"Pura Vida" is the pure life for ticos and ticas in Costa Rica. Less but better is the goal. These are my reflections from the pure life in Central America, at the Len Foote Hike Inn, and most recently, through a course in Sustainable Communities at Indiana University.
Good people of V515...it's been a blast! At the close of this semester, I can't believe how much we have all learned about each other. We've got some seriously unique perspectives that we've brought with us from California/Ohio/NYC/Florida. We each see things through different lenses of equity/health//happiness depending on our respective passions. When introduced to a new problem, we seek solutions from personal actions/politics/incentives. One thing that ties us together now, though, is an understanding that complex problems don't have simple solutions.
I think this is the number one understanding that separates the educated from the uneducated, the irrational actor from the critical thinker, and the successful problem solver from the guy who's probably going to give up. How many times have you heard someone who has no idea what they are taking about spout out some "perfect solution" to a grand challenge? This is absolutely one of my pet peeves. I'm so appreciative that our Sustainable Communities course provided a practical look at the difficulties of fostering sustainability, and that it encouraged us to expand and pick apart rather than simplify and reduce the issues.
V515: Calvin would be displeased
The blog assignments were a huge advantage of the class, allowing much more open learning opportunities than the typical grad class affords. I very much enjoyed taking on a personal project and following up on my progress every few weeks. I particularly enjoyed class periods when we used our classmates' blogs as a jumping off point for discussion. To me, people's blogs much more strongly informed the discussion than the tweets we were assigned to submit before each class.
I could talk all day about this class (and I recommend it to anyone at IU), but I'll just share one last thought. Roseland's text was 100% the right choice. The community capital framework framed the different topic areas very well, and the breadth of example communities highlighted inspired me that innovative progress toward sustainability is possible anywhere.
As we finish, I send a big THANK YOU out to Bill Brown, who recognizes that graduate students DO have interesting things to say. He's got faith in his students' abilities and lets us run a bit wild with our ideas! It has been fun exploring everyone's values and passions together as we discussed the various solutions that could help make our communities more clean, safe, valuable, equitable, enjoyable, and sustainable :)
I have had so much fun with this project! I'm really glad I chose to follow a personal challenge that would require so much reflection and examination of my values and priorities. This project was, of course, for a class on Sustainable Communities, so there was a big component of environmental benefit. However, another huge goal for the project has been trying to increase the amount of time and money I have to do things that make me happy!
Things on a shelf can only bring so much joy, and as many of the TED talks (including one of my favorites, above) and other resources I've posted here demonstrate, our belongings often just get in the way. I started making this realization when I moved out of my childhood home and began accumulating more and more belongings. I couldn't really articulate it then, but I was starting to think that more wasn't always better. Over the course of this project, I have really enjoyed striving to return to a simpler lifestyle, and I think my happiness will only continue to grow.
To understand what I've really accomplished, I took stock of the things I cleared from my life and tried to keep track of where they would end up. A huge priority was to make sure I wasn't just throwing away a bunch of stuff I would re-buy again later. Luckily, after weighing my unwanted things, it seems that only six pounds of stuff has truly reached the end of its useful life at this point. Great news! Here's how my totals look, broken down by point of exchange:
Planet XChange and Plato's Closet: I took a big box of winter clothes to my favorite resale shop in Knoxville then to the place next to Fancy Kroger here in Bloomington. In total, they took 5 lbs of clothes from me and gave me $67. I have another box of warm-weather clothes (17 lbs) that I'll take to these two places in the spring.
McKay's: I dropped off 30 lbs of unwanted books, CDs, and DVDs at my favorite place, and I got about $80 in return! I hope someone else will enjoy my old stuff :)
Goodwill: I ended up taking more stuff than expected to Goodwill. I had some furniture and other home goods to donate, plus the clothes that didn't sell at PXC or Plato's. Just this stuff weighed 71 lbs! In addition, I asked the guy at Goodwill where I should take toiletries (thinking Middle Way House?), and he said that GW actually sells tons of shampoo and lotion and stuff. That was 10 lbs. Then, I asked if my 4 lbs of craft supplies would sell, and he told me much of this is auctioned off online. They bundle big packages of supplies and price them for sale at www.shopgoodwill.com (that's where all the really good stuff goes, in case you were wondering!)
MCSWMD: Yesterday, I took 37 lbs of old cleaning supplies to the Monroe County Solid Waste Management District. I learned that the District actually gives hazardous materials a second chance to be used! I put all the bottles on a shelf that people can pull from for FREE! If these things sit on the shelf for some given number of days, only then are they packaged for safe disposal at the landfill. Neat!
Recycling: I got rid of some worthless papers that weighed about 11 lbs.
Trash: There were a few things I got rid of that I just couldn't see anyone else reusing or recycling. I'll get rid of them now, and hopefully I will continue to reduce in the future to make up for the landfill impacts of these 6 lbs of trash.
