Green Fund proposal applications are now being accepted for Fall 2013. All UW-L students, faculty and staff are eligible to submit Green Fund applications.
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| Photo courtesy UW-L University Communications |
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| Dr. Stanley Temple |
Hello again! This week I have been participating in Colin Beavan’s No Impact Project and UW-La Crosse’s No Impact Week. The theme for Tuesday was transportation and today’s topic is food. Yesterday I woke up early and finished my Alternative Transportation poster to put in Cartwright Center. I started researching the benefits of alternative transportation when I realized that sometimes people are merely nervous or uneducated about how to be a part of the green transportation movement. Sometimes riding your bike on a busy street can be intimidating and driving seems like an easier alternative. I decided to address this issue by putting a bicycler’s code of conduct on my poster, as well as some quick maintenance tips on how to keep your bike up and running. The benefits of alternative transportation, such as biking and mass transit, are immense! According to the American Public Transportation Association, “the average household spends 18 cents of every dollar on transportation, and 94% of this goes into buying, maintaining, and operating cars, the largest expenditure after housing.” Imagine the dollars you would be able to save by adjusting your car usage to a need only basis or eliminating this expense all together! We are lucky that in La Crosse we have access to the MTU, and as a student this service is FREE*! This service does not only venture within the city of La Crosse but extends to French Island, portions of Onalaska, and La Crescent, Minnesota. So next time you are running a quick errand or need to head to the mall, take the MTU or hop on your bike and do the environment and yourself a favor!
As for today’s topic of food, where do I begin?!? Obviously, food is the thing that keeps us alive and gives us our daily sustenance but it can be so much more than that. It is time we start taking the time to find out where our food comes from and its nutritional content. Many times we are tricked into thinking something is healthy because a label says “Low Fat”, “Zero Calories” or even “Natural” but this can be misleading. Having knowledge about how food works in your body and how it affects the environment around you is very important. Learning what those confusing ingredients on the back of a package are may save you from serious health ailments in the future. Even better, pick up a piece of fruit or some fresh veggies! Fresh produce is amazing for your body and gives you many vital nutrients that packaged food just cannot give you. Throughout the summer and early fall months La Crosse has multiple Farmer’s Markets where you can get amazing local produce. Why not give your money straight to the person who put time and care into their food production instead of massive farms that spray their fields with herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers (not to mention GMOs)? I take pride in supporting local famers, as well as walking out of my back door and picking herbs, leafy greens, peppers, carrots and more! Putting love into the food you create is, in my opinion, one of the most satisfying feelings you can have. You get to literally eat the fruits of your labor and feel a sense of pride and accomplishment with every bite and, I swear, it tastes better. I know growing your own food can seem daunting for those living in the dorms or in small apartments, I’ve been there, but there are other options. You could join a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, volunteer at one of the community gardens, grow some herbs or greens in a pot, or make a friend that is a farmer! Nevertheless, get involved with your food because you really are what you eat.
*This service is a part of your tuition.
UW-La Crosse student Rachel Lee will be blogging over the next several days about her participation in the La Crosse + Viroqua, WI No Impact Week taking place October 9-16. Below is Rachel's first blog post.
Monday I kicked off my participation in the UW-La Crosse No Impact Week. I, Rachel Lee, decided to get involved with Colin Beavan’s No Impact Project after learning about his mission and book entitled No Impact Man through Joint Committee on Environmental Sustainability. Over the last few years I have been very interested in greener and more holistic ways of living, which made participating in No Impact Week a no brainer. It has been great educating myself about the different ways I can make a difference in my own life, as well as the environment around me. Colin’s No Impact Project Manual has many different ideas of ways to eliminate or dramatically reduce your global footprint by doing things as simple as recycling and riding your bike and unique as creating your own hygiene products. By acknowledging the effect that my everyday activities have on my health and environment I am able to make better decisions and actively participate in more facets of my daily life.
Yesterday, I woke up and finished a poster that I was creating for Monday’s E-Waste Recycling event and began researching the topic of recycling and technology. Currently we are in an age of rapid technological innovation and our previous technologies are getting thrown away at an astounding rate! These machines have been created with different sorts of metals and chemicals, that when improperly dealt with, have a very negative effect on our soil and water supply. In La Crosse and Wisconsin there are many facilities that are in place to protect us from threats like lead and cadmium pollution from these discarded machines. It was great to see Dynamic Recycling involved in our project because they provide a very important service by protecting our local environment, as well as stimulating our local economy by creating jobs. I was very happy to be a part of this project because doing just this one thing benefited our community and was incredibly easy! We need to remember that doing the right thing only takes putting in a little effort and being an active participant in the community you live in. I look forward to the other projects that we are participating in this week, as well as taking part in more of No Impact Project’s mission.
UW-L's weekly online news publication, Campus Connection, is doing a series of articles about sustainability on campus. This is the third article in the series:
“We have one planet. Let’s plan accordingly.” That’s Biology Professor Rob Tyser’s central message when discussing how humans can preserve their environment.
Read more at: http://news.uwlax.edu/defining-sustainablity-part-iii/
UW-L's weekly online news publication, Campus Connection, is doing a series of articles about sustainability on campus. This is the second article in the series:
Donna Anderson, UW-L Economics professor, discusses the radical re-thinking of the relationship between the human economy and nature.
Read more at: http://news.uwlax.edu/defining-sustainability-part-ii/
UW-L's weekly online news publication, Campus Connection, is doing a series of articles about sustainability on campus. Here is the first article in the series:
For a practice to be sustainable in society it must benefit the population over the long-term. Therefore, it must benefit all people, according to two UW-L instructors, Guy Wolf and Al Gedicks.
Read more at: http://news.uwlax.edu/defining-sustainability/
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| Penokee Hills mine location |
