Lindsay Walker
POINTS TOTAL
- 0 TODAY
- 0 THIS WEEK
- 472 TOTAL
participant impact
-
UP TO7.0locally sourced mealsconsumed
-
UP TO21organic mealsconsumed
-
UP TO1.0documentarywatched
-
UP TO1.0petitionsigned
-
UP TO70minutesspent outdoors
Lindsay's actions
Ecological Principles
Advocate for Sustainability
I will contact local officials and city leaders this week to challenge them to support sustainability policies.
Ecological Principles
Join An Outdoor Project
I will join an outdoor restoration project in my community.
A Call to Sustainability
Explore My Area
I will explore at least one new hiking trail or nature walk in my area.
Consumption and Economy
Visit a Waste Management Facility
I will visit a local dump/transfer station, material recovery facility, and/or landfill to learn about the waste stream.
Consumption and Economy
Support a Sharing Economy
I will create or support a sharing economy with family, friends, and neighbors.
Consumption and Economy
Buy Only What I Need
I will not buy anything except items required for health and safety.
Water
Fix Leaky Faucets
I will fix faucets or report leaky faucets to facilities that have been wasting up to 9 gallons (34 L) of water per faucet every day.
Water
Watch The Story of Bottled Water
I will watch The Story of Bottled Water to learn more about bottled water's impacts on the environment.
Water
Say No to Plastic
Plastic bags and small plastic pieces like straws are most likely to get swept into our waterways. This week, I'll say "no" to plastic bags at the store and plastic straws in all of my drinks.
Water
Learn About My Watershed
I will find local resources for learning about my watershed and the particular water issues my region faces.
Food
Weekly Meal Planning
I will reduce food waste and save money by planning a weekly menu, only buying the ingredients I need.
Food
Support Local Food Systems
I will source 1 meal(s) from local producers each day this week. This could include signing up for a local CSA, buying from a farmer's market, visiting a food co-op, foraging with a local group, or growing my own ingredients.
Food
Whole Foods Diet
I will enjoy 3 meal(s) free of processed foods each day this week.
Food
Choose Organic Ingredients
I will enjoy 3 meal(s) cooked with organic ingredients each day this week.
Food
Reduce Animal Products
I will enjoy 2 meatless meal(s) and/or 2 vegan meal(s) each day this week.
Ecological Principles
Support Pollution Reduction
I will learn about water and air quality issues in my area, how they are impacting human and environmental health, and how I can help.
Ecological Principles
Recycle Everything I Can
I will recycle all materials that are accepted by local haulers or drop stations in my community this week.
Ecological Principles
Research Renewable Energy Options
I will find out if my local utilities offer an option for supporting renewable energy investment.
Ecological Principles
Practice Gratitude for Earth
This week, I will spend 10 minute(s) each day outside, practicing gratitude (prayer, meditation, journaling, etc.) for Earth and the nature surrounding me.
A Call to Sustainability
Pay Attention to Current Events
I will watch or read the news each day this week with a specific focus on sustainability issues and happenings.
A Call to Sustainability
Learn About Local Issues
I will find out what local sustainability issues are most urgent in my region, including both social and environmental justice concerns.
A Call to Sustainability
Watch a Documentary
I will watch a movie about a sustainability issue I would like to know more about.
A Call to Sustainability
Sign a Petition
I will sign petitions in support of an environmental or social initiative in my state.
Participant Feed
Reflection, encouragement, and relationship building are all important aspects of getting a new habit to stick.
Share thoughts, encourage others, and reinforce positive new habits on the Feed.
To get started, share “your why.” Why did you join the challenge and choose the actions you did?
