Author Archives: jamesjt

Kayaking Trip

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This weekend, my roommates and I went kayaking in an estuary by James Island.  It was my first time kayaking, and I was continuously awestruck throughout the entire two-hour trip by the peacefulness and beauty of the ecosystem.  The waters were calm even as the marsh grass blew in the breeze, and you could taste the salt in the air. The estuary was near a road connecting neighborhoods on the island, so the occasional car was heard, and there were power lines running over some of the trees.  However, at times there was no other sound than our paddles hitting the water, and I wish I could have stayed out on the water all day.

I normally try my best to stay off of my phone as much as possible throughout the day, but I promised my dad some pictures as the trip was a present, so that was the only reason I was on my phone.  It was a beautiful experience to just paddle through the waters with my best friends while scanning the cloudy sky as the sun set. We even saw a couple dolphins swim through the estuary less than ten feet from our kayaks!  

As I live on campus downtown, I do not have the opportunity to experience nature in this capacity on a regular basis.  I also do not have my car with me during the semester, so unless I pay for an Uber or Lyft, I tend to find myself pretty confined to the peninsula.  Even the “nature” downtown is cultivated and kept tidy by groundskeepers for residents and tourists. The parks we have were designed to be beautiful green spaces, but they were designed by humans, which kind of takes away from their natural aspect.

Kayaking, however, allowed me to experience nature without the sounds of cars starting, ambulances blaring past, or cell phones ringing.  Sadly, I feel like my connection to nature has decreased over time as I grew older and became busier, but spending a couple hours on the water this past Saturday reminded me of how much I love the sun and trees and salt water.  I am originally from northeast Ohio, and feeling the sun warm my skin reminded me of how excited I was to move to Charleston, where the sun is always warm and bright and not constantly hidden by clouds. I feel like I have lost the connection from my youth, when the best days were the ones spent with bare feet running on the bright green grass.  This weekend reminded me of the importance of that connection and the need to restore it.

I believe that most of the people living on the Earth today have lost their connection with nature through sitting behind cubicles and under fluorescent lights, always hiding behind bright computer monitors and phone screens.  Many of the issues plaguing the world would cease to exist if people would look up and recognize the nature we destroy every second of every day through our consumeristic habits and materialist lives. If we continue fueling our linear economy, creating mass amounts of waste, throwing away overproduced food, and expanding animal agriculture, soon there will no longer be any nature for us to appreciate, and that is such a terrible thought.

Sustainability Week Waste Audit

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Sustainability Week occurred a couple weeks ago, and among the many events throughout the week was a waste audit.  During the waste audit, trash was collected from various locations across campus, such as behind the library. After the collected trash was delivered, interns from the Office of Sustainability and member of Alliance for Planet Earth opened the bags and sorted the trash into different categories.  Among these were compost, recycling, trash, and specialty items used for art pieces commissioned for Sustainability Week. The recycling was further divided into Terracycle and number ones, twos, and fives because the Office has specialty recycling that the general campus does not. Terracycle, for example, recycles items like pens, empty shampoo bottles, cleaned out toothpaste containers, and more.  While plastic items with a number one or two on the bottom of the item can be recycled on campus, number fives can only be recycled through the Office, and these are items like plastic Starbucks cups. Straws, paper Starbucks cups, and plastic bottles were kept separate for different counting purposes and for art pieces.

The intent of the waste audit was to raise awareness on the habits of the College of Charleston community while diverting items from the landfill.  Volunteers sorted trash all day, but I only had the opportunity to sort for an hour before class. Even during that hour, however, I helped dig through multiple bags of trash, and I saw how much waste was simply thrown in the trash can.  Much of the trash consisted of food waste, single-use plastic items, and products that can be composted but were placed in the trash bin instead.

Sorting through the trash was very frustrating because it is difficult to imagine how students do not care about where they throw their trash when items could be composted or recycled.  Whether it is an issue of students not caring, not being educated, or a combination of the two, the resources are available to students and faculty to compost food scraps or recycle plastic water bottles.  Our campus even has reusable water bottle filling stations located around campus to combat the use of single-use water bottles.

