G.O.A.L.S.

This past week, I sat down with my compost group (Michelle Cane, Alyssa Gilliland, and Nicole Stephan) to talk about our Earth Month Action Plan. For week one our plan is to email Gina Hnytka to set up a meeting to talk to her about how her and the SUSTAINS group are composting. We emailed her before and she said she is going to get us more involved starting next semester, however, we want to get some ideas before then. We are also going to go buy candy and make survey questions for our plan in week two. For week two, we are going to set up a table outside of Morrill Traditions and have people answer a small survey about their thoughts on composting on campus (in rewards for candy). The only thing that will be hard about this is trying to get people to stop and actually fill out our survey. We might just have to end up going into traditions and ask people if no one stops at the table. Week three we are going to read and analyze people’s answers from the previous week’s survey. We will see if student would actually compost if available to them and see if trying to implement composting is worth it. We will also make a “business plan” consisting on how we can expand composting on campus. Week four we are hoping to talk to Gina Hnytka in person about expanding composting and the business plan we made in the previous weeks. I am extremely excited to talk to Gina and see what her opinions are about our “business plan” and the data we collected from our survey. The only thing that will be hard about this is if she doesn’t reply to our email from week one and can’t meet with us but, hopefully that doesn’t happen. The month of April will hopefully get us one more step closer to having a greener campus! 

This past week we heard from the owner of The Roosevelt Coffee House in downtown Columbus, Kenny Sipes. All proceeds from The Roosevelt go to efforts to fight for clean water, end hunger, and stop human trafficking in the city of Columbus and world wide. We also watched a Ted Talk by Joe DeLoss who is the founder of Hot Chicken Takeover which hires those who have previously been imprisoned. Once a person finishes their sentence it is difficult to find a job due to their record. HCT welcomes those who have previously made wrongs in their lives with open arms to help them make a living. Both of these businesses are extremely inspiring to start a small project for the benefit of people. It’s amazing what a good heart and a passion of making the world a better place can do. Though, composting will not have a great affect on individuals lives such as HCT, it will have a great affect on the environment even if it is just on campus. Listening to Kenny, I realized that while you have a great company/idea/organization etc. it is extremely important to know the crowd you are conveying your ideas to. You could tell he had a big heart and had a huge passion for helping those in need, he just did not know how to approach the situation appropriately. However, I still learned a great deal from him such as: have a back up plan, know where your money is coming from, and things will take a lot longer than expected. The biggest takeaway from this class session for me would be to know people come from different backgrounds and to accept what they say with an open heart and open mind. Also, that when you have a dream to do something, go for it, even if you have never done anything like it before.

According to Wikipedia, a social enterprise is an “organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being”. In other words, a social enterprise is a business that as they profit, the local community (and society) profits as well. There are many social enterprises addressing the issue of compost right now. Just in Columbus, there are small composting enterprises such as Compost Columbus (http://www.compostcolumbus.com/) and larger enterprise
such as Price Farms Organics, Ltd. (http://www.pricefarms.org/Delivery.html) The Ohio State University uses Price Farms Organics for the Zero Waste project. The Zero Waste projects is implemented during the

Autumn semester at Ohio State Stadium during football games where recyclable and compostable materials are sorted at the stadium and brought to Price Farms where the compostable materials are turned into compost and fertilizer. For my issue supporting this social enterprise
is our essentially our main goal. We want to implement a system like Zero Waste at football games but year round through out our dining halls, resident halls, and small restaurants around the campus such as Oxley’s and the Bread Company. There are many challenges that exist at the moment to get this implemented. We need to work with dining hall services about who is going to pick up and sort through the compostable waste? If Price Farms is willing to take our compost? The transportation of the compost? There are so many steps that we still need to take into consideration in how this whole process will work out. We have contacted Gina Hnytka, the program manager of EEDS and AEDE Undergraduate and Graduate Programs who runs the sustains group on campus to see if we can discuss with her how their small resident hall is composting their material. The most important things to consider when viewing this issue through the social enterprise lens is making sure that people see the benefit of composting and will utilize this system if implemented on campus. If people do not use it, Price Farms (the social enterprise we are hoping to use for our compostable items), Ohio State, and the environment will not benefit from our work. Going back to the Justice-Oriented Citizen model, all three levels are being fulfilled for social enterprise (for composting). There are the personally responsible citizens who utilize small composting and recycle bins given by the companies. The participatory citizens are those who implement composting systems through out small neighborhoods or campuses. The social-justice orientated citizen are those who not only implement composting systems but those who figure out why people do not compost and to see if they can find a way to make more individuals compost and see the benefits.

