Ecochallenge.org

Campus Ecochallenge

Avalon Zhu

Community Team

POINTS TOTAL

0 TODAY
5 THIS WEEK
370 TOTAL

participant impact

UP TO

7.0

whole food meals

consumed
UP TO

1.0

mile

not traveled by car
UP TO

1.0

mile

traveled by foot
UP TO

1.6

pounds of CO2

have been saved
UP TO

11

plastic straws

not sent to the landfill
UP TO

2.0

plastic bottles

not sent to the landfill
UP TO

10

plastic containers

not sent to the landfill
UP TO

3.0

pounds of paper

have been saved
UP TO

60

gallons of water

have been saved
UP TO

3.0

conversations

with people
UP TO

142

minutes

spent learning

Avalon's actions

Food

Whole Food Lifestyle

I will enjoy 2 meal(s) each day free of processed foods.

COMPLETED 4
DAILY ACTIONS

Food

Try a New Way to Prep

I will try a new method of food preparation, such as canning, pickling, or baking bread.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Water

Get Involved in the Water Justice Movement

I will spend at least 20 minutes using the resources provided to learn about water justice and find out how I can get involved in local initiatives.

COMPLETED 1
DAILY ACTION

Water

5-Minute Showers

I will save up to 20 gallons (75 L) of water each day by taking 5-minute showers.

COMPLETED 3
DAILY ACTIONS

Community

Talk To My Friends and Classmates

I will decide which social or environmental issue in my community is most important to me and tell 2 friends and/or classmates each day about the issue.

COMPLETED 3
DAILY ACTIONS

Transportation

Walk Instead

I will walk 2 mile(s) each day instead of driving and avoid sending up to (___) lbs of CO2 into Earth's atmosphere.

COMPLETED 1
DAILY ACTION

Transportation

Learn More and Advocate

Access to public transportation is a social justice issue! I will learn about the need for public transportation in my community and tell 1 friends or classmates each day about the issue.

COMPLETED 0
DAILY ACTIONS

Waste

Use a Reusable Water Bottle

I will keep 1 disposable plastic bottle(s) from entering the waste stream by using a reusable water bottle.

COMPLETED 2
DAILY ACTIONS

Waste

Use Reusable Bags

If at all possible, I will not accept any disposable bags when making purchases.

COMPLETED 5
DAILY ACTIONS

Waste

Choose Two-Sided Printing

I will save up to .21 lbs (.09 kg) of paper per day by switching from one-sided printing to two-sided when I have to print documents.

COMPLETED 3
DAILY ACTIONS

Waste

Skip the Straw

Plastic bags and small plastic pieces like straws are most likely to get swept into our waterways. I will keep 2 plastic straw(s) out of the landfill and ocean each day by refusing straws or using my own glass/metal straw.

COMPLETED 5
DAILY ACTIONS

Energy

Learn About Renewable Energy

I will spend 10 minutes learning more about renewable energy alternatives (i.e. solar, wind, biomass) in my region.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Participant Feed

Reflection, encouragement, and relationship building are all important aspects of getting a new habit to stick.
Share thoughts, encourage others, and reinforce positive new habits on the Feed.

To get started, share “your why.” Why did you join the challenge and choose the actions you did?

Avalon Zhu 6/02/2025 12:04 AM
This week, my report topic is mindfulness and meditation.
Through practicing mindfulness and meditation, I’ve started to reflect on how my lifestyle has changed recently, and I gradually realized that “Be natural” makes me healthier in body and mind, and also aligns better with the original goal of environmental protection, compared to “Be industrial.”
Before this semester—especially when I was still living in China—I was almost a die-hard supporter of industrial society. I believed that the word “efficiency” ran through every part of our lives. Even my idea of “living in harmony with nature” meant using nature without causing too much damage, so that “destruction” and “regeneration” would stay in balance. In a fast-paced life, rapidly developing industry and technology bring us endless convenience. I once thought it was unthinkable to give up these conveniences and return to a more natural way of living.

My daily life relied heavily on an industrialized lifestyle: I used electronic devices intensively, ordered takeout and fast food often, and ignored contact with nature. I rarely spent time outdoors and hardly paid attention to the natural rhythms around me.