People are interested in convenience, and students at the College of Charleston are no exception.  This isn’t our fault–it is the fault of the society that raised us. American society is interested in profit, and this profit is what fuels our country’s corporations today.  As discussed in the “Story of Stuff” video, corporations operate with the goal of creating the most money, which is achieved through our linear economy and the corporate control of the government.  How it is more profitable to create excess amounts of waste baffles me, but the concept of waste was really reinforced during the waste audit.

I hope that students passing by the audit noticed the amount of waste created by the College in just a few hours, and that the audit will help raise awareness so students can change their habits.  I also hope that officials of the College noted the event to perhaps draw connections of how infrastructure can be better adapted. Installing more compost bins around campus would be a great start, as there are only a few outside of dining halls, and more signage informing students of the proper way to dispose of their waste would also be helpful.

Office of Sustainability Litter Sweeps

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As I briefly discussed in another blog post, I had the opportunity to organize weekly litter sweeps for a month during my internship with the Office of Sustainability.  While working with the 71% Project, which researches and combats plastic pollution in the oceans, I facilitated four hour-long litter sweeps on the corner of Calhoun and Coming Streets by the library.  The 71% Project focuses on this area because this intersection was adopted by the Office of Sustainability, and its proximity to campus equates to most of the trash in the area being discarded by students.  

Volunteers during these litter sweeps included students from various organizations across campus, ranging from interns from the Office of Sustainability, members of Alliance for Planet Earth, and students from this class.  Thank you to anyone reading this who helped during these litter sweeps–they could not have occurred without you!

We began each litter sweep by meeting at the Office of Sustainability before walking to the intersection to begin picking up the litter.  As we collected trash, at least one person recorded the type of trash and quantity on their phone through the SC Aquarium Citizen Science app.  Using this app is not only helpful to the aquarium and their research, but it is also useful for the 71% Project to record its progress in litter sweeps throughout the semester.  

As the area where we collected trash was off campus, it was not surprising that the items collected in the most abundance were cigarette butts.  In addition, we always found many aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic cups, and pieces of paper lying on the sidewalk and in the bushes. Although there was a trash can located on the street corner, it was obvious that, while some of the trash might have blown out of it, most of the litter was thrown out of cars or disposed of after sitting on the concrete wall behind the bushes.  

It was very disheartening to see hundreds of pieces of trash collected from the same area week after week, especially as much of the litter was located next to storm drains which lead directly to the harbor.  However, a little less litter was found and collected each week, which displayed that the litter sweeps were effective, and many people stopped to ask us what we were doing during every litter sweep. Hopefully, seeing students collecting litter will inspire people to not litter themselves, use less single-use items, or pick up a piece of trash in the street.  

Organizing and participating in these litter sweeps every week really exposed me to the environmental aspect of sustainability that I am interested in: plastic pollution.  After taking this class, I no longer focus only on the usage and littering of the single-use plastic items, but the process of extracting resources, creating the plastic, shipping it, filling it with a product, and selling it.  As we have discussed, waste is a product of our linear economy because waste does not exist in nature, and this has really expanded my thinking about plastic pollution. While I believe that individual action and change is important and can have an impact, the only way we will be able to significantly reduce single-use plastic is by demanding better from corporations and policies within the government.

My Internship with the Office of Sustainability

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This past semester, I was a rotational intern at the Office of Sustainability.  As a rotational intern, I worked on three different initiatives within the Office, including the Cougar Food Pantry, the 71% Project, and Sustainability Week.  I worked with each initiative for a month in order to have exposure to each project and complete different tasks.

For the first month, I volunteered at the Cougar Food Pantry, which is a resource for students that battles food insecurity on campus.  Many students do not have access to three meals a day, so the food pantry allows students to come shop for different items like pasta, cans of vegetables, cereal, and more.  These items are donated by different organizations and students on campus through food drives and competitions. Along with volunteering during the pantry’s open hours, I helped stock these donations and organize the pantry.

Next, I worked with the 71% Project, which focuses on plastic pollution in the oceans.  Charleston’s location on the water emphasizes the importance of minimizing usage of plastics and cleaning up litter on the streets, so my main task during this rotation was to organize weekly litter sweeps.  Volunteers from the Office of Sustainability, Alliance for Planet Earth, and this class were instrumental in these litter sweeps. We also used the SC Citizen Science app to record the data on how much trash we collected before sorting through the litter.

