Preston Eberth

Eco Challenge seven consumption. There was no group specifically for consumption, so I selected eat mindfully out of the simplicity field. Most people I know either don't have a dining room anymore or have it but its mostly unused and in the rare case they have one but eat while staring at their phone. For the last week though I don't have a dining room I had a dining space that I would set and turn off all my electronics to just sit and enjoy the food. Part of the eating mindfully is to also eat slower which is my struggle. I worked on eating items individually, fully chewing and savoring eat bit. Surprisingly this slower more intentional eating also made me eat less which some of the reading says it because by slowing and focusing on what you are eating it gives your body time to recognize it is full. Admittedly it has been a bit of a struggle to back habits and initially mind numbingly boring, but it is something I will continue with as a pseudo mediation.

For ecochallenge six I am continuing my second ecochallenge to leave the car at home. I have found that while getting to these places my be feasible to do it can at times be uncomfortable with cars speeding by you, the additional time it takes and the planning. I have found on several occasions that I will ride somewhere only to not have a place to lockup to. Every now and again I will you a fence or post but there are others I have just turned around and headed back to try again by other means later. Other frustrations are the massive parking lots separating you from a store; the high-speed roads with driveways; poor transit connections, and lack of shade but I will continue looking at alternatives.

For the fifth ecochallenge, I focused on community building. To build community in my neighborhood I have been getting to know my neighbors and spending time talking and working together on yard project. we have also been swapping vegetables and fruit from our gardens as a nice way to not have to grow it all on your own and also introduce variety. On several occasions I have been loaning out tools such as pole saw, compressor, and others. several of us have tentatively agreed to also do a rotating dinner every couple weeks where we will cook a meal and serve it in our backyard. Outside of my neighborhood I have been working to expand my community with those I have met through classes. We have started a hiking group trying to get out every other weekend for a hike and then a meal after. We had a nice short hike and swimming saturday since someone picked the punch bowl hike. The beginning of August we are also doing a short backpacking trip since I had enough extra gear to loan everyone.

For my water ecochallenge I selected a couple items; first I reduced my showers to 5 minutes mostly by setting up a separate container for shaving that I then dump in my garden. next I mulched my yard, garden and trees to work on moving it to a dry garden. Lastly the water I do use is from 3 55 gallon rain barrels I have had setup but never connected to my watering system. Eventually I would like to setup my laundry to feed into additional water collection to feed into the garden as well.

For my Food challenge I am doing meatless days each week. Whenever I was overseas, I found I would be vegetarian and always noticed how much better I felt. Though not fully vegan eating lower on the food chain helps in several ways such as lower carbon footprint, reduced virtual water, reducing waste, improved health and of course animal welfare. It should come to no surprise that when looking at most western meals we have a focal meat dish and maybe a side of a starch or vegetable so many of my meatless meals are inspired from around the world such as Mediterranean, Italian, Asian or African. Most people I know don’t really think of Ethiopian when talking about food, but it has been some of my favorite meals and I am so happy I was introduced to it on a trip to Morocco by some friends. I have always purchased the injera (sponge like flat bread) and used it with meals I make but this week I'm going to attempt making my own.

8,887 grams/gallon (8.887kg/gallon) or almost 20lbs/gallon, that is the amount of CO2 released per gallon of gasoline. This works out to roughly 400grams per mile for the average vehicle. The majority of this doesn’t come from the gallon of gasoline itself, it is the process of burning that 6lbs of fuel then causes the hydrogen to combine with oxygen to create water vapor and the carbon to combine with oxygen to produce CO2. The majority of trips we take by car are under 6 miles, meaning that if we all walk or bike, we could reduce CO2 emissions by 897,328,155,339.8 kg or 897.33megatons (3.2Trillion miles annually/51.5% for trips under 6 miles x 8.887kg).

I'm beginning my journey with some simple changes related to waste streams. I say simple because it's an infrequent event for me already and I already made other changes regarding it.
I am reducing my disposable cups use which is already minor since I swapped to making my own coffee at my old job. My team would get coffee daily if not multiple times a day and the trash cans would be full of the empty cup not to mention the expense of getting a coffee.
My change was simple I brought in my pour over kit and cold brewer with mugs for the team and get beans weekly. I had the equipment at home already just sitting since I was always in the office, so it made sense to bring it to where the issue was. Not only was it great to save money and no longer have a trash bin full of cups but also the community engagement since as we made the coffees we would have "watercooler talk" or even start our meetings in the lounge making our coffee, chatting about non work and really building a connection rather than sending one person to pick up and deliver them and everyone right back to work.
Once Covid sent everyone home we still continued these engagements by scheduling meeting to talk and make our coffee at the beginning of the day. After I left that job I still make my own at home and now only contend with the free coffee with purchase of a bag of beans every few weeks so as I started today I am packing a to-go mug and they were more than happy to let me use it.