As my courses went deeper, I realized that sustainable living is not the same as sustainable development. The center of life is the “self,” meaning each person’s own natural state. I am now reexamining my relationship with myself and with nature. I am gradually learning to “Be natural” instead of “Be industrial.”

True sustainability begins with reestablishing inner order. When individuals no longer fight against nature, protection is not an external duty but becomes an internal breath. (Today, when I was talking about this with a friend, he gave me this sentence, I think it is very meaningful.)

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Avalon Zhu 5/25/2025 10:38 PM
The theme of this week is nature and consumerism
When it comes to nature, I chose to go hiking in Washington Park, which is the closest way to nature for me. Walking along the forest path, breathing in the fresh air, listening to the chirping of birds and the rustling of leaves, I feel as if I have merged with nature. This kind of environment also calmed my mood accordingly.

In terms of the theme of consumerism, I began to examine my shopping habits. Advertisements and promotions in modern society often encourage us to constantly purchase unnecessary items, bringing short-term satisfaction but also generating a large amount of waste. At the same time, large-scale industrial products have also reduced costs. I find that under the influence of eco change this semester, my consumption concept has changed significantly. From purchasing randomly to beginning to examine whether I really need it, and gradually starting to pay attention to the waste and reuse of materials, although I struggle to give up the desired items in the process of reducing impulse consumption, whenever I insist on only purchasing necessities, Then one can obtain a more lasting sense of satisfaction.

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- Amy Minato 5/26/2025 6:41 PM
  I find a connection between being in nature more and needing consumer goods less...
  
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Avalon Zhu 5/18/2025 11:53 PM
This week's topic is transportation. Therefore, the task I have chosen is 1, to learn more information and promote it to friends. 2. Walk every day.
Regarding transportation, I have collected the following information.

1: Burning one liter of conventional gasoline emits about 2.35 kg of CO₂.

2: On a per passenger‐mile basis, transit buses consume about 4578 BTU, versus 2847 BTU for private cars—i.e. buses use roughly 161% of the energy of cars per passenger‐mile[1]. Considering that the average passenger capacity of private cars in statistics is 1.2 people while that of buses is 11 people, the energy efficiency and energy-saving effect of buses far exceed those of private cars.

3: Assuming an average EV energy use of 15 kWh/100 km and Oregon’s grid emission factor of 0.2966 kg CO₂/kWh, an EV emits about 4.45 kg CO₂ per 100 km.

4: Considering the current wave of electrification, I calculated the carbon emission ratios of some common electric vehicles and gasoline vehicles.

Tesla Model 3：15.2 kWh/100 km × 0.2966 kg CO₂/kWh = 4.51 kg CO₂/100 km

Toyota Camry：4.61 L/100 km× 2.35 kg CO₂/L = 10.84 kg

4.51 / 10.84 ≈ 0.416

Electric buses(Enviro400EV)：0.67 kWh/km ⇒ 67 kWh/100 km × 0.2966 kg CO₂/kWh = 19.9 kg CO₂/100 km

Fuel buses: 40 L/100km × 2.68 kg CO₂/L = 107.2 kg CO₂/100 km[1]

19.9 / 107.2 ≈ 0.186

This data is very interesting because the gap between buses is greater than that between cars.

The main reasons are

(1) The transmission efficiency of electric motors is higher, usually ranging from 80% to 90%, while that of diesel engines is only 30-40%. Moreover, due to frequent starts, the engine speed cannot remain at the position with the highest fuel economy.

(2) Most buses are equipped with kinetic energy recovery systems to further reduce energy consumption.

(3) The principle of the electric motor makes it inherently more suitable for low-speed driving than gasoline engines. The motor can maintain high efficiency at low speeds, but once the speed is too fast, it will face hysteresis loss. At the same time, high torque means that there is no need for low-gear traction when starting like gasoline vehicles, which would increase additional energy consumption.

