Reduce, Reuse, Rethink your impact

    Hi, I am Jasmine Velasquez and I am an Earth Week CBLR Students in the Sustainability Office this quarter. During Earth Week, I attended the Reduce, Reuse, and Recreate event that was held in the lower level of the ARC on campus and had a great time creating sustainable cleaning supplies, and making handy bags out of t-shirts. It is shocking how just creating your own environmentally safe cleaning product can have a positive impact to the earth. Personally, whenever I do cleaning around the house I use plenty of Clorox, and other harmful chemicals to our environment. I have noticed people get so used to using the products they are comfortable and are unwilling to change their habits, which includes myself. After this event, I realized how much clothing I store in bags and boxes, when I could be donating them, or making little useful handbags for paperwork, supplies, or makeup. It is the little things and individual can do that can make a very big impact towards our earth.

    In order to make a positive impact on the earth I am going to work on the unsustainable habits I do on a daily basis. For example, not leaving the water running while brushing my teeth, or not leaving my appliances plugged in when not in use. Even if it seems to be a short amount of time it is still a significant amount of water being wasted. I also want to add some new sustainable habits to my daily life, such as shopping locally, using reusable shopping bags, and possibly planting my own garden. I know it is going to take effort to be able to do this but I know I can achieve it. Every single time I go grocery shopping I get tons of plastic bags to put my groceries in. That is really unnecessary because I could just buy a few reusable bags that I can reuse every time I go grocery shopping. 

I plan to make these changes and improve my sustainability practices in my personal life. Will you do the same?

My Virtual Journey Through Climate Change

During this CBLR program, we were asked to attend one sustainability-related event. I chose Martha Groom’s movie screening event because first off, the title of that movie sounded really appealing to me, and second, I am a cinematographer so I like movies in general. The movie I attended was called “How to Let Go of the World and Love All The Things Climate Can't Change” by an Oscar-nominated director named Josh Fox. It was deeply personal for him. He talked about how he decided to travel the world to Africa, South America, Asia, Oceania and much more after the hurricane Sandy hit New York in 2012, to investigate what climate change has done and its consequences. The movie was a little bit more than 2 hours long, but it didn’t feel like it because all of the overwhelming truth about the current condition of the environment kept coming in and surprised me.

I went in hoping it would be a cheerful documentary, but it was not. Half way through the movie, there was a footage of how Chinese people can’t open their windows due to too much pollution but the government is trying to cover it up. Later on, Josh shared a story about a Pacific Islander who couldn’t find his father’s grave near the shore because of sea level rise. All of the visuals and information are really thought provoking. It makes me think that everyone who Josh documented was from different political, racial and economic backgrounds, and they also were dealing with different problems. And all of the problems come from one cause only: climate change due to industrialization. The movie has changed my outlook on environmental issues. I guess that we have to be more aware of our impact on the environment because the consequences would not only harm us as a local community but also on a national and international scale.

Not Your Average CBLR-Earth Week CBLR

 About a month ago, there was a class day that all of the sites who provide CBLR Programs for student came and presented what they had to offer, Cassie was there too. To be honest, I was slacking off for the most part during that presentation, because I always felt left out due to the fact I might be the only Business student when everyone around me was either STEM or Environmental Studies. And then Cassie came on. The first word that caught my attention was “marketing” then “event” then “Earth Week”. And just like that, I was hooked. I decided to sign up since this program sounded the most familiar to what I had in mind. But the vision was still pretty vague. I just know this was what I wanted to do; a program that had a quick pace, a firm deadline, and a rewarding endpoint, not the basic other “every week 2 hours” internship everyone was signing up for.

I went in the first day and basically was bombarded with information and materials that needed to be done prior to Earth Week. I was not overwhelmed by the pressure, I was overwhelmed by how specific and important this event was going to be. Over the span of 2 weeks, this CBLR program has been providing me opportunities to do essentially everything, from giving inputs for our pledge board to cutting papers for about an hour every day, or participating in a garbage sorting day, or awkwardly and respectfully greeting the partners at Earth Week. The more I get involved in this program, the more I realize the importance of Earth Week to this campus specifically. Through the garbage sorting activity, we came up with calculations and numbers of how much waste was not sorted properly. That makes us realize that we need to raise more awareness of using the right bin at the three-bin stations because students are not really mindful when it comes to throwing garbage away.

Through the Earth Week main event on Thursday, we received a fair amount of creative pledges of how to make the earth a more sustainable place from using reusable water bottles to eating less meat. Honestly, I would have never thought of eating less meat would make this planet more sustainable. Through signing up for CBLR, I received more than Community Based Learning and Researching opportunities, I myself have raised my own awareness of the importance of Earth Week as an information source for the campus to improve itself and a knowledge source for students to educate themselves. And as important as it is, I hope Earth Week will be expanded and be a tradition of UW Bothell.

Welcome!

Welcome to the UW Bothell Students in Sustainability Blog!

One of the things that we work on in the Sustainability Office is educating the campus community on the sustainability initiatives and practices at UW Bothell. A way that we communicate this information is through student peer to peer education via the Community-Based Learning and Research (CBLR) program.

This blog will serve as one of the CBLR student channels of communication, where they will be given the opportunity to reflect on their experiences in working with us.

Below are videos from our past CBLR students, Aine Furhman, Priscilla Trivisonno and Courtney Palms. Take a look at their discoveries!

Please let us know if you have any questions, or want to be involved by contacting us at uwbsust@uw.edu.