Uranchimeg Erdenebat

I chose four actions, one is related to energy, one is related to waste, and the other two are related to water. For me, challenges, ‘turn-it-off’, ‘use a reusable water bottle’ and ‘conserve toilet water’ were not challenging at all because these were already my habits. I use the library most of the time, so I do not often use my light in my dorm room, and I always make sure I do not plug in something. I always carry my water bottle and refill my bottle from water dispensers. When I flush, I always think about and flush appropriately. However, I found a challenge related to water ‘five-minute shower’ was difficult, and I am still struggling to accomplish this challenge. Although I cannot finish my shower in five minutes most of the time, I believe I am not taking as much time as I used to take before I committed to this challenge. As a strategy to reduce the amount of time I am using a shower, I play a song every time and take the end of the song as my cue to end my shower time. Besides that, I tried to sit near the drinking bar at Whitney so that I would not forget to refill my water bottle. Furthermore, ‘Use a reusable water bottle’ is related to combatting the issue of PET bottle recycling, as we learned in one of our classes. Recycling PET bottles uses a lot of energy; even if recycled, it would not be the same product anymore. Additionally, visiting the La Crosse water treatment plant encouraged me to do the ‘five-minute shower’ challenge. By visiting there, I understood how it is difficult and expensive to treat water and to recycle the used water and the huge amount of electricity being used as well. By saving water, I believe I contributed to saving water and energy, which further leads to low carbon emissions. I had a few conversations about my challenges outside of class. When I talked about the ‘five-minute shower’ people seemed unfortunately less interested and their reaction was,“Is that possible?”

I chose four actions to take, "Turn it off" (energy), "Use a reusable water bottle" (waste), "Conserve toilet water" (water), and "5-minute showers" (water). My challenges has been doing good so far. I find the challenges related to energy, waste, and 'Conserve toilet water' are not as challenging as 5-minute showers. When I study, I go to the library most of the time, so I hardly use the light in my room. I use a water bottle and conserve water in the toilet. For '5-min showers', I succeed sometimes and sometimes I don’t, and I try not to stay long in the shower, so I set a timer.