-
Lindsay Walker 4/29/2020 4:28 PMThis week I went on a virtual tour of the waste recovery facilities in Tacoma. I learned that Tacoma's landfill is already full and so our garbage has to go 30 miles to a landfill in Pierce County. I also was always curious about where food waste goes and learned that it goes to Puyallup to the composting factory. I also learned that recycling goes to JMK materials in Tacoma's tideflats area. I have been curious about the Tacoma Transfer center and it was cool to learn about it. It is a leed gold certified building and while it is currently closed to the public it will be opening again May 4th. The transfer center has a drop off area for block styrofoam, all kinds of electronics, glass, packing materials and other items. There is also usually a goodwill truck there accepting donations. It was important for me to think about the Tacoma dump being full and that our current dump will also be full someday. It is a good reminder to try to repair and share things instead of throwing them away. -
Lindsay Walker 4/22/2020 12:39 PMI live in the Commencement Bay watershed, so water that falls in my area goes directly into the Salish Sea. This week, the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference was happening digitally and for free. I was able to attend a few sessions. One was an update on the governor's orca task force and another was about relationships between social and ecological goals. The two sessions went very well together. I have been following the orca task force from the beginning and it has been interesting to see how ecological goals are often in conflict with social or economic goals resulting in policies that must work to protect orcas while balancing many competing social and political interests. While it is playing more of a role it seems like more research is needed to understand how people understand an value the Salish Sea especially since this becomes so important in a policy context. -
Lindsay Walker 4/15/2020 1:47 PMThis is kind of a combo of this week's and next week's topics. Today one of my favorite local environmental organizations, Citizens for a Healthy Bay, posted a video of their weekly Bay Patrol. They explained several local environmental issues that impact Commencement Bay, one of which is the grain elevator where grain (and other food like soy beans) comes in on a train and gets loaded onto ships. Here's the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zghEksW6zQ-
Lindsay Walker 4/15/2020 1:50 PMOops i put the link to an older video... Here's the new one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKJ-RH0RS1A
-
-
Lindsay Walker 4/14/2020 10:28 AMI was thinking it would be pretty hard to find local vegetables from Washington this time of year, but we were actually able to source quite a few things. My local mushroom guy has been doing weekly deliveries and we get local and foraged mushrooms, nettles and fiddleheads that we have been adding to our rice bowls and making pesto with. We also haven't been able to find bread flour at the store for our sourdough so we went in on a 50 pound bag from a local mill with our friends. We will use this to make bread, pizza dough and flat breads. We also found Washington potatoes, kale, green beans, eggs, cabbage, beer, ginger beer, dried beans, and coffee roasters (not the coffee itself though). We got a few things regionally from Oregon as well.
We usually shop at several different stores to save money on certain items, but since I live 2 blocks from the Tacoma Food Coop, and we only want to go to the store once a week, we have been shopping there exclusively. They only sell organic produce and most of their other products are also organic. This means that they don't always have the items that are on the list but that we are by default buying more organic items than usual.
Meal planning has become a necessity since we only go to the store once a week. We were very excited this week that when it was time to go to the store, all we had leftover in the fridge was a little cabbage that we ended up eating that day. I wonder how many of these changes will carry over once we are no longer eating every single meal at home. I hope that we can carry many of the meal planning practices over, and now that we know we can get local flour in bulk we can continue doing that as well. I've been looking into local CSAs for the summer and am hoping to support some local farmers that way. -
Lindsay Walker 4/08/2020 3:02 PMI've been very curious about air quality since I live with 2 people with asthma and am curious how air quality impacts people with covid-19. The New York Times had an article yesterday about a nationwide study showing that Covid-19 patients in areas with higher rates of air pollution prior to the pandemic are more likely to die from infection than those in cleaner areas. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/climate/air-pollution-coronavirus-covid.html . This also made me think of issues of environmental and social justice since poorer people and people of color tend to live in areas more impacted by pollution. From 2009-2015 Tacoma had levels of Fine Particulate Matter above those recommended by the EPA.