Total project inflow: $67 + $80 = $147 + GOOD VIBES :)
Here's one last measure of my progress over the course of the semester. I've got photos of my living space before and after. Here's where I see how much further I'd have to take this to really be a minimalist. The truth is, I love living in a space that feels like home, so I've still got books on shelves and posters on walls and relics from my past. I can continue to explore the balance of stuff for the rest of my life, but I feel good right now knowing that I've simplified a bit, decreased my impact a bit, and grown in happiness through the process. Anyway, here's the pre- and post-pics. Not a huge difference, but certainly an improvement:
Slightly less furniture, a more tidy bookshelf, and cleaner workspace
Less furniture, a little less clutter
Less busy walls, more closet space (though newly filled with winter gear from storage)
Room for coats & summer stuff, camping gear more organized, no more toxic inhabitants
Now, if there's one thing I've learned through this exploration of stuff, it's that many Americans are really addicted to it. Myself certainly included to some degree. We can look to the storage industry, Black Friday, or even the financial crisis of 2008 for evidence. The real interesting question for this project has not been "What would happen to the world if I lived more simply?" Instead, I've been thinking, "What would happen to the world if everyone lived more simply?"
If we think back to the Story of Stuff, we remember the impacts of extraction, production, transportation, and disposal of the things we buy. We recognize the huge totals of embodied energy associated with things we casually purchase but never fully utilize. What if the world's demand for stuff declined significantly so that fewer resources were extracted, fewer power plants needed, fewer trucks were on the road, fewer Walmarts were hogging up land, and fewer things were being landfilled??
All in all, the potential change to the ecological footprint of our nation remains pretty unclear, but I have hope that a change for the better is in our immediate future. My generation is a whole different breed, and it will be up to us to find balance in our consumption of resources and our achievement of happiness. The seeds of sustainable change have been planted, and I fully expect them to grow as more and more people start living "less but better" lives!
If anyone else wants to get on track to "less but better" I'd encourage you to examine your own purchasing habits, not just adopt the rules that I've set for myself. We all own different things that make us particularly happy and other things that are just taking up space. I feel like I've learned a lot about myself through this project, and here are the rules I'll be trying to follow as I continue to pursue "less but better":
Thanks for reading, and keep me updated on your journey if my project inspires you to simplify :)
As you all know, I'm a huge nerd. So one of my favorite experiences this year has been travelling to Portland, Oregon, for the annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. AASHE is a membership organization that brings together sustainability practitioners, provides resources, and catalyzes action in college and university communities across the globe. Their conference is THE place to meet brilliant, dedicated, problem-solvers who care about the future of our planet and the coming generations that will inhabit it. And I'm not just saying that because I was there...
Seriously though, I learned so much this year and just found myself in awe of all the great work being done in my field! The AASHE conference is definitely a great place to get inspired. The general schedule lasts a few days with hundreds of overlapping presentations, panel discussions, networking opportunities, community tours, poster sessions, and keynote speakers. In addition, there is an exhibition hall with dozens and dozens of booths with resources for campus sustainability leaders, there is FOOD, and there are all kinds of people who share a very specific common interest just getting to know each other and sharing ideas. This year, the theme was "Innovation for Sustainable Economies and Communities," but this in no way limits the conference content to these spheres. Now, this won't even begin to give you an idea of the wide variety of topics covered, but here are some of the sessions I attended:
Big Ten and Friends workshop
Student sustainability grants for campus projects at Ohio State
Beyond eco-reps: Deepening engagement through an effective residential life partnership
Southeast Sustainability Network (SSN) Lunch
Building a living-learning community: Big problems and big success
Studying sustainability studies: A comparative analysis of 42 US degree programs
Sustainability on a grand scale: Large university networking
My favorite was the one called "Accomplish more, work less." I couldn't believe that there weren't 500 people in the room for this one, because who doesn't want to know how to accomplish more while working less? Surprisingly, the session was delivered by two undergraduate students from the University of Denver who made streamlining sustainability efforts across campus sound easier than tying my shoe. I was surprised because I know that this very task is what many high-level sustainability professionals struggle with more than anything else. The fact is that there is so much to be done, and when you are passionate, you want to do all you can at all times forever. For this reason, I think, many people in higher ed sustainability get burnt out. These students from Denver were the opposite of burnt out, though...and it sounds like they are spearheading some pretty astonishing initiatives for their campus. Very cool stuff!
I also enjoyed having the opportunity to present my own work for the first time this year. I gave a 20-minute briefing of what I had been up to for the past year and half (HA!), and I hope my experiences might help a good number of my colleagues doing similar work at other schools. I shared some of the "steps" that I've helped IU's Office of Sustainability take to set up our Sustainability Peer Educator Program (SPEP). I explained some of our challenges as well as our advantages in this process, and I asked my audience of 30ish people to contribute their thoughts on what the "steps" might look like on their campuses.
