts of plastic add up throughout the day and the pile of it at the end of this challenge was really eye-opening. In the end, I feel as though I do not see any major barriers for me to consistently keep doing these challenges other than the fact that sometimes convenience and productivity of my everyday life sometimes need to come first. 

            When I was collecting my trash over the course of a few days the images of the apocalyptic future and ecological body kept coming to my mind. These images in my mind were repeated with the quote in the reading by Neiburger who warned, "All civilization... will pass away, not from a sudden cataclysm like a nuclear war, but from gradual suffocation in its own waste” (Page 74) I was thinking about the mother and child in gas masks and was relating it to our world being covered in plastics in the future. I was thinking that there might come a point in human history where we are literally buried in the trash just trying to breathe. This image is haunting and really did make me second guess if my trash was even absolutely necessary or in other words if I really needed the thing I was just about to throw the container away for. 

This week the daily and one-time challenges were a little tougher. I had to take a trip to Charleston for baseball this weekend so it was difficult trying to keep my challenges in mind and stay up to date with them. I believe the more that we travel it will be a little bit easier each time to implement the daily challenges into the road trips to ensure they are done more efficiently. It was surprising to see how the change of routine really impacted my ability to keep up with the daily challenges and do them when on the road we are constantly doing one thing after another and do not have much a lot of time for downtime to focus on schoolwork or mental health. The new daily challenges I began this week were to drive less and only when necessary and also to use a reusable water bottle. It was pretty easy to use a reusable water bottle in the beginning of the week but once we got to Charleston is was harder since I did not bring a reusable bottle and we only had plastic bottles to drink from. So, I had to improvise and use one plastic bottle and then just kept filling it up to prevent from using seven or eight plastic bottles a day. It was generally pretty easy to only drive when necessary and drive less. I limited myself to just driving to the field and back everyday and only going to get groceries once this week instead of going two or three times when I felt that I needed something. 

            The barriers that I am facing and especially this past week was getting into a travel routine and being able to implement these daily challenges while traveling. I felt that it was a lot tougher trying to do these daily challenges when traveling and it made it difficult to keep up and remind myself to do them. Traveling definitely took a toll and after a game it was hard to keep up with some of the challenges since my family was in town and all I wanted to do was relax and prepare for the next day. 

            From my experience this week with driving less and only, when necessary, I am willing to make this lifestyle change permanent. In the article “Reimagining Our Streets as Places:  From Transit Routes to Community Roots”, the author states “…increased vehicle emissions have degraded air quality and contributed to the greenhouse gases causing climate change; and a lack of transportation options for many communities has caused uneven access to jobs, social services, healthy food option, and community interaction”, so I believe that it is important for me to reduce the amount that I drive so I can feel that I am helping the environment even though one less car on the road a day probably does not have much of an impact, but I will be able to influence others to do the same (https://www.pps.org/article/reimagining-our-streets-as-places-from-transit-routes-to-community-roots). If I can show people that I can drive less and use public transportation I will be able to make a greater impact in the community. I am also willing to make the change from single use plastic bottles to using a reusable water bottle. It was a relatively easy fix and next time I will remember to bring a reusable water bottle with me when I travel. 

I have really been enjoying the Eco-challenge, and have been pushing myself to remember the tasks everyday. This week I picked up four new challenges including turning things off, finding a local recycling depot, car sharing, and using a reusable water bottle. I would say the most difficult for me was the reusable water bottle. I am someone who constantly finds myself losing my water bottles, or leaving them at home when I go places. I constantly then find myself buying water plastic water bottles. I honestly struggled with this all this week as well. That being said, I have definitely been a lot better and some days have not bought any plastic water bottles. I would say that this would be difficult for me to completely make the change to in life after the challenge, yet I am going to do my best to use a reusable water bottle. I found that the other challenges I took on this week were not difficult for me. I do not have a car on campus therefore I find myself constantly walking or catching a ride with one of my friends. The car share challenge allowed me to be more aware of how much I was walking/driving. I believe it allowed me to make a conscious effort to try to walk to class more. This week a couple of friends and I walked to Dunkin rather than driving. It allowed me to do something fun while also being able to explore the area and not utilize a car. Finally, turning it off is something that I thought would be more difficult yet I found very easy and is something that I feel has already become a part of my routine. I find myself always making sure to turn off not only the lights in my room but also around the house. I have also never considered how I utilize the energy in my home and how it reflects in the monthly bills we pay. Since we talked about this in class I have been more aware of things like leaving lights on or keeping my computer plugged in overnight. I think this has also helped me motivate myself to continue to turn the lights off and unplug things. Finally, the article by Laville and Taylor A million bottles a minute: word’s plastic ginge ‘as dangerous as climate change, shows some extremely important data and conversations surrounding the dangers of plastic use. The article states that annual consumption of plastic bottles is up to half a trillion in 2021. Further, that the amount of plastic produced in a year is roughly the same as the entire weight of humanity. Overall, this article as well as my experiences made me understand the importance of not using plastic when possible to avoid. 