My second goal is to replace every short car trip with a walk. It’s an excellent choice, after all, I spend about thirty minutes each day on the treadmill, so I won’t need to carve out any extra time, making this habit easy to maintain. Walking instead of driving not only boosts my daily step count but also gives me a richer experience of the city’s streets. The only adjustment I need to make is planning my schedule more carefully and setting out a bit earlier to ensure I arrive on time.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport

[2]https://www.climatiq.io/data/emission-factor/54bd6556-22c1-4306-a4a7-f68fe2d72640?

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- Amy Minato 5/19/2025 3:53 PM
  thanks for the data! this is a great time of year to walk..
  
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Avalon Zhu 5/11/2025 1:01 PM
The topic of this week is community
I have chosen two tasks for this week. The first one is to talk with friends about topics related to the community and environmental protection. The second one is to interview and assist some organizations.
One interesting point we talked about regarding the promotion of environmental protection is that in some old industrial cities, there are a large number of people engaged in or related to heavy industry. If reforms are carried out blindly without considering these, it often leads to a sharp increase in the unemployment rate. For instance, we talked about the large-scale industrial transformation that China carried out around 2010. A representative example among them was Wu 'an City, Hebei Province. In this small city, steel is the absolute core industry, directly and indirectly accounting for more than 60% of the city's gdp. Therefore, these actions have encountered strong opinions from local trade unions and the government. But 60% is a very terrifying figure. Due to backward technology and excessive pollution, this city is also a key area for industrial greening. Ultimately, in order to solve this difficulty, excellent technologies from other regions were introduced several times successively, and the industrial structure was constantly adjusted. Under the condition of taking into account the interests of the environment and local people, the proportion of the steel industry in gdp was reduced to 40%-50% in 2020, ten years later.
Secondly, this week I once again went to SCRAP PDX for an interview and participated in activities. This organization was initiated by a teacher in 1999. It uses surplus materials (such as textile threads or books, etc.) to make handicrafts and give back to society. This organization is not like traditional resource recycling companies. I think although its recycling power is not large, what is more important is to arouse people's awareness of environmental protection and recycling. Works made from waste are like paintings or some performance artists. They let us know the value of these wastes and enable each of us to participate in the creation of waste.

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- Amy Minato 5/13/2025 3:21 PM
  I'm glad you got to visit SCRAP. You might also appreciate the Rebuilding Center - which has materials for more practical, home building projects. Very relevant story about Wu'an City!
  
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Avalon Zhu 5/04/2025 11:03 PM
The topic chosen this week is water, and the task chosen is 1, to study water justice in Oregon. 2. Practice water conservation in daily life, such as reducing shower time.

Klamath River

Many indigenous tribes rely on salmon fishing for food and economic livelihood. However, for decades, several hydropower stations have blocked the migration routes of salmon, seriously reducing their numbers.

After more than two decades of activism, legal action and environmental advocacy, the four major DAMS on the Klamath River were dismantled in 2024, marking a historic victory for water justice. This project is regarded as the largest dam demolition project in the history of the United States. It restored the spawning grounds of upstream salmon and reaffirmed the fishing rights of indigenous people.

Winchester Dam

Ecological Damage and Cultural ConflictLocated on the North Umpqua River, Winchester Dam is a privately owned structure that became the center of controversy in 2023. During a repair operation, the dam's owners failed to follow environmental protection protocols, resulting in the death of over 550,000 Pacific lamprey. These fish play a critical ecological role and hold deep cultural and ceremonial significance for local Indigenous tribes.

In response, the state of Oregon filed a lawsuit demanding more than $27 million in damages.

This incident has drawn people's attention to water-related issues, such as how to strike a balance between building local water conservancy projects and protecting the ecology, as well as the supervision of water conservancy facilities, especially those built privately.

Besides, this week I also chose to practice water conservation in my daily life, such as shortening the shower time. This is a very simple measure, but it requires a change in habit. In the past, I often relaxed my thinking or daydreamed unconsciously when taking a shower, and the bathing process often lasted for 10 to 15 minutes. To reduce water consumption, I treat taking a bath as a timed task and strictly control it to be completed within five minutes using the timer on my mobile phone, including all the steps such as quickly wetting the hair, cleaning and rinsing. On average, 5 to 10 minutes were saved each time, thereby reducing the consumption of tap water by about 10 to 15 liters per day.

