capstone fall 22

Today, I watched the story of bottled water. When thinking about bottled water, I usually worry about body of water. This mini doc, reminded me of what happens to things that get "recycled". There is so much misinformation about recycling, it is sad that so much of what we consciously and thoughtfully recycle still ends up in...

For this eco-challenge, I decided to buy only what I need for a week. I consider myself a pretty frugal shopper and someone who doesn't buy a lot of unnecessary things, but I actually found a lot of opportunities to buy less. I normally buy paper towels every couple weeks, but since I was running low I decided to use this as an opprortunity to...

For this eco-challenge, I began taking daily walks to complete some of my small errands instead of driving. Most days, I drive to a cafe near my house for a coffee and a bagel. I decided to use this as an opportunity to walk instead, since it isn't very far. The first day I planned to do this, I slept in too late and didn't have time to walk....

For this eco-challenge, I decided to use my daily walks as an opportunity to pick up litter on my street. I often see litter on the ground in my neighborhood and it makes me sad, but I have never put in the effort to do something about it before. I was surprised that it really didn't feel like work at all, since I already enjoy taking walks...

For my eco challenge this week, I have made the decision to begin recycling my food scraps to make vegetable broth, to reduce food waste and get the most out of the produce that I buy. I actually got this idea from Francis. For the past few weeks I have been been saving scraps from produce that I cut up, that I would ordinarily throw away, and...

For all of this term, I have avoided buying or using plastic bottles for water drinking. It has been tricky on days that I forgot my bottle. I spent some time being dehydrated and then, started remembering. I have only used two paper cups this term and feel like not having a coffee mug and water bottle at all times severely impacted my...

For the final eco challenge, I decided to do an energy audit of my house. It was interesting to see how much energy is used in a two person household. I'm not sure if I entered in the information 100% accurately but from what I could it seemed to make sense for the apartment I live in. I have never done an energy audit before, so I might do...

This week I decided to focus on implementing a sharing economy with my roommates and my family at home. I chose this challenge fro this week because a couple of weeks ago I decided to carpool with my roommates when having to commute. Because we still carpool together now for most of your daily errands, I decided to breakdown all of the things...

This week, the change that I've resolved to undertake is to begin composting. I've wanted to do this for a while, but haven't been able to figure out a viable way; I live in an apartment building that doesn't offer compost as part of its waste-management program. However, I live very near to some of PSU's residence halls, which have an outdoor...

I’ve been growing my own plants for a bit now, and I wanted to branch out to something that I could actually eat. I ended up walking past a booth in front of Smith where I saw they were handing out seeds for people to grow their own food. It was a random bag of seeds, but the seeds that I got were corn. it’s a weird plant to start with, but I...