I looked at this graph https://secure.pscleanair.org/airgraphing for tacoma Particulate matter (2.5) and saw that this morning at 6:00am had the worst air quality of the month so far. and that March 16-22 had high numbers as well, mostly over night and on days with no precipitation. But I'd be interested to know why those days were worse. One major contributor to this pollution is wood smoke so I wondered if those days were colder, but they weren't compared with other days that month. -
Lindsay Walker 4/08/2020 2:40 PMI have been sad to not be able to recycle as many plastics as I once could in my curbside recycling. I try to reuse plastic packaging as much as possible but it eventually ends up in the trash. The stay-at-home order means that no recycling is being accepted at the drop off site but the website says they take things in addition to what you can recycle in curbside (I've heard they take styrofoam block, plastic film, bubble wrap, scrap metal and books). I found a local company that recycles things like paint, old toilets, doors, furniture and flooring http://www.seconduse.com/about/acceptance-policies/ which I don't currently have but hope to clean out my garage soon and might find some things to take there.
I also recently heard about a new company that is doing a plastic offset program where folks can offset their plastic footprint by supporting recycling programs in developing countries: https://repurpose.global/ -
Lindsay Walker 3/31/2020 10:38 AMToday I focused on learning more about local issues. I read about the impact to the Washington State legislative agenda as a result of COVID-19 in this article in the Seattle Times https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/coronavirus-dominated-the-2020-washington-state-legislative-session-heres-what-lawmakers-did-and-didnt-get-done/
J.T. Wilcox, R-Yelm, the House minority leader was quoted saying the session “seemed to start out with this huge progressive agenda, and almost all of that fell by the wayside." One of the agenda items that "fell by the wayside" was a Climate Change bill that would have implemented a low carbon fuel standard.
I also read an article in the Tacoma News Tribune about Metro Parks Tacoma having to lay off 520 seasonal and part time workers and reduce the hours or furlough almost all other full time workers. As a result of lost income from sales and property taxes, and lost earned income from classes, programs and entry fees, the parks are looking at huge losses. Metro Parks executive director, Shon Sylvia was quoted saying, " We strongly urge Congress to target its next round of relief toward local governments. https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article241577346.html -
Lindsay Walker 3/30/2020 2:32 PMI live with 2 people who have asthma, one of whom is immune compromised. Because of their asthma, they can tell when we are having a bad air quality day. After reading about the EPA rollbacks for regulating air pollution, I signed a petition asking the EPA not to relax regulations that keep the air clean especially now when many more people's lives depend on their lungs functioning at their highest capacity.
https://act.biologicaldiversity.org/onlineactions/gEjDagGcAkKdAQ3r7Ha-IA2?sourceID=1006092&utm_source=ad&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=currentalerts -
Lindsay Walker 3/30/2020 2:28 PMLike Dan, I also read about the EPA's choice to freeze enforcement of certain environmental laws for industry as part of the declaration of a national emergency for COVID-19. I get a daily news brief from the New York Times and the article about this was all the way at the bottom. It was alarming to me that air pollution regulations would be relaxed during a pandemic of a respiratory illness when there is a shortage of ventilators...
I also read an article in the New York Times today that the Trump admistration plans to announce tomorrow rollbacks to a 2012 rule requiring car makers fleets to have an average of 54mpg. The rollback would reduce the required average mpg to 40 leading to an estimated 1 billion additional tons of CO2 expected to be released into the atmosphere over the lifetime of these vehicles. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/climate/trump-fuel-economy.html -
Lindsay Walker 3/26/2020 12:55 PMI went over to the DC Environmental Film Festival (https://dceff.org/) and watched a short documentary about a group of islands in the Chesapeake bay that I visited as a child called "We Will Stay." The trip I took there was very meaningful and played a role in my decision to become an environmental educator. Today, these islands are eroding due to sea level rise. It was jarring to see a place that is so connected to my cultural and personal roots being directly impacted by climate change (something I hadn't even heard about when I first visited the islands). It was also very interesting to learn about the reactions and politics of the people who live there.