Lexi Ebert

Since I don't have a car I almost exclusively use public transit, I transit from Gresham to campus every week day. So for this week I decided to pay attention to how the transit system was working well and how it wasn't. Then I sent an email to trimet with what I noticed (both during this week and as a regular user of trimet). Some things I included were that certain busses were consistently late, some elevators at max stops were continuously out of order, and some buss stops were hard for drivers to see as they were in awkward places or covered by foliage. I also included good things, the trains are almost never late and when they are there is notice on the app and at the stations on the monitors, the public transit can take you within walking distance of most places in Portland, and I generally feel very safe on the trains, busses, and street cars.

I work at a daycare and so to work on community this week I took my kids on a walk to a new part of downtown. We got to ride the streetcar which they absolutely loved, and they got to see all kinds of people who live in their community. They had lots of questions, "Where they going?", "Who that?", "Why they sleeping?", "Why they have that?", each question I answered as best as I could to make them aware that some people in our community are really struggling but I also didn't want to speak to harshly about topics of homelessness with 2-3 year olds. We talked about how some people don't have a place to sleep and so they sleep on the streetcar because it's a safe place for them. We also saw a person using an electric wheelchair which they found very fascinating and we talked about how some people can't walk or have a really hard time walking and so they use a wheelchair to help them get around. Taking the kids out in downtown Portland also makes them visible to the community and we often get asked lots of questions about the kids and our center. The more we go out the more the kids can identify staples of their community and how to interact with them. They will point out places they have been, like the library, and (my favorite) always thank the streetcar for taking us where we need to go.

For my water challenge I decided to collect rain water, and what a great week to do it! It was pretty easy I just put a bowl out on my balcony and since I'm on the top floor there was nothing blocking the rain. It rained enough to fill my bowl about one and a half times during the week, I then used the water to water my indoor plants. This is something that I would continue, but I will have to get a dedicated collection system and perhaps one that will filter the water.

For my food eco challenge I focused on packing food rather than buying it. Since I live almost two hours from campus on transit I'm usually there all day and eat at least one meal on campus per day. Normally I will buy my lunch but this week I made the switch to packing my lunch. I actually liked it a lot more than I thought I would, it wasn't as tedious as I had always feared it would be, and it saved me money. I was also able to reduce on food waste since I could pack exactly what I would eat and could much more easily bring home what I didn't finish.

For this weeks topic of energy I went with a simple task of making sure everything got turned off when not in use. This includes lights, appliances, and various technology. At first I found it to be difficult to remember to turn off things like the TV, which usually auto shut off after half an hour, but eventually it became a habit. The lights one was not as hard because I try to do that anyway but occasionally I do forget so I was trying to be extra vigilant about it this week. Overall this was a pretty easy task that helped me reduce my energy usage even if it was by just a little.

On the topic of waste I decided to look into sustainable fashion as the fashion industry produces a ton of waste. We ended up also discussing it in class on Thursday as well which was helpful. I did research into reasons for fast fashion and ways in which I can personally help reduce fashion waste. The biggest way I discovered to reduce fashion waste is to not throw out clothing from your existing wardrobe, rather, you can up-cycle it, give it away as hand-me-downs, or donate it if you must. It is also important to repair your clothing as it breaks, a lot of fast fashion is low quality and begins to fall apart after only a few wears, knowing basic sewing skills to repair rips, holes, or fraying stitches can keep a fast fashion wardrobe in use for many more years than intended. Fast Fashion came about as technology advanced and making clothes by machine and in bulk was possible, as well as the technology to spread information and trends. We can see this if we look at fashion through the eras, if I were to say picture someone from the 1800's we have a pretty clear idea of what their clothing looked like because it didn't change very drastically over the course of the whole century. If I say 1920's, 1940's or even 1970's very distinct looks come to mind as characterizing these decades, but as we reach the 80's the looks between the begging and end change quite a bit and by the time I say 2010's the looks change almost more than once a year. 2012 fashion is wildly different from 2018 fashion and they're only 6 years apart. After doing a lot of this research I went to go look at my clothing and assess how sustainable my wardrobe is. While none of my clothing come from sustainable brands and are almost entirely fast fashion I have only bought one new clothing item in the last 6 or so months, most of my clothing is second hand or thirfted, I repair my ripped or otherwise "ruined" clothes, and I wear all the clothes I currently own. I would therefore categorize my wardrobe as sustainable.