A video that I found for Social Enterprise was a Social Enterprise Podcast on YouTube with two individuals who started a company named Compost Crew. Ryan Walter (the CEO of Compost Crew) and Brian Flores (the COO of compost crew) who have now served thousands of families through the DC metro area and Baltimore with composting. In the video they state that they started as a small business serving around 20 people and with a lot of trial and error have created a huge business. The key takeaways I got form this video is the fact that they almost quit their business but they were able to bounce back because they saw the reward that came from their idea. They said the three major value proposition in their company are: reducing carbon footprint, reducing need of synthetic fertilizer and reducing manufacture of oil. They explained that it is important to start a business with a good partner who will bring you up when times get hard and who is willing to cooperate with you no matter what. They also stated that it is a scary process and nothing is easy, but it is totally worth it to keep working for the product you wanted and to see out your project.

We have a great group who is trying to work really hard to get this implemented on our campus and we are all extremely passionate about this idea. It is just hard to talk to people due to our busy schedules and trying to get people to reply to our emails. We hope to have more information within the next few weeks.

Wikipedia site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_enterprise

YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBHUVLa68O4

 

These guest speakers had a major impact on my initial thoughts regarding my issue (campus composting) through the lens of community organizing. The guest speakers, Greg Pace from Columbus Community Bill of Rights and Jessica Mathews from 2 Wheels and Heels/Parklets in Columbus, gave me a lot of insight in the next steps to community organizing. Greg Pace and the Columbus Community Bill of Rights, works with a group of individuals who together try to stop Fracking in Columbus Ohio and other Midwest towns to keep clean water for city residents. Jessica Mathews is an individual who has a passion for safe places for pedestrians to walk and ride their bikes freely through city streets. She believes that people have just as many rights as cars do in cities, and should be allowed to take back city streets. Their inspirations came from making common people lives better: with clean water and clean streets. Greg’s work started almost ten years ago when fracking became a serious source of extracting oil and Jessica got her inspiration from visiting other cities such as San Francisco who had safe “Parklets” for their citizens. Their platforms for their issues gained attention through simply talking to people. Greg said he stands outside places for hours, such as the on campus Wex-Center, talking to passersby about CCBoR and the issues they fight. He said normally everyone he talks to signs his petitions and keeps up with their group. Jessica uses social media to get her ideas across Columbus. Her bike group 2 Wheels and Heels has a Facebook group and the Parklets get attention through local news groups and other social media sites i.e. Facebook and Instagram. This gave me inspiration to possibly create a social media account directly relating to on campus composting to get opinions from students and faculty to see if they would utilize this idea. When these speakers came to ENR, it made me realize as long as you are passionate about an issue and work with like-minded people, anything can be accomplished. There are always going to be people who have similar ideas, but may not have the resources to start a project, so you must be the voice for them. The biggest takeaway from this class session is getting confidence to start working on this idea because I know with the right amount of effort and determination it will definitely become implemented on our campus. As of now, I would personally like to start getting opinions from other students about starting composting on Ohio State’s campus to see what their thoughts are. Hopefully, we will see a great response.