Recently I talked to friends in Gansu, China, where the average annual precipitation is less than 300 mm, which is only about a third of that in Portland. Due to the shortage and difficulty in obtaining water resources, they are very serious about taking baths. Many residents in rural areas have the habit of catching water in large basins. After taking a bath, they will use the collected bath water to mop the floor and so on. Learning about their difficulty in obtaining water and their cherishing of water resources has made me deeply realize that water conservation is not only a personal habit, but also a respect for environmental justice and the sustainability of resources.

In other respects, I am grateful to my mother for educating me since childhood. Many actions I witnessed in eco change have long been integrated into my life, such as using a cup to hold water when brushing teeth, and using a basin instead of letting the tap run continuously when washing vegetables and fruits. These water-saving methods have long been integrated into my daily life. Without deliberate thinking, they have accumulated into considerable water-saving effects unconsciously.

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- Amy Minato 5/06/2025 1:38 PM
  Avalon thank you for sharing about the lamprey! i didnt know about that damn project. When our home was being renovated, i put a feed trough in our greenhouse and filled it with water. on sunny days, it heated the water enough for me to take a bath in it. then i used it to water the plants. bathing at night in a greenhouse looking at stars was the best!
  
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Avalon Zhu 5/02/2025 12:18 AM
Hello everyone, the focus of my Eco Challenge this week is "food." I chose two directions: first, learning a pre-cooking method, and second, returning to whole food-based cooking in my daily meals.
I learned how to braise beef—a dish I often ate in childhood but had never cooked myself. With guidance from my grandmother, I followed these steps:

1；Choose beef shank, a lean cut ideal for braising.

2；Blanch the beef to remove impurities and odor.

3；Stir-fry soybean paste and soy sauce for 2 minutes, then add water, star anise, ginger, chili, cinnamon, and salt.

4；Add the beef and simmer for 2 hours. Let it cool naturally before serving.

It was a traditional yet complex method, but it helped me appreciate the process and value of preparing food from scratch.

As for whole food cooking, I had tried it before but gave up due to time constraints, turning instead to processed foods.This week, I returned to whole food cooking but adopted a more time-efficient method: blanching and stir-frying vegetables, and lightly marinating meat before quick cooking. Each meal still takes about 20 minutes.

And I brought up some questions:

Another option is to use whole food to make food. I have had this experience before but gave up because it took too much time and chose more convenient processed foods instead. These days I have started anew, and the methods I have chosen are different. Now I have switched to steaming, boiling and quick stir-frying. This will reduce my time consumption and avoid the loss of the original flavor of the food due to excessive processing. The method I chose is to blanch the vegetables and stir-fry them faster. Simply marinate the meat and stir-fry it quickly. However, it still costs 20 minutes for each meal.

I'm somewhat puzzled about this. Is it only possible to adhere to a whole food diet every day when there is very sufficient time? I have thought of several solutions, such as marinating meat for two or even more meals at a time or blanching vegetables. However, preservation is a problem. Not to mention that keeping cooked food in preservation for a long time can lead to nutrient loss and food spoilage. Can excessive consumption during storage, such as cling film and plastic bags, be avoided? Is it counterproductive to insist on whole food and lead to more plastic consumption? For instance, in order to avoid buying packaged chicken wings from supermarkets, I choose to marinate them myself, put them in a fresh-keeping bag and store them in the refrigerator

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- Amy Minato 5/06/2025 1:48 PM
  i use an air fryer. quick and efficient. just cut up veggies, drizzle with olive oil and salt and air fry for 10 minutes. they taste great!
  
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- Ava Miel 5/05/2025 3:23 AM
  Hi Avalon, the beef that you made sounds delicious, thank you for sharing the recipe! I think that the question you pose, "is it only possible to cook with whole foods when there is sufficient time," is valid and I hope that you are able to find ways in the future to cook with whole foods and save time if that is what you want to do. I remember watching a video from Folding Ideas on YouTube about Jamie Oliver the chef and how he takes issue with pre-made chicken nuggets, creating a from-scratch recipe instead that is apparently healthier and tastes better. The video argued that people choose the pre-made nuggets not necessarily because of taste, but because they take less time to make, and that Jamie Oliver was missing this point. Thank you for sharing!
  
