Ben Wall

For this week's ecochallenge, I chose to excercise for an hour each day and meditate for ten minutes each day. These are both activities that I feel are necessary to my well-being that I've been relinquishing lately; meditation since about 2012, and I was happy to have extra incentive to do them. I regularly dismiss going to the gym because I don't have time. However, if I manage to get on my way before I get hit with an afternoon lull, it makes my day more productive. My brain typically shuts down around 8:00 each night, but when I exercise in the afternoon I am able to be productive until I'm ready to go to bed. Meditation was another challenge. I chose to do it before getting into bed each night. I couldn't maintain my focus for more than five minutes when I first started, but I've worked my way up to being able to sit still for ten minutes and allow my mind to wander without grabbing for my various distracting impulses. These are both practices that I would like to maintain; I know that I feel better and get more done when doing them, but the end of the term will make focus difficult.

I chose nature challenges this week, and it was a perfect time to motivate to go outdoors because I would likely have stayed inside during the rainy weather, otherwise. Each day before sunset, I made sure to go outside for at least ten minutes until the sun was down. I typically walked the length of the Park Blocks and then sat on a bench until it started to get dark. Observing the dimming of daylight was relaxing, and I'm going to try to make it a regular habit. The other challenge I took on was to find a new trail, so I hiked a portion of the Wildwood Trail in Forest Park that I had not been on before. The damp weather resulted in hardly any other hikers on the trail, and the woods were peacefully still and quiet.

For this week's challenge I chose to research and discuss local transportation justice issues with friends. Unsurpringly, I learned that the east side of Portland is underserved by Trimet. There are fewer transit routes and stops in neighborhoods on the east side of the Willamette River, which tend to be more marginalized and lower income communities than on the west side. Less access to transportation means less access to jobs, healthcare, education, community services, and so many other things vital to life. In 2022, Portland Bureau of Transportation implemented a Transportation Justice initiative that acknowledges disparities and inequities that have been created, and resolves to redistribute transportation resources so that everyone has equal mobility options. However, Trimet recently raised fares, so I guess those who are most economically disadvantaged will bear the brunt of the "redistribution."

For this week's challenge I updated the mailing address on my voter registration, which was easily done online, and I practiced active listening with five people. It was a great reason to use this weekend to catch up with friends and family that I don't regularly talk with. Something I can always use more practice with when having long conversations is to recognize when the other person wants to talk, and maybe is only wanting to get things off their chest, and isn't interested in my thoughts on the topic. I probably spent around eight hours on the phone over the past few days, and it left me feeling more connected.

This week I aimed to turn off the faucet whenever possible while washing dishes. I often let water run constantly while I am washing and rinsing one dish after another, and I recognized that this was unnecessary. I read that washing a dishwasher load-worth of dishes by hand uses an average of 27 gallons of water, and I estimate that I probably wash about a third of that per day, which would require nine gallons of water. By turning the faucet off whenever possible, it probably at least halved my usage. Another water-saving tactic that I found useful was to wash and rinse my dishes using a basin rather than using running water.

I set my goals this week at eating one meal each day with organic ingredients, and having one meal each day consisting of only whole foods. I chose a whole foods-only breakfast and began eating oatmeal with frozen wild blueberries each morning. I typically cook one large dinner each week that I stretch into several meals, and this week I cooked a rice dish that included a head of organic purple cabbage and organic broccoli. Considering that it composed multiple meals, the added price of buying organic cabbage and broccoli was nominal. The switch to oatmeal for breakfast was worthwhile as it made me feel more energetic than the high-fat breakfasts that I've been eating recently.

This week I chose to wash my clothes with cold water and to power down my laptop when I haven't been using it for more than two hours. The idea of using cold water for laundry had me questioning why I have always changed the setting to warm water. I assumed that warm water would do a better job of washing, but I use commercial washers that do a thorough job. When it came to powering down my laptop when I'm not using it, the first thing I did was go to my settings to see if I could have it automatically power down after two hours. I could not find this setting, but it was very cool to find that Windows had multiple recommendations for settings to change to reduce my carbon footprint. From the recommendations, I switched my screen to dark mode, my laptop will go to sleep after three idle minutes, and screen brightness will optimally adapt to the content I am viewing.

I did some research on where our waste in Portland ends up, and I was surprised by the distance that our waste travels to its burial. I used to live in rural NE Oregon, and all waste there went to the county landfill that was a ten minute drive from town. It cost about $15 to dispose of a heaping pickup full of garbage, which I think is way too cheap. In Portland, most of our waste collected by Waste Management ends up at the Columbia Ride Landfill in Arlington, OR; 140 miles to the east along the Columbia River. Columbia Ridge spans 750 acres and is one of the ten largest landfills in the U.S., and it processes around three million pounds of waste annually. The landfill opened in 1990 and has an estimated 120 years of life expectancy remaining. There is also a Waste Management landfill in Hillsboro that operates in conjunction with Tualatin Valley Waste Recovery, which recovers about 40% of waste as recyclable or reusable. TVWR processes nearly 400 tons of waste per day and specializes in construction and demolition debris. Most of the recovered material is sent to local recycling markets, woods products are processed into fuel that provides steam for energy, and asphalt shingles are processed into base-material for road construction.
I also researched hazardous waste superfund cleanup sites in the Northwest. The Hanford nuclear reservation is a notorious waste site 200 miles eastward of Portland along the Columbia River. Decades of nuclear manufacturing produced over 50 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste and 25 million cubic feet of solid radioactive waste at the Hanford site. Cleanup efforts began in 1989, and by 2014 it was the largest environmental cleanup effort in the world. There are currently over 10,000 workers involved in the Hanford cleanup. 60 sq. miles of groundwater beneath Hanford still remain contaminated, down from 80 sq. miles when cleanup began.
Another notable superfund site in the Northwest is the Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Complex in northern Idaho and eastern Washington. Spanning 1,500 sq. miles, including 166 river miles, Bunker Hill is the most expansive cleanup site in the U.S. Mining operations there began in 1883 and, incredulously, continue today. It has been on the EPA priority cleanup list since 1983. Since cleanup began, the level of lead in the blood of local children has been reduced by more than 50% to a level that is considered in a healthy range.

Hey All,
I chose to research what can and can't be recycled via Waste Management pickup in Portland, as well as resources for recycling and reusing various materials. Some bits I learned about recycling pickup is that frozen food boxes are unrecycleable, empty aerosol cans can be thrown in with mixed recycling, empty and dry paint cans can go in mixed recycling, buckets (5 gal or less) and rigid plastic planters (4"+ diameter) can go in mixed recycling, and plastics are recycleable based on size and shape, not the recycle symbol #. I've reviewed the list of what can and can't be recycled in Portland multiple times in the past, but often find myself questioning what I can put in the bin. Some common things I wish were recycleable via pickup, but aren't, are coffee cups, plastic food take-out containers, lids of any kind, plastic bags, and plastic bottles under 6 oz. All containers have to be free of residue and dry, but don't need to be perfectly clean.
When searching for how to recycle items that Waste Management doesn't accept, I found an amazing local website that has resources for sustainably disposing of just about anything: oregonmetro.gov. The site has a very user-friendly search function for finding where to recycle or reuse dozens of different materials/items. I tried a search for light bulbs, cell phones, and oil filters and found multiple recycling locations within four miles.