My issue is to start campus composting through out Ohio State University. Our focus right now is to just start a small composting project at the 12^th avenue bread company on West Campus. All of the to-go boxes and plastic wear are made from bio-degradable materials however, there is no compost bins or composting center on campus.

Community organizing plays a huge role in the context of my issue. We need to get our office of sustainability, waste managements, energy department, dining services, and administration on board with this idea. Our campus will have to build a composting center, which will take a lot of money, time, and new staff members. If the community is not impressed by this idea, there is no way that composting will ever be available on our campus.

At the moment there are several other groups trying to work on composting at Ohio State, the organizations that I know of are Zero Waste and Real Food OSU. Zero Waste is an organization that after big sporting events cleans the stadium and surrounding area and instead of bringing trash to a landfill moves it to a composting site. Each game they set up a tent and educate people on the importance of recycling and composting. We will be in contact with this organization soon to find out how exactly the transportation compost works.

I believe challenges that we will face when trying to get the community involved in our issue is trying to get the “man power” to start this idea. It will take a lot of time in the beginning to get everything in place and then even more time to keep things running smoothly. While the campus will be able to hire full-time employees to keep up with this work, a lot of it will be student run. Finding the time to complete class assignments and volunteer with the composting group will be a hard thing to time manage. However, it will definitely be worth it in the end. I do not think it will be a problem to find people who will want to help out with this issue. It is such a large campus and so many students are concerned with the environment and making a greener campus, it will just be finding enough students to work due to busy schedules.

The most important thing to consider when thinking about community organizing and my issue is find out what is the best way to get in contact with people. Should we set up a table on the oval? Create multiple social media accounts? Go to sporting events? We need to find a system to get the most people involved in short amount of time.

For the justice-orientated citizen model, the personally responsible citizen is met by sharing the composting issues on social medias such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. A participatory citizen would organize meetings and school-wide events to teach people the importance of recycling and composting. A justice oriented citizen would start a composting system through out their campus.

Though not a TedTalk, I found a video on YouTube that addressed the issues of community organizing. The video was a skype call with a girl named Jenessa Gilarski, a freshman who attends University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point who works for her campus office of sustainability. She started a composting around her campus i  n classrooms, dining halls, and resident halls. She said that at her campus they have a waste education center with a compost pile in the back that is manually turned with sand and other organic matter. Once the compost is ready it is applied back to landscape through out their campus and football fields. The key takeaways I got form this video is it is extremely important to outreach to campus staff and students about the issue. Jenessa said to reach students campus wide you should create a Facebook page or if you are trying to reach a worldwide audience you should create a twitter. She said on campus set up a table and talk to students and make sure to have incentives: such as t-shirt give away or cookies. She also said to start this project with a group of people and do not do it alone. She works a part-time job, is a full time student, and works at the composting center and said time management is key to have a successful outcome on all your projects.

I am very excited to start this project and get people involved with making a greener and happier campus!

Water Privatization:

According to National Geographic, “only 0.0007 percent of the planets water is available to fuel and feed its 6.8 billion people” (Nation Geographic). Just over 2 percent of the Earth’s water is fresh and half of that is either frozen or not easily accessible. With the increasing population, the more intense the need for clean water becomes.  About 90 percent of the world’s freshwater remain in the public’s hands, but privatization is becoming more common as governments cannot afford to maintain water purification and delivery systems. Corporations that privatize water creates more problems such as: “corruption, lack of corporate accountability, loss of local agency, weakened water quality standards, and steep rate hikes that eliminate poor people’s access to water.” (Food is Power). One example of privatization of water in the United States is through the company Nestlé. Nestlé owns 50 springs across the nation. They have illegally obtained water from aquifers, engaged in price-gouging tactics, and polarized communities. Nestlé holds the rights to Arrowhead Springs, Calistoga, and Poland Spring bottled water market, playing a main role in environmental issues such as recycling. In the United States more the 28 billion bottles are purchased and only 23 percent of those bottles are recycled. Privatization of water also affects the environment because it has been known to be a cause of water shortage problems. This affects society because if people do not have access to public water they will not survive. It will cause tensions between the social classes because those who can afford to buy bottled water will get more than those who cannot simply buy it. You need water to survive, and if people cannot freely obtain water, problems will escalate. For environment, private companies might be able to make their own laws and will not have to follow government regulations concerning healthy water conditions.
**Information found from these articles:

http://www.foodispower.org/water-usage-privatization/

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/freshwater-crisis/

Pharmaceutical Pollution:

