Ava Miel

This week I researched which local urban wildlife are native to Oregon and, if they are not, where they came from. The first is the nutria, which I learned is not native to Oregon and instead is from South America. They were brought here anywhere from the late 19th century to the early 20th century (my sources were inconsistent) because of the value of their fur, but shortly after their introduction the value went down and so they were released into the wild. In one attempt to decrease their population, it was legal to eat their meat. The next species are crows, which I learned are native to Oregon and North America in general. They are one of the few animals to have their population increase since the introduction of European settlers. This is partially because of their adaptability to the industrialized spaces we have created. The thirds species is squirrels, which are actually a mix of native and invasive depending on the species. Two species in particular, the Western Grey Squirrel and the Eastern Grey Squirrel, look similar, though only the Western Grey Squirrel is native to Oregon. The invasive squirrels' populations are able to overtake native species as they are able to persevere with less habitat. According to law, you can also not purposefully move squirrels off of your property, as this risks allowing invasive squirrels to reach more areas. Eastern Grey Squirrels are native to North America, but from the Eastern states. The final animal I wanted to investigate was raccoons, and I found out they are native to Oregon.
I was definitely surprised by some of my findings, especially that raccoons are native to the region while some squirrels are not. With the squirrels in particular, it did make me sad to read about the different species as I have for sure seen more of the invasive ones than the native ones (and am not sure if I have ever seen a native squirrel before). This post was not as challenging as some of the other information I have learned, as there were some positive things that I learned like how crows are native and their population is increasing. I thought for sure that since they are so common that they would be invasive. Similar to learning about native plants for my Eco Change Project, I feel much more informed now about my surroundings and hope that the native plants I put in my garden will help create habitats for more diverse species. We have a fig tree in our yard that, when in bloom during spring and summer, usually houses a family of raccoons. Instead of seeing them as somewhat scary now (I am always afraid they might bite me), I can view them in a more grateful light for being a part of the natural ecosystem of Portland. I also want to keep an eye out for the kinds of squirrels that might be in the PSU park blocks, as that is where I see the most of them. I believe I have seen mostly Eastern Grey Squirrels there, but perhaps if I am persistent enough I can see one of the more native species either here or more outside of town. Finally, I have actually not seen many nutria in Portland. I used to live near a marshy area and saw a few of them there, which makes sense because they thrive in marshes, but maybe their population is going down, especially since I know many Portlanders who have never heard of them before.

My Sources:
1. "Nutria" by Jessica Rondema on Oregon Encyclopedia https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/nutria/
2. "Nutria, an Invasive Rodent" from the United States Department of Agriculture https://www.aphis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/fsc-nutria-invasive-rodent.pdf
3. "Crows, Jays, and Magpies" from the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife https://myodfw.com/wildlife-viewing/species/crows-jays-and-magpies
4. "Urban Crows" from the Bird Alliance of Oregon https://birdallianceoregon.org/our-work/rehabilitate-wildlife/having-a-wildlife-problem/urban-crows/
5. "Living with Wildlife: Tree Squirrels" from the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife https://www.dfw.state.or.us/wildlife/living_with/docs/TreeSquirrels.pdf
6. "Eastern grey squirrel" from Invasive Species Council of BC https://bcinvasives.ca/invasives/eastern-grey-squirrel/
7. "Raccoons" from Think Wild https://www.thinkwildco.org/raccoons/

This week I researched and performed an audit on the toxicity of cleaning products and one that my family frequently uses: Fabuloso. I learned that there is a big issue in the cleaning products industry with volatile organic compounds (VOCs), compounds which evaporate at room temperature and can cause chronic respiratory problems, allergic reactions, and headaches (American Lung Association). VOCs can be found in nearly every cleaning product as well as some personal care products. Multiple large companies have faced legal action over their lack of disclosure over their use of VOCs in their products, including Lumber Liquidators and Home Depot. An incident that I found particularly egregious was four paint companies (Benjamin Moore, ICP Construction Inc, YOLO Colorhouse, and Imperial Paints LLC) that advertised their paints were safe for children and pregnant women because they had no VOCs, even advertising that the paint was good for nurseries, when in reality the paints would emit VOCs while being applied and drying. ICP in particular greenwashed their products by inventing their own eco-friendly seal that they had no qualifications for. With all of this information, I tried to research the safety level of Fabuloso. I found Colgate-Palmolive’s own analysis of this products, in which they say that it has no VOCs and only one hazardous ingredient, being sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate. However, anther source I found was concerned about the safety of this product. EWG is a cleaning product company, so some of what they say has to be taken with a grain of salt because they are trying to keep you from buying from their competitors. But their analysis of Fabuloso showed that they were concerned about the product’s damage to respiratory health, skin irritation, developmental and reproductive toxicity, and, most extremely, cancer. Cancer was the highest concern for them due to the sulfuric acid found in the product. They were also concerned about this aspect of it as well as the preservatives and coloring of the product (which is a bright purple). This information makes me feel even more skeptical about Fabuloso, and I think that I need to convince my mom that we need to stop using it. The source which informed be about VOCs in the first place, the American Lung Association, recommended that an alternative to cleaning materials with VOCs in them can just be warm water, soap, baking soda, and vinegar depending on what needs cleaning. This ties back in to what we were talking about in class last week with consumerism and simple living. While these cleaning products do work really well, if they are actively harming us it is better to go for the simpler option and avoid buying specific products or at least buy products with simple ingredients. The most difficult part of this challenge was trying to find a straight answer for the toxicity of Fabuloso, and I hope to be able to do more research into the potential harmful effects it may have on my health. Reward-wise, the companies that did violate the laws surrounding VOCs were brought to justice which makes me happy to see as that does not happen as much as it should, and I hope that that pattern continues.