My Eco challenge has been going well. I have continued my wellness actions and have added the other one time water and waste conservation challenges in the process. I would say that as time has passed on, it has become more part of my schedule and I have developed habits that have made it easier to complete my tasks everyday. I have also logged some of my time in a journal to make sure that I am completing all of my tasks everyday. In terms of becoming part off my daily routine, I have been taking walks in the morning before my classes to clear my mind for the day as the first thing I do everyday. I have noticed that my mood has been worse on the days that I move this walk to later in the day and is something I am happy to do every morning as it has become part of my everyday habits. I have done my reading task later at night as a way to destress from the day and has really been something I look forward to during the day. Like the walk task, I have noticed that I do not sleep as well when I don't read before bed and is something that I have loved working into my daily routine. For my waste tasks, I have pushed off doing my laundry for the longest in my life. This has been an eye opening experience because I have never pushed myself to really wear every item in my closet before washing my clothes. I usually just cycle through my favorite pieces of clothing and leave a lot of clothing in my closet just sitting there not being used. I think this habit is a bad one and is something I never really noticed until I started this challenge and added this to my daily habits. I have also started to walk to class more often which is something that has been great for my monthly budget as I have not had to spend money on gas as my use for my car has gone way down since the challenge started.

In this week’s experiments and daily challenges became a lot easier than the week prior to this. I say this because over time you develop a set schedule and pattern as you set in new ways to do every day things and go out of your way. However, as days pass and things become easier, you find yourself in a rhythm. For me, this is the case with my challenges and experiments. Adding to the fact that weeks prior I missed school for health reasons and before that only had 2 challenges. Over time this process and challenge has become easier. This week, I was surprised by something more simple, the weather. One of my daily challenges in this unit was to watch and acknowledge the beauty present in the sunrise or sunset. I was to set time out of my day to rest my phone and just witness the beauty we have at hand daily. But, throughout the week, the weather was inconsistent and changed. We had colder days, but we also had some nice beautiful days in which the sun was out, we could see some clouds, and temperatures reached almost 50 degrees fahrenheit. In my opinion, these days reminded me of almost California a little. The slight breeze on the quad hill was in comparison to the coastal breeze I get back home from the ocean. It sort of reminded me of something I can look forward to. But then on Saturday morning however, we received a slurry alert on our phone for a potential wind and visibility problem. Being outside already for football, I can see the little snow flurries we had, the wind picking up with branches and leaves flying everywhere on the ground, and then the sky and air becoming a little harder to see and pick out things. This particular morning I had watched the sunrise, unaware of what was to come. Witnessing nature and the beauty of it, is something that I consider very important in my life. This may be a result of being from sunny-side Southern California, but it may also be who I am as a person and what I like. In the article “Valuing Your Values” by Matt James, he says, “Values help us through crisis”. And to me, this hit home and was very true. I say this because back home in California, the beach and ocean was so accessible to me, if I felt like it would always be there. Due to this, I would find myself doing my best thinking or writing or feeling at peace when I would just let things go and not allow my mind to take over and look over the ocean and the horizon as the sun sets. My values in life weren’t as clear until I moved out here on my own across the country. I did not always see what I needed in life versus what I wanted. This has now become clearer than I imagine. It is almost in relation to you don’t knowing what something means to you until it is gone and you can’t have it. To add, I feel this is where a barrier in life comes to making certain changes in life permanent. The fear of the unknown and scarynes of what could possibly change is what people do not like about changing their lifestyle. The fear of not being in control of their everyday lives is what society as a whole struggles with today. Therefore, as I open up and read more resources and look at things differently, I do feel like I am willing to make these lifestyle changes permanent in my life because they have turned me into a better person not only for the environment but for myself within and affecting those around me.

This week I chose to drive less and skip the straw. I have the tendency to drive a lot to my classes and drive uphill because I live off campus. This is more of a tendency I have in the winter months because it is colder out. I am more likely to walk everywhere on campus when it is warm out. I worked to drive one mile less a day. The mileage was low because I really only drive around campus besides going to the grocery store once a week. Choosing to skip the straw was easier for me because I use a reusable water bottle every single day. Additionally, when I got Starbucks this week, they had lids that did not require straws. This made making this switch easier. The one time challenges I chose were car sharing and going paperless. If I was driving, I would offer my housemates rides to see if they needed to go up or downhill any time soon. Additionally, I am in charge of my house's electric and water bills and chose to receive both of those bills mobily every month. This is honestly going to be easier for me because my house does a poor job of checking our paper mail daily. The cold weather and rain is a barrier in making the change to drive less more permanent. However, since I do not want to receive parking tickets, that can be a motivation to drive less around campus. Skipping straws is an easier change. When going to restaurants, I can drink out of my glass without a straw and if I were to get Starbucks they have no straw friendly lids. Additionally, the bison uses paper straws. I read a resource called “The Last Plastic Straw.” The article explains that 500,000,000 plastic straws are used every day in the United States. The article explains methods to take action and that the first step is not using plastic straws anymore. The article also provides alternatives to plastic straws. This movement is supposed to help with the plastic pollution problem. After reading about plastic straws, I am definitely willing to make this lifestyle change permanent. I am going to stop asking for straws at restaurants and bars. Additionally, I will continue to use my reusable water bottles. I also think I may purchase some metal straws for my house to use when we are drinking out of our glasses. I had no idea how many plastic straws were used each day and the negative impact it had on plastic pollution. Additionally, the straws are hurting sea turtles and causing harm to the environment. Overall, this change I am definitely willing to make permanent and I am interested in seeing how next week's daily and one time challenge go and how those changes will work with these changes. 

