Wednesday, December 8, 2010
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
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week 5: Final Weekly Review & Overall Project Reflection
- 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!
- 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!
- 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).
- 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!
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
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.
Picture from here.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Reflections: Weeks 9-12
- Over the past few weeks in class we have covered a lot of different information. We watched a video in class that gave us a better understanding of how fast Americans are consuming and going through things, how most people feel they have to keep buying new things to have value in this society and contribute to the "golden arrow" as well as information on recycling and other facts and tips on how to try and save our environment. This video was rather eye opening and did a great job showing us the "whole picture." I found this video so interesting to me so when I went home for Thanksgiving break I actually showed it to my mom and sister to try and spread the word.
- Something else we did was a project called the photo essay. Not only did I enjoy doing this on my own and telling a little story through pictures, but I liked how we got to share our photos in class so we were able to get to see what everyone else did and listen to them give an explanation. There were a lot of unique and interesting photo essays to learn about.
- One day we had the opportunity to look at junk items and try and think of different things we could do with these instead of just throwing them away or buying something bran new. It was neat to me to hear all of the different ideas that everyone had and made me realize that next time I am about to throw something away that I should think outside of the box and see if I can somehow put it to a different use!
These were a few of the things that I enjoyed doing over the past few weeks along with some of the new information that I learned. I am looking forward to going to Goodwill on Monday!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week 4: Weekly Update
-SMART GOAL: to drink 12 oz. of water a day out of the facet or a drinking fountain and to not drink out of a plastic bottle.
-Success- I did it! I drank 12oz of water everyday and did not drink our of any plastic water bottles. Me and a girl were studying in the library one day and she bright a snack and some plastic water bottles for each of us. I thanked her and told her how I am not drinking my water out of a plastic bottle and explained why. She understood and said she is going to try and cut back on her consumption of water out of a plastic bottle, so that was good.
I did not really face any challenges this week with my goal so I was rather pleased.
-This week I felt really good because it was the first week that I fully met my goal. I felt successful and happy about doing so!
-I learned that I can set reasonable goals and meet them when I put forth my best effort and really make a conscious effort about meeting my goal.
-For the upcoming week I am going to up my water intake. I am going to try to drink 16oz of water each day and make sure not to drink out of any plastic bottles. I am also going to try to put some money aside to purchase a camel back water bottle which I hear will contribute to my success with this goal even more! :)
Picture of camel back water bottles
Blogged for the Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week 3 hosted by Amy@Amy in the Rain
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Share & Voice: Environmental News Network
Hey all! Just want to share a website with you all about good ways to find out environmental information and updates. Some of you may already know about the website, and for those of you that do not feel free to check it out. It shares top stories, environmental advertisements which are rather interesting as well as having the option to sign up for a free newsletter via email. They have a lot of facts and interesting stories so I encourage you to take a quick peak :)
Environmental News Network
(Picture from above is taken from this website as well)
Monday, November 29, 2010
Eye Opener: Photo Essay
My theme has to do with environmental contributions that we do in my apartment to try and contribute to bettering the environment. I took a few pictures of some things in my apartment that contribute to this and I will explain them all briefly and the benefits that I feel they have.
First of all, we make sure that we have a separate location for our trash and our recycling at our apartment. Recycling is important and a good way to help the environment. We place our trash in a garbage under our sink as you can see above.
The items that we recycle we place next to our sink and when the collection grows we place it into a cardboard box and our roommates bring this box down when we empty the garbage and then bring it back up to continue to add more recycling items to it.
Furthermore, me and my roommates have come to the agreement that we will try and use as little napkins or paper towels as possible. Our goal is to use none so we make an effort to always have towels hanging up to dry our hands or wipe up a spill.
This is another example that contributes to using less paper towels. We use rags and always have a clean one sitting in the sink so that this is a better option than grabbing a bunch of paper towels, napkins or other wasteful paper products.
We always try and use the dishwasher instead of washing dishes by hand because using a dishwasher vs. doing dishes by hand saves a lot of water in the long run.
First of all, we make sure that we have a separate location for our trash and our recycling at our apartment. Recycling is important and a good way to help the environment. We place our trash in a garbage under our sink as you can see above.
The items that we recycle we place next to our sink and when the collection grows we place it into a cardboard box and our roommates bring this box down when we empty the garbage and then bring it back up to continue to add more recycling items to it.
Another important thing to us is eating healthy and we try and eat/buy organic fruit and other products as often as possible.
Something else we do that contributes to the environment is taking the bus as often as possible. This is something I try and do as often as I can! I live at Boulder Ridge so we have a shuttle/bus that goes to and from campus so this is very convenient and a good benefit for the environment as you could conclude.
This is another example that contributes to using less paper towels. We use rags and always have a clean one sitting in the sink so that this is a better option than grabbing a bunch of paper towels, napkins or other wasteful paper products.
We always try and use the dishwasher instead of washing dishes by hand because using a dishwasher vs. doing dishes by hand saves a lot of water in the long run.
At the apartment we try and do the majority of our bills and mailing by computer. This also saves on paper consumption!
I make a conscious effort when I drink water to do so out of the faucet. This is resourceful.
To go along with the contribution above we have a lot of reusable cups so that we do not use plastic water bottles or any other items that contribute to additional and unneeded waste.
--These are some ways that my apartment tries to contribute to the environment and take that extra step!--
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