Lastly, I helped with Sustainability Week, which is an annual collection of events intended to promote the different pillars of sustainability to students and the community.  I helped organize events during the week, along with setting up, attending, and tearing down events. My main task was assisting in organizing a Land & Labor Acknowledgement, which acknowledged the indigenous groups that owned this land and their labor that built the College.  The event included speakers and performances from members of indigenous groups, such as the Gullah Geechee community, and their words and actions were very enlightening.

I also had the opportunity to volunteer with other organizations on campus through interning with the Office.  One of these organizations is the Stone Soup Collective Student Chapter at the College, and I was able to help distribute the soup to students one Wednesday evening.  It was very interesting to hear the founder of Stone Soup speak in class last week on her inspiration for the organization and the way it operates outside of campus.

Working as a rotational intern with the Office was a very rewarding experience, as I was exposed to the pillars of sustainability outside of learning about them in this class.  Not only did I work within the economic and social pillars with the Cougar Food Pantry and Sustainability Week, but I also experienced the environmental pillar through the 71% Project.  At the end of the internship program, we participated in a synthesis module exercise, which tied together these three pillars by defining them and providing examples of issues within the pillars, such as greenwashing.  We also discussed topics we covered in class, like the Anthropocene, points of intervention, types of capital, externalities, and more.

My experience as an intern with the Office of Sustainability was a very positive one, and it exposed me to aspects of sustainability outside of just learning about them.  I was able to apply much of the knowledge from this class to take-aways from events and conversations with other interns. I highly recommend applying for an internship with the Office in the future because they are a great resource on campus and an amazing way to become more involved and expand your consciousness.  

#FuturisticFebruary Challenge

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During the month of February, I participated in the social media challenge #FuturisticFebruary.  For the entire month, I collected all of the trash that I created, including recyclables, in order to visualize the amount of waste that I generally produce in a single month.  The idea of the challenge is to save all of your trash created during the month without changing your behaviors. Then, after the challenge is over, you can discover changes to make in your life to minimize your amount of future trash.  This challenge, created by Carly Bergman on Instagram, is very eye-opening, and I highly recommend looking up her Instagram page and the challenge.

I began the month with the belief that I was a conscious consumer who created minimal waste, so I wasn’t expecting to accumulate much trash throughout the challenge.  However, very quickly into the first week or two, I began to realize that my previous assumption was incorrect. By the end of the month, I filled one large Chipotle bag with trash, which, although below average for many Americans or college students, was very frustrating for me.  It was also very humbling because I held the belief that I was creating little to no trash on a normal basis, and seeing how much waste I collected inspired me to try to minimize my trash creation further.

I discovered that the majority of my trash comes from food and its packaging, ranging from Einstein Bros. Bagels wrappers to plastic hummus containers to receipts.  Sadly, a lot of my food comes from take-out restaurants or fast food chains because of my busy college-student schedule, which translates to a lot of waste from meals.  Although I try to avoid plastic packaging as much as possible, trash is trash–whether it is paper, metal, or plastic. It all has an impact.

This challenge also has an impact–although it is a much more positive one.  After analyzing my trash and the behaviors that accompany it, I discovered many ways to limit my waste in the future.  For example, for the past few weeks, I have been trying to not eat out as often, or at least eat in a restaurant to eliminate packaging.  Although I cannot control the upstream waste of my eating habits (such as food growth needs and shipping), I can recognize the impact of upstream waste and attempt to lower my impact.  

As we learned in class, waste is a product of our linear economy.  I should not create waste from my eating habits, yet in today’s society, the majority of my food is shipped to Charleston from across the globe.  A product of not knowing where my food is sourced from is not knowing who grows my food, meaning that my consumption could (and most likely does) harm minority populations that labor in massive agricultural fields.  These fields, utilized for the growing of a single crop, also harm the environment through deforestation and spraying fertilizers and pesticides. These and more issues constitute upstream problems related to my food intake.

Although this challenge only focused on the material trash collected, it uncovered so many more issues and questions that will help me to minimize both my trash and impact in the future.  I highly recommend participating in this challenge because it will change your outlook on your daily habits and inspire you to create better actions in the future.

Speak Up for the Ocean

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A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the Speak Up for the Ocean advocacy event hosted by the Coastal Conservation League in partnership with Alliance for Planet Earth.  The focus of the event was advocacy– specifically what college students can do to get involved. The speakers especially encouraged the involvement of College of Charleston students because of their ambition and close relationship to the coastal plains from living in the Charleston area.

