Jamie Lujan

To help be more aware of  my community this week I started hanging out with different people and trying my best to include everyone into our community more. I began starting this week to meet new people and just try and be more of a positive person in general to try and lift other people’s moods when I wasn't feeling very well at all. I feel like throughout this week of the eco challenge having to do with community, I have begun to know many more of my classmates and just more people around my community much better and I feel like I have become a more open person to new things, people, and experiences. Another thing that I started to do this week was to be more aware of just how everyone is a small part of the community and the bigger picture, but we all make it up and we are all super important in our own ways. 

To help my community I was not just more social, but I also tried to be more aware of the messes in our community and how to clean them up. In becoming more aware, I found myself doing little things such as cleaning up after a volleyball game or even picking up other peoples utensils and plates around Monte when I see that people left them behind somewhere instead of just putting them back into the bin or in the kitchen. 

I really enjoyed this eco challenge and just overall becoming a larger part of the community through small actions and deeds. 

For my current neighborhood, my score for the AARP Sustainability Index was a 54, which is relatively high compared to some. After looking at the different statistics about the neighborhood I live in I have discovered that I am quite impressed by my community. My highest category was health with a 68 overall which was very surprising for the amount of smoking households there seem to be just on my street. My lowest category was opportunity with a score of 33 because of the low ratio of jobs to workers. After looking at the scores for my address, I feel very lucky to live in such a good neighborhood with such good statistics. Most of the other categories were very mediocre for my neighborhood, but they were good enough to get a good livability score. On average for a price that is not too bad, I'm very proud to live in such a good community with such a good livability score and  such good opportunities! 

Ecological Footprint Response

My ecological footprint was very shocking to me in a better way than expected. At first, I thought my carbon footprint was going to be much higher than it was, but mine was that we would only need 1.4 earths to sustain all humans if every human lived exactly like me. This answer was pretty shocking to me but there is still a lot of things I could do to get my ecological footprint down below 1, because after all we only have one earth! 

A few things that I could do to bring down my ecological footprint would be to eat less meat or animal products and also to start using less electricity or using more renewable types of energy such as possibly starting to switch to solar energy. Another thing that I could do to help reduce my carbon footprint would be to do less travelling by car, or if I do, to carpool to places much more often. 

 For the first Eco challenge, I decided to sign petitions on a website called Care2, which was recommended by Savannah. The entire interface of the website is very easy to use and it is such a great program to sign up for! I signed several petitions off of the site the day that I signed up and I have signed many more to this day. Some examples of the petitions I signed were fighting plastic pollution, stopping cosmetic tests on animals, stopping the murder of seals and sharks, and many more. Many of the petitions on the site have hundreds of thousands of people who have signed them already, but they need more people! I strongly encourage anyone who wants to take action to sign up for this site and sign those petitions! 

 The second Eco challenge that I did from chapter 1 was to start a sustainability journal! I have just started to format it and add information into it. Very soon I hope to be able to keep records of how much water I use, how much plastic I use, even how much trash I accumulate throughout a week. I am barely just beginning, but I have so far decided to keep a strict journal about my the foods that I eat and where they come from. Soon, my mentorship in physical fitness and nutrition will probably come together into the same journal where I can keep track of it all in the same place. 

 I’m so excited to see what the next group of Eco challenges brings me! :)

Using the link that Savannah shared to the website (Care 2) I signed many of the most popular petitions from the site sticking up for Animals Rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and a few more. I would really recommend for more people to sign petitions from the site if there is anything that they see and really believe in the cause. 

This course was originally one that I was not very familiar with, making it a lot less exciting for me to want to begin. Now that we have started the curriculum and learned what we are going to be working on, I am really excited to learn about how small things can be changed in our lives to make such a huge impact! After just reading the introduction to this class I am hoping to help make the Monte community more sustainable in almost everything we do. One goal that I have from this class is to start using much less non recyclable resources and all around try to cut out single use packaging from my  daily life and possibly even convince more people in my family and around the community to become more sustainable in their day to day lives. 

One major goal that I want for myself to learn how to do in this class is to live for at least one week in complete zero waste or as low waste as possible to help the environment, which is currently being absolutely destroyed by nonrenewable energy sources and non recyclable products we use every day. I think that for this class, and more specifically my group, I could hopefully bring new ideas and bright possibilities into the class! I hope that throughout this year together we can all come together to come up with some great new ideas about keeping Monte del Sol a more aware community. 

Another thing that I would like to learn from this class is how to use a lot less water in my day to day life, which is really significant to everyone in the world, but especially us here in the desert of New Mexico! I am really excited to spend the year learning about sustainability! 
-Jamie