Thomas Gowing

Nature

Consumerism

Transportation
The transportation eco-challenge I decided that any trips that were needed within my area I would either walk or ride my bicycle. I know that any of my appointments would require me to drive my automobile so any of my off time that required traveling would be local as a test run. Also, this week I did not order anything that needed to be shipped to me and tried to stick to shopping in one area where I could park and walk from each store or only got items within this small radius.

Community
This week, for my Eco challenge I help my friend put up a fence around his front yard for a ongoing project to have a front yard garden. The project took a bit to complete but we had 3 of our friends over and finished it up pretty quickly. After we finished, we had dinner together and chatted for a few hours before leaving. also, on Wednesday after our field trip I was able to have lunch with two of my classmates as well as Ella who took attendance for us at sunflower farms. It was a great time getting to know all of them and sharing a meal.

Water

Food

For the second challenge, I decided that I will try to use my A/C unit as much as possible. I investigated what to do about this and one option that I wanted to try was to use temperature control curtains. Since most of my heat and cold will radiate through my windows these curtains help stabilize temperatures, keeping rooms manageable. By opening two windows when its colder at night can push out the hot air that was built up during the day this will keep things manageable on my end. One other thing I thought of was using my camping tools to try something new. I have a solar battery pack that I can use to recharge my AA batteries, phone and power tools that I use. Why not use it at home in my patio area and not use power that’s coming from PGE. I can charge my phone and use it other things from this pack at night and recharge the battery pack during the day, this also worked while charging my laptop. So far, the test run is a success, I can see that having a bigger one could power more devices but using what I have is the goal.

One big thing that I am trying to help save on waste was to contact the VA medical center about going paperless. I tried in the past and it didn’t seem to work all too well. I was able to use their app and select to go paperless, as well as call them to make sure all my accounts were not sending me physical mail. Another thing that I am doing is using a filtered water jug to cut back on bottled water, as tap water most of the time gives me issues. This will save in the long run plastic waste that I produce and that is going into the recycle bin.