New Logo.

Our gift to the next group of Eco Challengers who want to open a blog can do use this as their flag.

Look for a comfortable balance

One of the most important and yet underemphasized parts of sustainability is the idea of balance. Finding a solution that satisfies basic human needs without seriously or permanently compromising environmental homeostasis. In most cases, people believe "going green" automatically implies that we must resort to being berry-eating hippies who live in lean-tos and reuse everything we buy. Such is not the case in reality. We should be reasonable in our approach to incorporate organic materials and carbon neutral systems. There some things that just can't be "greenified". Here is an SNL digital short to exaggerate my point.

Solidarity in Numbers

Here is a note about Winner Announcements from Nicole Howard:

"Greetings Eco-Challenge Participants

The numbers are in and it is UNBELIEVABLE what a difference your actions made in the month of October. We had a water meter on a townhouse that didn’t participate and they used 5,140 gallons in October. The average of your three houses was 2,946! Regarding electricity, the average for the non-participating townhouses was 1,540 kwh. The average of your townhouses was 562 kwh. The average for your three homes specifically last year was 1,241 kwh."

Those statsistics are impressive. We should be very proud of our hard work.

As Captain of Townhouse D, I would be happy to be the representative at the next sustainability committee meeting. It is on November 20th at 12:00pm in Breakout Room B of the Ravenhill Dining Hall. If any of you would like to join me, I think we could show solidarity in great numbers! Bring along your teammates, girlfriends, whomever for support and to show how that PhilaU students support and are ready for this kind of change.

Closure ...

I called Nicole Howard, the head coordinator of EcoChallenge 2008, to see what comes next. I had to leave a message. But she got back to me promptly with a lot of great information. Anne Bauer has tabulated the results from our recycling and waste creation. We are now just waiting on the results of our electricity, water and heat from Physical Plant. So please be patient. We will eventually be notified about a closing ceremony during which we will receive our due reward!

We got this!

Collect, Clean and Reuse

The homemade alternating current electric generator was built and successfully put out 1/2v of power. Although this is a mild success, it isn't quite what I was hoping would be the output after the project was complete. I have learned a lot about the intensity and concentrated amount of effort that goes into creating electricity and maintaining its flow over time. Inspired by my mild success, I was inspired by the last few days of rain to look further into the capabilities of our water collection device. As of yet, our single recycling bin has been the basis for our grey water collection, and by expanding the capability of this collection system we could potentially minimize our dish washing and toilet water consumption. The rain water that comes directly off of our roof isn't fit for washing dishes, but if we were able to direct that water into some kind of filtration system it could potentially begin to be used for a broader range of activities. And that is just what I am proposing to do. Educated by a few Internet sites and fueled by the left over money for the eco challenge, I set out to devise a way to undertake such a challenge. The way I propose to solve this design issue is with a quick sand filter aided by layers of burlap and aggregate. Three five gallon buckets will function as my rainwater collection (top bucket), filtration (middle bucket) and filtered water collection (third bucket). These will be stacked up one on top of the other and with any luck, we'll have more, cleaner water so that our townhouse can continue to limit our water consumption.

A Fresh Supply

I went home for the beginning of this weekend and returned to campus to find our water bucket completely full! This is great because the water that we had previously collected was becoming very old and we were worried about bacteria becoming an issue. Ours worries were nullified when last nights constant downpour filled our bucket with rainwater.

Today marks the homestretch for Eco Challenge 2008 and I'm excited to not only make a great finish to this competition, but to use this as a springboard for our continued efforts to conserve and reduce.

Last call ...

Ok guys, I know that, for the most part, we all agree that we will continue to challenge ourselves after this competition, but I challenge you to think of any other items that might help us to be more sustainable in the next 5 days. I am sitting on a sweet little nest egg. I would like to buy atleast one more thing before I have to give it back. You let me know what you would use. Maybe we should replace the fluorescent bulbs with better higher quality ones, potentially withmotion sensors. thoughts?

Great Work

Coming down to the last week or so of this challenge I am very pleased with myself as well as the rest of our townhouse because we have really found a successful way to save electricity and water and make less of a footprint on the environment. I feel as though we have found great ways to be able to keep up with great work even way after this challenge is over. It feels good when you know you are making a difference and I feel as though that everyone in the townhouse feels the same. I thought it was going to be a lot harder towards the end of the competition because we just would not care as much anymore. I hope our commitment goes way further than the month hopefully it will last a lifetime.