Have fun, help the planet, and win great prizes! Tuesday, April 7 – Sunday, May 3, 2015
Team up with two of your friends for the fun, 4-week EcoChallenge. Gift cards to local businesses will be awarded to players each week, just for participating! You’ll learn something new related to each week's theme: Personal Care and Cleaning Products; Food; Waste; Energy and Water. You and your team will be challenged to make simple lifestyle changes, complete weekly challenge activities, and advocate for the issues that matter to you.
Registration is open until Tuesday, April 7th. Build a three-person team with any combination of students, faculty, and staff. More information on ecochallenge. Sponsored by the Center for Environmental Justice and Sustainability.
Each week your team can earn points in 4 challenge areas. Don't worry, we will provide lots of ideas for activities!
Why it is important? Everyone uses household cleaners and personal care products like shampoo, deodorant, and suntan lotion. These products contain hundreds of different chemicals, some causing serious health effects such as cancer or infertility. Government regulation is virtually non-existent and no safety testing of personal care products is required.
Why it is important? Food connects us. To soil, water, plants and animals. To farmers, ranchers and truckers, migrant farmworkers, and to those with whom we break bread. To national, regional and local farm policies. To the health of rural and urban communities here and across the world. Humanity has always recognized that in receiving food we are ultimately receiving a gift – the gift of a fertile Earth. After transportation, our daily food choices are one of our largest environmental impacts. In America today, the average food morsel travels about 1,500 miles to reach our plates. Clearly, the choices we make about what we eat and where that food comes from has far reaching consequences.
Why It’s Important? Consumer product companies have spent millions of dollars creating our consumer culture. With the boom in ‘green’ products, advertisements make us believe we can shop our way to a healthier planet. The hard fact is that climate change cannot be solved by switching brands. It takes resources and energy to manufacture and transport all products, even those made from recycled content.
Why It’s Important? Arguably, enjoying reliable access to energy and clean water will be the defining issues of this century. Water is pretty obvious–we can't survive without it. And energy drives our economy. Our dependence on fossil fuels for energy drives the climate crisis. The climate crisis affects rainfall patterns–increasing droughts in some areas and floods in others. In such a connected world our lives are inextricably connected to these concerns. Energy and water are more than “resources”, they are gifts. We are called to share those gifts.