Pharmaceutical drugs are finding their way in bodies of water throughout the world. Germany Environment Ministry tested 713 potential pharmaceutical drugs that could be found in water supplies. Out of those 713, 631 were found in water supplies across the UN. They were found in lakes, rivers, groundwater, soil, manure and drinking water. A particular isolated case in the United States is Lake Michigan. Rebecca. D. Klapper, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee tested for pharmaceutical drugs in Lake Michigan, the most common drug found was Metformin (a type 2 diabetes drug used to control blood sugar). The drug and many others are found three miles from the sewage treatment plants surrounding Lake Michigan. This affects the environment by polluting our waters and affecting our ecosystems greatly. Male fish have now developed a gene that causes hormonal changes and causes them to produce eggs. The feminizing effect on male fish potentially inhibits their ability to reproduce. This affects our society because researchers will have to find new environmentally friendly drugs to put on the market.  Or stop the sell of some pharmaceutical drugs to keep our waters clean. The most prevalent drugs to harm wildlife include: antibiotics, antidepressants, anti-inflammatories and analgesic, beta-blockers, oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapies. To prohibit the use of these drugs to save our water supply affects billions of people who need these drugs to survive. It will also affect society by making people dispose unwanted medicines correctly and changing sewage treatment plants to become more efficient and environmentally friendly. This will effect our economy because we will have to find ways to fund sewage treatment plants to reform their system. Furthermore, if “eco-friendly” drugs come on the market, we will have to find a way to make them affordable to the average citizen.
**Information found from this article:

http://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/news-and-analysis/features/pharmaceuticals-in-the-environment-a-growing-problem/20067898.article

Repealing the Affordable Care Act:

Since President Trump took office this past Friday, he and his cabinet have already been working to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). If the repeal goes through, 20 million Americans will lose health care. Trump wants to replace the health care with something “far less expensive and far better”. However, he does not have a set plan to replace Obamacare yet. On January 12, Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted “As Republicans try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they should be reminded every day that 36,000 people will die yearly as a result”. This affects society by people not having healthcare which is a human right. Many citizens may not be able to afford needed medicines for mental and chronic illnesses. It will affect economics by trying to fund a new health care system and making healthcare more affordable. It will affect the environment because if people do not have health insurance their primary focus will not be buying sustainable and organic products, instead they will be making sure they have enough money to buy their health necessities.

The topic I chose to do out of these three is pharmaceutical pollution. I think this is the most interesting between the three because I really do not know much about it. It will be an interesting topic to explore through out the semester and see how it affects the environment, economy, and society. I think the hardest issue to focus on will be how it affects the economy, but I am eager to solve the issue. I intend to explore this issue by watching documentaries, reading lots of articles, and looking at graphs from previous years to see how pharmaceuticals affect our bodies of water.

For this semester’s to do list I chose to do the coffee and tea category. In part 1 , I went to Kafé Kerouac- a little coffee shop about a 20-minute walking distance from my dorm on N High Street. In part 2- I went to four other coffee shops in Columbus.

On November 6th: my roommate Danielle, her boyfriend Evan, our suite-mate Liz, and myself decided to go to 3 coffee shops in the Columbus area. This would’ve been a fine idea except for the previous night I drank about 12 cups of coffee while staying up until 3 in the morning trying to finish a paper (college problems). However, I went with the idea since I am a coffee enthusiast.

