Real Food Challenge Photo Petition!

Oh my goodness it seems like it's been months since I've last posted anything on here! I beg your forgiveness (because I know ALL of you were waiting on the edge of your seats all summer for this post to appear)! With the break for summer came a necessary break with the majority of my work with the EWU Sustainability Project, which serves as the main source of material for my discussions on being environmentally friendly and living a sustainable lifestyle! But, now that school has started back up again and I'm caught up enough to spend an hour or so writing I've decided to let you in on a cool event that we -the EWU Sustainability Project - did on campus last month!

For those of you who didn't already know, October 24 is National Food Day; a day which is a nation-wide celebration and movement for healthy, affordable, and sustainable food! It's a pretty cool day of the year that is beginning to gain traction, especially on college campuses and within green communities! If you forgot about it this year, or just hadn't heard of it, mark it on your calendars for next year so you can find a local farm, co-op, or market to volunteer with and help share the benefits of REAL food!

The EWU Sustainability Project definitely didn't National Food Day out this year! As a part of our on going goal to see Eastern Washington University sign the Real Food Challenge and get 20% of all food served on campus to be REAL Food by the year 2020 we partook in the Real Food Challenge photo petition.

Instead of standing around asking students to sign a paper petition showing their desire to see 20% of all campus food be REAL, we walked around campus with a whiteboard and a camera asking students, faculty, and anyone else we came across to pose with their own personal reasons for wanting REAL food on campus. The pictures we collected were sent to the President of the school with a letter indicating our desire to see him sign the Real Food Challenge as well as posted on our group Facebook page and the Real Food Challenge website! (With the participants permission of course!). We had so much fun and met so many great people with as many great reasons for wanting to see more REAL food on campus. Below are a few of the most memorable photos from the day!

What's Your Reason!?

My lovely Fiancee, "because she cares about
the environment!"

Good ol' Farmer Griffin (me)

She's real! Why wouldn't she
want her food to be too??

His tummy controls his mind!
We don't want fake thoughts running around!

By far, the best picture of the day. There reason was so that WE
could live as long as THEY are. Aren't they awesome?

Throughout the afternoon we came across a wide range of people. From freshman to senior citizens, student to faculty members, and Eagles from all different backgrounds, every person we talked to - while not always wanting their photos taken - had a reason for wanting to see more REAL food campus. Having our campus smack in the middle of one of the county's most prominent agriculture regions definitely lends itself to a heightened awareness of the need for more REAL food in all of our diets and a continued effort to see that played out on our campus, and campuses around the United States!

If you are interested in sharing your own reason for wanting to see more REAL food in your cafeteria, take a  picture of you with your reason on your campus and drop it in a comment below. I'll be sure it gets posted to the Real Food Challenge website!

Questions? Check out the Real Food Challenge FAQ section here or drop a comment and I'll answer it the best I can!

Spring Time is Here!... I think.

ugh....shwaaaat???

Two days ago marked the very first day of Spring 2012, ushering in the season of awakening, gardening, DIY projects, and a general Go Green mentality.  Apparently, the local weatherman apparently missed the memo because today I woke up to two inches of fresh snow on my mini-lawn.  Here in Spokane, the locals always count on one last attempt by Old Man Winter around this time before the season actually turns in for the year.  I sure hope so because I am not one of those people who get all excited for snow... or cold weather in general.  I prefer 60s weather with buds on all the trees and the first stirrings of green in the yards.  Rumor has it we're getting close though so for those of you like me have hope!

With the onset of Spring also brings the height of the Miss America Organization pageant season. *(For those of you who are now completely confused, I am blessed to have a wonderful girlfriend who happens to compete in the Miss America Organization and uses her many talents to benefit the community, the organization, and the environment.)  It just so happens that pageant season comes around the same time that spring does; and with spring Reina's work with her platform - Sustain-Ability: Impacting Tomorrow, Today.  As a part of that work, she is kicking off a 30 Blogposts to Help YOU Go Green Campaign today.  Her month of attempting to be as green and sustainable as possible has inspired me to try and do better on a lot of the simple things in daily life. Therefore, I will be sharing my hints, tips, and tricks with you much like Reina is.  You can check hers out here and if you email subscribe to my blog, follow me on Twitter (@connoragriffin), or find me on Facebook you'll constantly annoyed with links to my latest posts:)  Below is my first post; which is really more of a challenge than anything:

30 Days Without Disposable Containers

I work at a locally owned coffee shop here in Spokane (Forza Coffee Company on 29th and Regal - you should totally come check it out sometime) and was struck stupid one day by how many sleeves of paper and plastic cups we go through in a week.  As a huge coffee fanatic I went on to realize that it wasn't just my shop that customers are walking out of with this disposable cups.  It's the Starbucks down the street or the other local shop across the street and all of the other coffee shops in town and across the country.  Worse than that is that it's not only faceless "customers" who do it; its ME too!!!

At this point it is of utmost importance to clarify that I am not attacking these coffee shops, restaurants, and convenience stores who sell drinks in these cups.  I'm not attacking anyone.  But to be completely honest, it is us as the consumer who is responsible for all of this waste.  And if you're curious about what I mean by "all this waste" let me present a few facts to you:

• Worldwide 430 trillion (430,000,000,000) plastic bottles and containers (Bs&Cs) are thrown away each year.  That translates to roughly 140,000 per second.  These plastic Bs&Cs take over 200 years just to start decomposing! ¹
• The United States threw away 3,810,000 TONS (7,620,000,000lbs) of plastic Bs&Cs - roughly 190 billion units.  That's about 605 units per person, per year.¹

I'm not sure about you, but as an English major, all those zeroes has my head spinning.  And that's just plastic containers. That does NOT include the paper cups that are the most common to-go containers for warm drinks in the U.S. Wrap your head around that! 