Though I attended some amazing sessions this year and enjoyed the formal programming, this was the first year I felt relaxed and confident enough to just hang out and interact with folks more casually. It could be that this was the first year I felt like a real member of the community, and not just a wide-eyed student. I attribute my confidence boost to two factors: 1) Business cards and 2) Emilie Rex. Honestly, I doubt that having my own business cards even did anything, but I was so grateful to be reunited with one of my favorite folks I've met since coming to IU. Emilie was my mentor at IUOS for my first year, and her confidence in me has been contagious since about this time last year. Her warm encouragement was a huge blessing when we were setting up the Peer Educator Program, and her welcoming nature meant EVERYTHING to me when we met up in Portland. Emilie, thanks for being amazing as always :)
Next year's AASHE conference will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota...give me a shout if you'll be there!
A few weeks ago, all IU students were invited to share their thoughts/suggestions for the draft of Indiana University's Bicentennial Strategic Plan. Administrators purport that this document will guide the strategic planning efforts of all IU campuses for the next two hundred years (!!), though it reads much more like a five- or ten-year plan. That's quite alright with me, actually, but there is one other pretty huge problem I see with the plan (which I'll get to in a minute). To share my input, I attending the public meeting with Director of Strategic Planning, Michael Rushton, and Provost and Executive Vice President, Lauren Robel, on November 18th.
Rushton and Robel
First, when the Bicentennial Strategic Plan was emailed to all members of the IU community, I set out to explore what our campus administrators had to say about sustainability as a means of addressing the environmental, economic, and social challenges of our future. What I found was that the report outlines seven "Bicentennial Priorities," followed by a four-part section on the "Framework of Excellence." One part of this framework is "Building for Excellence," a section that focuses on IU's infrastructure and facilities. Here, there are "Bicentennial Action Items" and "Continuing Priorities." The last of five "Continuing Priorities" states exactly this:
"Continue and expand efforts to make all IU campuses more energy efficient and sustainable"
Wait, wait...that's it?? In a 41 page report, I have to wait until page 33 to read this one measly, vague sentence about sustainability?!
Yep.
Unforunately, there is no other mention of the grand environmental challenges that IU will face in the next two centuries. Luckily, administrators asked for input. It sounds like they received many electronically-submitted comments lamenting this oversight. I also know that Provost Robel also took the time to meet with the Campus Sustainability Advisory Board about their recommendations. I jumped at the chance to talk face-to-face with Rushton and Robel at the meeting for comments on the 18th.
Oddly, this meeting was held in a tiny conference room in the Indiana Memorial Union, meant to seat ~30 people. The room filled up quickly, though, and at maximum attendance during the meeting, there were probably about 55 or 60 people squeezed in. The group seemed to be overwhelmingly composed of faculty members, and those who shared their comments had a wide variety of things to say about the future of teaching, the health and well-being of all members of the community, strategies for engagement, and much more. From what I could see, there were only three students in attendance (out of 30,000+...eek!), but luckily, each of us felt empowered to speak up.
I was nervous to talk at first, because I knew how important this issue was. I didn't know if I could articulate my thoughts clearly and convincingly enough to make any real impact. So I started scribbling down some thoughts. I decided to ask questions, because most everyone in the room who just made comments got simple, "Thank you for that thought" responses. I prepared the most challenging questions I could think of (HA!), and did some power-posing in my seat to prepare. (Try it before your next big presentation!) After I was called on, my hands started to shake immediately. I took a big breath, thanked Rushton and Robel for seeking student feedback, and calmly posed these two questions:
"Without any attention to environmental and sustainability challenges in this Bicentennial Plan, what is the IU community to assume about how the administration plans to address the increasingly salient challenges of resource scarcity, climate change, environmental injustices, and the myriad of other sustainability challenges our world will face in the coming years, decades, and centuries?" --and--
"Ifnotnow, through incorporation of a sustainability-related bicentennial priority or primary action items tied to each aspect of IU's Mission and day-to-day operations, when and how should plans be made to assure that IU does not fall behind in doing our part to address global environmental challenges?"
MAN, was I nervous! But I made it through, and sparked a pretty good conversation. Provost Robel expressed gratitude for the hard work being done by Office of Sustainability staff, and some other faculty members chimed in to confirm that this was not just a student concern. He said that many faculty members agree that sustainability should be incorporated much more comprehensively into the Bicentennial Strategic Plan! Overall, the planning meeting was a bit of a whirlwind. Administrators were basically just hit with criticism for an hour and a half, and they handled it pretty well. For now, that's all I can really say...we'll have to wait and see what the next draft of the plan looks like. Hopefully we'll see some pretty major changes with more comprehensive acknowledgement of environmental issues as a key concern for coming centuries of excellence at Indiana University. Stay tuned! UPDATE: IU adopts nearly all Bicentennial Plan content suggestions from the Campus Sustainability Advisory Board!! New and noteworthy:
"Sustainability, stewardship and accountability for the natural, human, and economic resources and relationships entrusted to IU" is now a Core Value of the university (!!!)
All future IU building construction projects must meet standards for LEED Certification at the GOLD level!
Read about all this and more in the final text HERE