            For my third official week of the campus eco-challenge, we were asked to add two more tasks along with two one-time challenges from the waste and transportation categories, in order to help us become more cognizant of our contribution to harmful landfills and CO2 emissions from fuel. Out of the tasks for waste, I chose to use more reusable water bottles, rather than going through them in a single use, therefore sending less plastic to the landfill. By making use of reusable metal water bottles and filling up my plastic bottles from the water fountains in my hall, I was able to drink water daily without throwing away any containers. This choice definitely made me more aware of all of the waste of materials that goes through single-use packaging, and can remain as a very feasible eco-friendly choice I can continue with in my life. As for the daily transportation challenge, at first it was very difficult selecting one due to my current situation without a car on campus, and little time spent going far from it, but I was able to create a task involving walking downtown rather than relying on the campus shuttle bus. Walking downtown to the bookstore rather than taking public transportation was not too much of a difference for me, as I am used to walking around campus frequently, however it did make me really think about how many of the freshmen on campus have a lower-carbon impact than most others due to our restrictions, and how possible this lifestyle is when everything we need is local. The main barriers to making such a lifestyle change permanent would primarily take effect when living at home due to how much I drive when not on campus for various activities during the day, depending on the car to be in the right place at the right time. The usage of water holds few barriers to making a permanent life choice as long as I hold onto my bottles, making this likely to become a regular task of mine. From the resources I read about water conservation by avoiding plastic bottles, as well as roughly calculating my own water footprint, I learned that water bottles take much more water to be produced than are even contained and have various other negative effects on the environment as the plastics continue to be recycled. I also learned about how many different factors can contribute to one’s water footprint, such as the products you buy and dietary choices, being a “virtual” water footprint. For my one-time challenges, researching local waste sites was difficult to get information from, but I learned that the town of Lewisburg has a program for picking up refuse, as well as one of the nearest landfills being located in Wayne Township, actually benefiting the surrounding area through donations and scholarships. Collecting all of my room’s waste in one spot for the week and assessing it, I concluded that my lifestyle also appears produces little waste overall, only one small trashcan full, however when put into perspective of how many people live in my dorm I can see that we at Bucknell can easily generate great quantities of waste that typically isn’t thought about, encouraging us to be more mindful in our output.

I enjoyed challenging myself slightly more this week by adding new challenges from the waste and transportation categories. I chose to drive less and reduce my use of plastic bags and use a reusable bag. Many of the challenges to pick from this week were not very feasible for us to do now or may not apply to us as we are living on a college campus. However, these were two I felt I could work on and were relevant as I have a car on campus and I buy groceries about once a week or so. The one time challenge was interesting as well as I learned more about sustainable fashion. I was able to read about the effects of the fashion industry on the environment and learn ways to practice to be more sustainable when thinking about purchasing clothes. It was surprising to learn about just how many clothes are produced every year and how many of these clothes go to waste. It was a shocking number. 
At school it is easy for me to drive less especially since this campus is small and everything is within a short walking distance. However, at home, it is almost impossible to get anywhere without driving. Therefore, I think it would be very difficult to drive less when I am home as I live in an area that borders on being suburban and rural. Everyone in my area has to rely on cars to get places as many of thee stores, restaurants, etc. are not within walking distance. 
I do not think I can reasonably make the change to drive less a permanent action in my life. I think I can drive less and carpool with people more often which will help but I do not think it would be feasible to rely on other modes of getting to places where I live. However, while at school I can definitely make the effort to drive less as it is much easier to do here. I think I can commit to using less plastic bags and this is something that is relatively easy to do. In the article "Study: Where are Plastic Bags Banned Around the World," the author says that placing a tax on thee usage of plastic bags has significantly decreased the use of them in certain countries such as Portugal and Ireland. The article also said that in the US, the only states that either ban plastic bags or put a tax on them are Hawaii, California, and DC. This was surprising to me and I thought it would be a higher number of states. The information from the article makes the harmful effects of plastic bags on pollution and on the health and safety of various kinds of animals clear. It also gives me insight into wanting to make this change permanent and to continue to practice using reusable bags. A simple way to do this is to make sure you always have one in your car so you have it easily accessible when you go to the store. My mom has done this for a few years now and it has decreased the amount of plastic bags that my family would discard of. I want to do this at school as well and not just at home and make it more of a consistent habit.