Social Change Starts at the Individual Level

Whew! Spring quarter is finally coming to an end and I could not have asked for a better ending to my quarter with finishing our group action projects. My action project group decided to focus on the political ecology of the mass livestock farming and meat production and focus on the negative impacts it has on our environment. Over the… Read more »

Bringing ‘The Question of Meat’ to UW’s HUB

On Thursday May 24th, the five of us (Angelina, Chloe, Bailey, Rori, and myself) talked with students, faculty, and passerby in front of over two-hundred and fifty cups strung and swinging in the light breeze. The cups were an overwhelming visual, and the DUB Street burger centered underneath our installation provided a tempting smell for dogs straining on their leashes…. Read more »

Mitigating Food Waste in the University District

Over the course of our Action Project, I learned many new skills and had experiences that enriched my learning and outlook on the topic of food insecurity. Each group member was tasked with contacting local restaurants and grocery stores to inquire about excess food that could be donated to local shelters that would otherwise be thrown out. In retrospect, I… Read more »

Action Projects for Ecological Justice

What’s your water footprint? / Image found on Max Pixel (CC0) Most classes throughout my collegiate experience have, for the final tests of the quarter, subjected me to either long essays or arduous exams. Certainly, these have been somewhat conducive to my learning–writing and time-crunch skills are those that definitely don’t stop being used in life. That said, I had definitely… Read more »

Contemplating Action

      No Comments on Contemplating Action

After hearing horror stories of the crisis in Flint, Michigan, the dark reality for those in Cape Town, South Africa, and the many other challenges that citizens in Honduras, Mozambique, and Nigeria, I realized I wanted to learn more. For our group action project, we chose to tackle the theme of water. Specifically, we decided to look into the crisis… Read more »

Group Action Project Reflection

My group did our action project on the topic of trade.  We were originally going to conduct a faculty panel, but about a week after we’d decided on this it was announced that a faculty panel on the topic of trade was going to be hosted by the University.  We then decided that we would just have grad students and… Read more »

Community Action and It’s Lesson on Collective Action

In ENVIR 385, I was tasked with working on an action project that would represent a response to the course topic of politics and the global food system. Our group decided that we wanted our action to center around the intersection between domestic food and agriculture and immigration. So, we chose a two prong approach to spread awareness about the… Read more »

Reflection on Action Project

      No Comments on Reflection on Action Project

The piece of our group project that I believe was most essential to our learning was our team’s willingness and ability to communicate with one another. While this strength may obviously be conducive to the success of any group work, I began to consider how naturally impossible and frustrating it is to tackle any environmental cause when the relevant relationships… Read more »

Group Action Project: Food Waste

For our group action project my group tackled the problems of food waste. Food waste starts at on the farm, where almost 7% (est 1.3 billion pounds/year which is about 1 trillion dollars in lost food/year) of all food that is grown goes unharvested (Foodtank). Next it is transported to markets, where it may go bad during transportation or while… Read more »

H2Burger

      No Comments on H2Burger

Our action project focused on the factory farming of beef, with a main goal of making people aware of the mass amounts of resources factory farming practices consume. To do this we decided to make an art installation, in which we hung 225 cups that each represented 2 gallons of water and then showed how this amount of water (450… Read more »