They encouraged CofC students to get involved in five different ways.

  1. Join the college chapter at CofC.
    • Not only is the college chapter free to join, but it meets monthly and provides many opportunities to volunteer and reach out to local government officials to make a difference.
  2. Visit their website at https://coastalconservationleague.org/
    • The Coastal Conservation League website is full of information about their history, work, events, news, and ways to get involved.
  3. Volunteer.
    • Volunteering is truly the best way to get hands-on involvement with advocacy– whether it be making phone calls to local leaders, traveling to Columbia to speak with senators, or organize administrative work.
  4. Follow them on social media.
    • Keep up-to-date through their Facebook (Coastal Conservation League) & Twitter (@scccl)
  5. Speak with local representatives.
    • A few tips shared by the Coastal Conservation League included making phone calls over writing emails, introduce yourself, be clear, and be personal.  Phone calls including these elements are more likely to be remembered and listened to than indifferent emails.

The event concluded with an interactive exercise on calling local representatives with volunteers from the audience to oppose the proposed Senate Bill 394– or the ban against bans.  This bill would hinder local municipalities’ ability to pass and enforce bans on single-use items like plastic bags, and this exercise incorporated skills learned during the event while also showing the ability to make a difference with a minute-long phone call.

Advocacy for the Coastal Conservation League is very political because it includes calling and speaking with local representatives to ensure that the government is listening to what we, as constituents and concerned citizens, want from our government and laws.  This event incorporated political sustainability while also encouraging ways for students to be more sustainable both personally and on-campus. Working with the Coastal Conservation League or with other advocacy groups provides a chance to get involved with student chapters and learn more about sustainability in relation to politics and environmental issues in a more hands-on approach.

The event was also helpful because, as a student without any prior knowledge of or experience with advocacy, I feel that I now have the basic tools for becoming an advocate.  Learning skills for advocacy and then seeing those skills used by fellow students in an exercise was very helpful and stress-relieving. I personally would like to work with the Coastal Conservation League–or with advocacy groups in general–in the future because it expands my impact on the world.  While individual actions are very important and necessary to enact change, they are smaller steps leading to larger actions like advocacy.

Although I am not a resident of South Carolina, I still have the ability to become involved with the Coastal Conservation League through volunteering instead of speaking with local representatives.  The League’s willingness and enthusiasm to work with students from different backgrounds displays the need for more advocates today–whether they participate in a local college chapter or speak with representatives to create change.

*I forgot that the photo at the event had to be a selfie, so I accidentally only took a photo of my notes!

News Report Take Away- Jordan James

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Title of Article:

“Legal Rights for Lake Erie? Voters in Ohio City Will Decide” (The New York Times)

Citation:

Williams, Timothy. “Legal Rights for Lake Erie? Voters in Ohio City Will Decide.” The New York Times, 17 February 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/us/lake-erie-legal-rights.html.

Main Ideas:

  • Who: Voters in Toledo, Ohio
  • What: Voters will decide if legal rights of existing, flourishing, and evolving belong to Lake Erie
  • Why: Environmental issues like algae blooms and farm runoff pose threats to Lake Erie that disrupt the ecosystem and prevent citizens from receiving clean water
  • When: Special city election on February 26, 2019
  • Where: Toledo, Ohio
  • How: Voters will answer the ballot question on granting legal rights to Lake Erie at the special city election

Impact:

  • The ballot question is a result from efforts showing that current environmental protection laws are insufficient in protecting nature and ecosystems.  
  • The proposed bill would allow people to sue polluters of the lake based on its legal right “to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.”
  • While paving the way for other elements of nature to gain legal rights, the bill would also harm the local economy by closing local farms and costing the city money to defend the bill in court without the guarantee that it will survive legal review.

Relevance to course:

  • This article discusses the granting of legal rights to elements of nature, which we recently discussed in class.  
  • The article also mentions the interconnectedness of different aspects behind the proposed bill, such as the need for greater environmental protection along with the potential negative effects on the local economy.

Questions raised:

  • Will the proposed bill be passed by the citizens on the special election?
  • If it is passed, will it survive legal review?
  • What is the timeframe of undergoing legal review?
  • How will this impact Toledo’s local economy?
  • How will this impact other areas of the country if the bill is passed?