Share & Voice: Smarter Appliances

My parents just bought a house in St. Paul because my sister will be attending college at the U of M next year.  They looked for a nice and reasonable priced house for her that her and some friends could rent from them.  One issue was that the house needed all new appliances. When my dad was looking I mentioned to him to try and find some appliances that he could buy that would be better and more beneficial for the environment. My dad thought this was a really good idea so we looked into some options online.

I decided that this would be a good idea to share this with this class considering it is beneficial to the environment and some of us may be getting houses on our own soon.  If you guys need any additional information I will attach a few of the websites that we were looking at! :)


http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/03/06/ge-to-deliver-smarter-appliances/
http://www.hitachi-ap.com/company/environment.html
http://www.42u.com/environmental-monitoring-appliances.htm

Let me know what you think!
PICTURE

Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week 5: Final Weekly Review & Overall Project Reflection

1. What was your SMART goal? How did you do in achieving your SMART goal: My smart goal was do drink 12 oz of water daily and not drink out of any plastic bottles!
2. Address successes & challenges. What strategies helped you to be successful? What challenges did you face? How did you deal with them? My successes were that some days I did drink 12 oz. of water which was good. Some days, unfortunately, I did not quite get all the way up to 12 oz!  The challenges were that I went out with a few friends and on the way home we were all thirty and hungry and stopped at a gas station and I was really bad and bought a bottled water :( Oops...after I drank it I felt really bad so I have not thrown it away yet and try to keep reusing it!
3. What feelings did you experience? When did you feel them? I felt good when I met my goal and it showed me that it is possible for me to drink 12 oz of water each day and not do so out of plastic bottles! I felt bad when I bought a water out of a plastic bottle (as I mentioned above).
4. What did you learn this week? I learned that my goal is possible as long as I make an effort to stick to it and make sure that I plan ahead! I have to make time to get to the school store to buy myself one of those camel back water bottles, I have just been so busy!
5. What are your plans for next week? Will you continue with the change as is? Will you modify to make it more achievable or more challenging? My plans for the following weeks are to stick to my current goal and keep working toward it. I also have a mini goal to try and buy the reusable water bottle so that I will drink at least 12 oz of water and not do so out of ANY plastic water bottles!
6. What was your SMART goal? Did it change at all during the project? Explain. My smart goal is to drink 12 oz of water each and every day and to not drink any water from plastic, non-reusable water bottles. My goal changed a bit throughout the weeks because I upped my water consumption from 8 oz to 12 oz.  I upped my consumption after I was able to consistently drink 8 oz of water daily.
7. What helped you be successful? What things got in your way? How can you address these in the future? It helped me to be successful to plan ahead and to remind myself of my goal and that I can do it! Things that got in my way was when I did not plan ahead I found myself drinking out of plastic bottles for convenience.  Sometimes I did not drink enough water because i chose to drink other beverages instead such as juice or pop.
8. How did you benefit from this project? What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about behavior change? I benefited because I stared drinking more water than I had in the past which is healthy for me. I learned that I can reach my goals as long as they are reasonable and as long as I try and put forth a conscious effort. My behavior change was realistic and I learned that it was a possible behavior change to be accomplished
9. How did others and/or the environment benefit from you changing this behavior? The environment benefited (when I met my goal) because I did not use plastic water bottles which are bad for the environment.  The environment also benefited from this goal because when people would ask me why I did not drink out of a plastic water bottle I explained to them why it was bad for the environment and passed on the word.  Furthermore, when I was home over Thanksgiving break I also told my parents about my goal and explained to them why plastic water bottles cause a negative effect on the environment and they agreed to stop buying them as well.
10. Will you continue this behavior? Why or why not? I will try my best to continue this behavior. This is a positive goal not only for myself but also for the environment that I live in so I feel it is a good idea to continuing meeting this goal and hopefully further down the road begin to increase my water intake even more.
11. What recommendations do you have for others about making a lifestyle change? For people who are making a lifestyle change I recommend that you choose a goal that is realistic, you can always start your goal a bit lower and if it is going well you can make it more challenging.  It is harder if you make your goal really complicating at first and then try and work backwards because this can be discouraging to people.  I also recommend you pick a goal that is important to you so that you have motivation to work toward the goal.
-Picture is from here.

 

*Blogged for the Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week 3 hosted by Amy@Amy in the Rain.

 

Advocacy Project: Letter and Fact Sheet

December 5, 2010
Michele Bachmann
House of Representatives
107 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Michele Bachmann,

I am writing to you concerning HR 1432: Stop Adolescent Smoking Without Excessive Bureaucracy Act of 2009 which was introduced in House Energy and Commerce.  I believe that this is an important law and should be passed because it has to do with the health and wellness of others.  People who smoke are not only harming themselves, but also the innocent people around them.
This is important to me because I do not smoke of use tobacco products and I do not want meself or my environment to suffer the harmful side effects.  Woodbury has come a long way with smoking issues but there are still so many things we can do to make tobacco products used and purchased less that they currently are.
Please pay close attention to this and vote yes to pass and enforce this law. Thank you!

Fact Sheet:

• In the United States, an estimated 24.8 million men (23.1 percent) and 21.1 million women (18.3 percent) are smokers
• The use of smokeless tobacco has been increasing, especially among America's young people.
• According to the CDC, more than 3,000 young people become regular smokers every day, which is more than one million new smokers a year.
• 1 in 5 teens smoke cigarettes. 
•  17 percent of kids in 9th grade reported smoking cigarettes. The rate of smoking then increases to a high of 26 percent in 12th grade. 

As we can see, smoking is and CONTINUES to be a problem! I am a graduate of Woodbury High School and I know that tobacco is an issue here as well. We need to continue to pass laws and stop the harmful effects of smoking!
Picture from here.