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- Lally Pollen 5/04/2025 3:48 PM
  Hi Avalon, You raise some good questions regarding food preparation and preservation. Bulk cooking, say on a Sun evening for the next few days of work/school, can certainly help cut down the time needed each day depending on what you make you only need to heat it up each day, or have a cold meal. Vegetarian meals and keeping excess in the freezer can make it safer to prep for even more days ahead. Also going the butcher's counter to get meat rather than the repackaged stuff and storing meals in glass jars or glass tupper-ware can help avoid the plastic use. The Braised-beef sounds delicious.
  
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Avalon Zhu 4/21/2025 11:07 PM
In this week's study, the project I chose is Learn About Renewable Energy. I have gained an in-depth understanding of the clean energy structure in Oregon. Data shows that in the power generation composition of the entire state, fossil energy accounts for only 38%, and almost all of it is generated by natural gas. Non-fossil energy accounts for as high as 62%. Relying on the abundant wind resources near the Pacific Ocean, I will focus my research on the field of wind power generation.

Environmental issues of wind power generation

Although wind power generation is a clean energy, it is still inferior to geothermal or hydropower in certain respects. The technology was not sufficiently mature in the initial stage, and hence a relatively low input-output ratio. Wind power has obvious intermittency and volatility. Its output power can also change suddenly with wind speed, and within a short time period, there can even be as much as 70% power difference. Such fluctuation not only causes challenges to the frequency and voltage regulation of the power grid, but also requires the power grid to reserve more backup capacity for timely response to accommodate the intermittence of wind power. Present main measures are gas turbine or energy storage devices. Nevertheless, frequent boosting and reducing of power from gas turbines will lead to resource wastage, and batteries will be of low energy storage efficiency because of present technical issues. This adds to operating cost and decreases overall efficiency. Meanwhile, much electricity from wind was wasted.

The financial benefits of wind energy

In spite of the above challenges, wind power has been performing extremely well economically, which is one of the major reasons why Oregon state government strongly prefers to develop wind power.

LCOE of onshore wind: EIA AEO2023 statistics reveal the capacity-weighted average new-built cost of onshore wind power to be around 3.6¢/kWh. NREL ATB 2024 also stated the LCOE of high-quality wind resource sites to be below 2.9¢/kWh and that of medium sites to be around 3.6¢/kWh.

Comparison with coal and natural gas-fired power generation: Over the same period, the cost of new supercritical coal-fired power without carbon capture was up to 6.8-16.6¢/kWh. New US natural gas combined cycle (CCGT) power plants in 2023-2024 will have an LCOE of 6.0 to 7.6¢/kWh as well.

These statistics show that the kilowatt-hour cost of wind power is under half that of coal and natural gas power generation and is very competitive. If current issues are resolved properly, it will have a greater role.

[1] Wikipedia, “List of power stations in Oregon,” 2025. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Oregon

[2] U.S.Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2023: Levelized Cost of New Generation Resources, May 2023. [Online]. Available: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf

[3] F. Khan, G. Khatib, and A. Dhaka, “Grid Integration Challenges of Wind Energy: A Review,” Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev., vol. 104, pp. 172–186, Feb. 2019.[Online]. Available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338466226_Grid_Integration_Challenges_of_Wind_Energy_A_Review

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- Amy Minato 4/22/2025 10:21 AM
  I am a big fan of geothermal too. Right now I am in Eastern Oregon where there are numerous hotsprings. Of course, they have a lot of wind and solar here too...but they are still very fixated on fossil fuel and there is only one electric vehicle charger in the whole Lake County which had a big truck parked in front of it when we arrived!
  
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Avalon Zhu 4/13/2025 10:39 PM
In order to save plastic bags, I choose to use my gym bag instead of going to the supermarket. This bag has a large capacity, which is equivalent to about two bags. At my purchase frequency, I could theoretically save about 40 bags per quarter. What a staggering number

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- Amy Minato 4/14/2025 5:00 PM
  good idea! are there other disposable items you could replace with reusable?
  
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