My "trusty Nalgene".. My Forza mug was
in the car and due to snow I didn't
want to go get it:)

After realizing that feeding my coffee... or two-a-day habit along with the other beverage items (sodas, juices, water, etc) that I purchase during the course of a month was directly contributing to these staggering figures I decided it was time to make a difference.  Don't get me wrong, I realize that my month of not using disposable containers is more likely than not to have no concrete impact whatsoever on these national figures.  Where it will have an impact is in my local dump and immediate environment.  That's 50 containers, give or take, that are not going into the dump.  Might not seem like much but more and more people are realizing that it's not going to be the politicians and "environmental agencies" that will make a global impact; it's going to be hundreds of thousands of individual efforts coming together for the collective good - and this is my contribution to that collective good.

Therefore, starting right. now. I will be forgoing all disposable drink containers for the next month instead using my trusty Nalgene bottle and Forza travel mug. I promise to use these when I have them or simply pass on the beverage if I don't.  In this effort it is my desire to make an individual impact on my local environment.  It is here that YOU can help me:

Join Me.

All it takes is a BPA-free water bottle and a travel mug if you're a warm beverage drinker.  If you don't have one or more of these (which in today's America would be incredibly surprising) you can set yourself up with a great Nalgene from Amazon for about $10² and Target sells cheap, easy, dishwasher-safe travel mugs for under $10³ as well.  

There are no excuses for not doing this.  If the $20 bucks is a monumental issue (and hey.. I'm a college kid, I understand if it really is) think of it this way: Most coffee shops and convenience stores give you a discount ranging anywhere between $.10-.25 for bringing in your own cup.  If you use it every day that adds up to about $7.50.  That's roughly three-fourths of your "start-up costs" and in two months you'll have paid for it and then some.  Not to mention you get to be hip and trendy... go you hipster, you.

So what will you do then? I'm not saying that you have to do this to have an impact on your environment (it does help though!).  There are tons and tons of quick easy things you can do in your everyday life that can make a difference and I'll be posting a lot of those throughout the next 30 days.  Think about it; I implore you.  Question your excuses and ask yourself "what's really stopping me?" So I ask beg you...

Join Me.


Post a comment below if you are taking the challenge with me, are curious about more info, or simply have a question of feedback.  Comments always make bloggers happy!

Until you read again,
Connor


(Okay, okay... like I said, I'm an English major and we're a stickler for where we got our information so here it is)

¹"Fast Facts." Earth Distributer. 2011. Web. 22 Mar 2012.
²http://www.target.com/s?searchTerm=travel+mug&category=0%7CAll%7Cmatchallany%7Call+categories
³http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_4_7?url=search-alias%3Dgarden&field-keywords=nalgene+bpa+free+water+bottles&x=0&y=0&sprefix=nalgene%2Cgarden%2C358 

Eastern Washington University Sustainability Project

So today I met with the "unofficial" official president of the Eastern Washington University Sustainability Project today at the recommendation of Reina.  She had met with Kelsey on Friday and everything she was telling me about the project in itself was simply calling my name. I couldn't wait to start talking with them and somehow get involved and boy was I even more excited after our meeting today!

I've mentioned multiple times in this blog that I used to farm in the middle of Kansas and that I simply loved the farm life.  There is something about being able to witness the fruits of your labor grow as time passes and to look at a field right before harvest and say, "I did that."  For reasons unknown to me, this prior lifestyle has instilled in me a passion for simply growing that I don't think will ever escape me in this life. As a result, I have had this drive in me to garden and to at least try and bring back the popularity of a home garden within my community. In part, it is this idea of mine that led me to start blogging about DIY stuff in the beginning. I have long since learned that there is nothing more worthwhile than doing things yourself; especially being able to feed yourself.

That being said, the idea of a student-led and organized food sustainability program simply shouted out my name!  As soon as I started hearing about what the program was all about and the things they had planned I couldn't get involved quick enough. Along the way hopefully we will stem a passion within the community and start a new trend in food sustainability practices within Cheney and the larger Spokane area as well as lead the way for EWU to introduce new academic programs such as Agronomy and the likes.

As of today, here is a list of only a few of the Sustainability Project's accomplishments:

• Created a comprehensive website: www.sustainable-ewu.org
• Aided in the Farmers Market relocation next to PUB
• Manned a booth EWU's first-ever Earth Day, 2011
• Created a comprehensive and extensive proposal that was sent to the University President
• Attended "Globalization" conference at Riverpoint with Dr. Laurie Morley
• Finalized professional design graphic for permanent EWU Community Garden
• Received scholarship to attend National Real Food Challenge Conference, 2012
• EWU Sustainability Project is 1 of 40 semi-finalist teams to head to next round out of 250 teams in the Be The Change student competition
• Applied for positions on EWU Sustainability Council, 2012

That is by no means all of the accomplishments that have occurred in the past year or so, simply the most notable.

One major event series that we are planning is a documentary movie series on the issues of food sustainability, local/organic agriculture, and the fair-trade market.  First of which will be a week from today on Monday, March 19 on campus.  

We will be screening the film "The Greenhorns" in Martin 158 at 5:30pm.  There will be food and coffee at the event so please feel free to come check it out!  The link above will take you to a little bio of the film as well as a trailer and if it's something that might interest you I strongly encourage you to leave a comment or email me for some more info.  Hope to see you there!

Be sure to keep an eye out for more posts regarding the Sustainability Project and our events/activities.