Sources:
1. “Cleaning Supplies and Household Chemicals” from the American Lung Association https://www.lung.org/clean-air/indoor-air/indoor-air-pollutants/cleaning-supplies-household-chem
2. “6 companies who were caught misleading customers over VOC levels in their products” from Define Instruments https://www.defineinstruments.com/post/6-companies-who-were-caught-misleading-customers-over-voc-levels-in-their-products?srsltid=AfmBOooynl6ASiFIk4xp-LeJZbElvqMAWFgNDDIsQQnGeYRjG_k-liEP
3. Safety Data Sheet from Colgate-Palmolive Company, “Fabuloso All Purpose Cleaner Liquid Lavender” https://monroetn.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Colgate-Palmolive-Co.-Fabuloso-All-Purpose-Cleaner-Liquid-Lavender.pdf
4. “Fabuloso Multi-Purpose Cleaner Spray, Lavender” from EWG’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning https://www.ewg.org/cleaners/products/5527-FabulosoMultiPurposeCleanerSprayLavender/

This week for my ecochallenge I decide to improve a bus stop next to my house that I often see a lot of people wait by that is just a pole with a paper sign for the bus number on it. I don't have a chair that I can spare, so I decided to make a tear-away sheet with positive affirmations that people can take with them if they need a pick-me-up, since waiting for the bus can be boring and/or kind of of lonely sometimes. I made it by hand and partially from a template online, but in the future I would like to make one that I can print out a bit more easily and with color. The biggest challenge I faced for this week was taking myself seriously trying to do this. I felt a little strange trying to make an adjustment to a bus stop since I thought people might notice me and ask what I was doing or think that the positive affirmations were frivolous. But as I made the tear-away I kept thinking about how if I saw one I would really feel cheered up and I felt happier making it and just had fun with it. It made me feel like I was taking a step towards the kind of activism presented by Annah MacKenzie in this week's textbook chapter, where individuals can make small changes to make their local communities more welcoming to pedestrians. I also felt like kind of a bandit putting it up so late and was a little worried someone might catch me even though the paper is harmless. I'm excited to see if it gets any use as I walk by it and I hope it makes someone's day better.

I researched LGBTQ+ perspectives and learned that most suffering from climate change roots from social injustice. For example, a disproportionate amount of LGBTQ+ people live in areas with higher levels of pollution because they are rejected to live in other areas, leading to health problems, Because LGBTQ+ people and transgender people especially are at higher risk of houselessness, they are also more susceptible to dangerous weather events caused by global warming. Being queer myself, and having family members and close friends who are gay and trans, I knew that researching LGBTQ+ perspectives for this week's ecochallenge was important to better understand the risks that we might face, especially my friends who are beginning to strike out on their own from their families. What most surprised me about the information that I learned this week was how much intersectionality also affected climate change. Even though much of the data I read disappointed because it is a very grim outlook on yet another way that LGBTQ+ people are finding difficulty existing, I do feel more empowered with the knowledge of these statistics rather than staying in the dark, especially when it comes to helping address our own houseless population in Portland.

Sources:
1. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/how-environmental-and-climate-injustice-affects-the-lgbtqi-community/
2. https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/climate-change-risk-lgbt/

This week I researched which foods use the most water in their production. I learned that we actually consume the most water through the foods we eat instead of things like long showers or using the toilet, though reducing the use of those helps as well. In terms of unprocessed foods, beef takes the most water to make, with one 6 ounce steak needing 674 gallons of water. To my surprise, nuts also need lots of water, especially almonds, cashews, and pistachios. Rice also takes a lot of water to grow as well as wheat and corn, all of which are staple foods. A singular egg takes 52 gallons of water to produced. I also learned that there are 3 kinds of "water footprint" which is the water usage, being blue, green, and grey. Blue is surface and ground water, green is rainwater, and grey is water used to dilute waste to maintain water quality. I had never heard of the last one before and didn't know that that was a tactic. When it comes to animal products, animals raised on farms where they get their food through foraging use mostly green water, meaning that their waste is much less than farms with supply their animals with corn or soy feed. Through doing this challenge I feel much more empowered in terms of knowing the processes that go into making my food because I realized that I was assuming that water use was just about watering crops/keeping animals hydrated when it's much deeper than that. This is also yet another reason why I would like to try eating less meat. Doing this challenge made me reflect on droughts around the world, like the water crisis in Cape Town, South Africa, where residents of this major city were thought to reach a point where water would be rationed out to them in mere gallons. That a single 6 ounce steak needs almost 700 gallons of water to produce makes me realize how much we in the US are eating foods that are maybe not necessary or indulgent in terms of water usage and how this is affecting the planet and other countries. We need to find more eco-friendly ways to produce the food that we eat or otherwise stop eating those foods altogether. It would be challenging to give up eating meat or even just eat it less, but knowing that it would make a difference in hundreds of gallons feels tangible and significant.