Or first stop was Mission Coffee Co.: an aesthetically pleasing coffee shop in the Short North. This coffee shop was very “hipstery” which was a little intimidating at first since I wasn’t wearing a beanie nor do I have a nicely trimmed beard. I ordered a cheddar and chive scone and an ice latte. The scone was delicious- highly recommend. The latte equally delicious, but very strong. If you need a strong pick-me-up that is the place to go. Liz got an almond croissant (which was probably the best croissant I have ever tasted) and Danielle got a chai tea latte which was amazing. This place would be great for a cute coffee date or great study place with a vibrant atmosphere. I will definitely go back.

 Our second stop was Impero Coffee : about a minute walk from Mission Coffee. This coffee shop is a lot smaller than Mission Coffee and Kafé Kerouac. Personally I did not like the set up nor did I really like the drink I got. I got a chai tea and Mission Coffee’s was a lot better… Danielle got a hot chocolate which she said was pretty good. The place was a lot cheaper than Mission Coffee though which was nice- I would definitely get their drinks to go, but if you are looking to sit down to enjoy Mission would be a better choice. I probably will not go back.

Our third and final stop was One Line Coffee: about a two minute walk from Impero Coffee. This coffee place was a lot busier than the other two coffee shops we went to however, it was a great place to people watch. There was nothing super special nor was it really boring about this place- just your normal coffee shop. I got a cappuccino which probably would’ve been really good however, I was so coffee-d out I could not finish it. I would still definitely recommend this place to get a coffee. I will most likely go back.

On November 27th, Danielle and I went to Fox in the Snow Cafe in the Italian Village near the Short North. This was the cutest cafe out of all five that we went too. I ordered a New Orlean style iced coffee and a pumpkin muffin. Danielle got an apple tart and an iced latte. My muffin was delicious however, the coffee was disgusting- one of the weirdest tasting coffee’s I’ve had. It was supposed to be sweet, but it definitely was not just
super bitter. Danielle’s latte was really good though- I’ll definitely get that next time I go. If you want a cute place to take pictures this is definitely a place to go. I will for sure go back.

My favorite experience of this semester was probably Mission Coffee because it was just such a nice morning with a few friends in a cute little coffee shop. However, my favorite coffee shop is Kafé Kerouac: good tasting & cheap coffee is my favorite coffee. I learned that Columbus has a huge “hipster” scene and most people are super friendly- I also learned they have great coffee. I definitely recommend Kafé Kerouac, Mission Coffee, and Fox in the Snow for people who are trying out coffee shops next semester. Also you will need to take a bus, uber, or find a car to get to most of these places. I now want to explore neighborhoods or parks to see what Columbus has to offer outdoors. Excited for next semester to be able to explore more of CBus.

 

 

 

For this semester’s Columbus To Do List I decided to do the coffee and tea category. By choosing this category I will be able to find cute coffee shops that will probably not help my coffee addiction. I’m looking forward to trying new coffee brews and exploring the Short North and campus area. I hope to find places that make great coffee while simultaneously are a great study place. Also, be able to understand the COTA bus system a little better. For my first coffee experience I went to Kafé Kerouac which is about a 20-minute walking distance from my dorm. I ordered a large iced latte and was surprised it came in a “bierglas” something I have not seen since I moved away from Germany in July. It was pretty funny and made me feel at home (which was nice since I ventured to this cafe during fall break and everyone was off at their homes). Furthermore, I thoroughly enjoyed this cafe. It had cheap records to buy, books to read, and a nice study area in the back room. I was able to complete a math assignment, enjoy a good music playlist, and drink a decent well made (and cheap) latte all within walking distance from my dorm. What more could I ask for? The service was extremely nice and the customers were even more friendly. I had a nice conversation with someone about music which was pretty awesome. I will definitely be coming back here from time to time and definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for a nice coffee experience.