This week I watched Episode 1 of Season 19 of Native Report from PBS about food sovereignty. The episode covered three food sovereignty efforts, being a restaurant owned by an Objiwe man serving Indigenous-inspired dishes, a foodshare run by Indigenous Food Network that grows food so local Native American communities have better access to it, and a new elementary school curriculum that teaches children Indigenous values about the land and how to grow and harvest native crops. I felt particularly inspired by Odia Wood Krueger's teaching curriculum as her booklet is similar to my Eco Change project where the end goal is to create a booklet with recipes for people to follow. The teacher who implemented the curriculum explains that her students were more engaged by it because it involved hands-on activities, and I hope to achieve the same with my booklet because it encourages people to create with their hands and have a tangible result from their work. I also think that the efforts of the foodshare are successful because they are sidestepping capitalist food networks like grocery stores by growing their own food and providing for the community, creating their own sustainable policies that do not need to be overseen by the American government. Watching this documentary only felt challenging in the sense that it makes me sad to think that efforts need to be made for food sovereignty because our current growing and harvesting system is so broken that it is destroying the Earth without even feeding everyone. However, the documentary was extremely hopeful in its tone and it made me wonder if there were places in Portland like the restaurant Miijim to go to where I can learn more about Indigenous food and support Native American businesses. I learned about Javelina, the first (and perhaps only) Indigenous restaurant in Portland. They are currently closed as they move to their new location, but I would like to visit them in May when they open again and they are not actually far from my house.

This week I decided to naturally heat the floor that I live on/myself since it usually becomes very cold and I turn on my heaters a lot to get warm since its convenient and immediate. I live in a basement so opening the windows is unfortunately not an option to get warmer, but I was able to open up the blinds to let the sunlight in which heated up the rooms, sometimes to the point of actually being too hot. Nighttime was more challenging, but the methods I found most effective were staying by the oven when I was making food, taking warm showers, and putting on more layers or getting up every so often to move my body and get my circulation going. I would also sometimes leave to go outside when it was too cold and soak up the warm sun, which allowed me to evade using the heaters completely and made me feel better than staying inside. A definite challenge of this week was not turning to the heater. It has become a habit for me when I come home to turn it on to get warmer, since other methods of getting warm takes more time and I find some emotional comfort in being warm so quickly. However, the rewards of this challenge also offered me other forms of emotional comfort, like opening the blinds more which makes the space seem less dreary. In addition, I have heard that sitting next to heaters like I often do can cause permanent burns on your skin, which I have noticed signs of in myself, so this week was a good excuse to begin leaving that habit behind. Finally, by heating naturally I felt more peaceful knowing that I was using less energy, not only making the energy bill smaller, but also not using something that wasn’t necessary. In the future, I would like to use the heater only if absolutely necessary, like in the winter, and at lower temperatures than before.

This week, I chose to do the Personal Waste Audit and collect my non-recyclable and compostable waste in order to raise my awareness about the kinds and amount of waste that I produce. I collected approximately half a bag of trash and found that the type of plastic waste I produce the most is from bulk items rather than individually packaged ones. I am often guilty of buying individually packaged items for convenience, but grocery items that I bought this week such as cheese, bagels, and tangerines all came in plastic packaging. I never put as much consideration into the packaging of items that weren’t individually wrapped, since it seemed like the waste produced from these products would be lesser. A big challenge of this action was not throwing everything away right away because it felt like it was cluttering up my space. Keeping it with me made me feel a sense of disgust, but by reflecting on that disgusted feeling I realized that the origin of it was actually a sense of guilt because I was subconsciously aware that if the trash was not clean enough to be in my home, that it was harming the environment as well. The Systems Thinking Iceberg Model from Session 1 of our textbook definitely came into play during my experience for this project. I realized that I was using a lot of plastic, which led to me realizing that I use more plastic when I do not pay attention to the packaging of bulk items and when I am buying for convenience. This led me to understand that I was not paying attention to the packaging of bulk items because I was making the assumption that they left a smaller footprint and that I was buying for convenience to save time. However, because of this activity I now realize that bulk foods can still leave a large plastic footprint and that the convenience of plastic packaging is not worth the harm that it inflicts on the planet and the disgust that comes from when the plastic must be disposed of. The rewarding thing about this experience was gaining more awareness and control over what I choose to purchase. For produce, instead of prepackaged tangerines, I will bring my own bags and pick out the produce that is not prepackaged. I can also substitute some of the foods I bought, like pre-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, for the raw ingredients and make bulk batches at home. Also, for some drink products like apple juice, I can find these products in glass or cardboard containers. For glass containers especially I can reuse the containers for my own homemade goods.