By Jimmeaha Mack
Staff Writer
With the three-week campus wide EcoChallenge coming up Oct. 3, Sustainability coordinator Derek Martin hosted an EcoLuncheon for both faculty and students to raise awareness for the upcoming environmental challenge.
This challenge, which will span from Oct. 3 to Oct. 24, will allow the Susquehanna community to create habits to reduce their carbon footprints by creating teams and choosing from an abundance of pre-created pledges to complete.
Once a pledge is fulfilled, the person who completes it will be awarded points for doing so. The team of people with the most points at the end of the three weeks will win a lunch with Susquehanna University President Jonathan D. Green.
This is the first year that the community is breaking down into teams and competing against one another: “[The community] will gain an understanding about all the various ways they can change their lives to better themselves and the planet,” Martin said. “I also hope that people will have conversations with friends, coworkers, classmates, teammates, etc. that they haven’t had before. For me, starting a conversation about our environmental impacts is vital to becoming more sustainable as a society.”
In order to become involved in the EcoChallenge, an account must be created online at 2018.ecochallenge.org, where basic information and demographics will be filled out. From there, the option to join or create a team is available, though any number of people may be on a team, all teams must be created under the same organization name: Susquehanna University, in order to be in the competition to win the lunch. If someone does not have a team to join but still wants to be part of the competition, there is a general Susquehanna EcoChallenge Team available: SU Sustainability Warriors.
After creating a team, points can be acquired by inviting people to join the team or one can jump right into pledging challenges. These challenges include ways to make minor changes to waste, food, transportation, energy, community, nature, water and simplicity habits. The challenges range in difficulty, including using a reusable water bottle to foraging for food. As a whole, the EcoChallenge has been around for over twenty-five years. It is currently managed by the Northwest Earth Institute with the mission to challenge people to reflect on the environmental and social issues prevalent in society along with providing a stepping stone for ways to start to change them.
“[EcoChallenge is] important for people to understand that every action and decision they make every day has an environmental consequence,” Martin described. “While this may seem daunting and that individual actions are too small to mean much, EcoChallenge confronts those ideas and shows that when many people across the country consciously change their lives, we can see big changes.”
After hearing about the EcoChallenge, first-year Kate Carango said: “I did not know what to expect when I initially heard about the EcoChallenge and that it was coming to Susquehanna, but after talking to some of my peers and gathering some more information, I think it is a good idea to help people gain awareness about all of the little things we can do to improve our ecosystems and keep our planet healthy.”
In order for a team to win the lunch with Green, each member must have one account and must be the sole user of that ac count. An exception can be made if someone is interested in being on two different teams, in which case that person may have two accounts, but different challenges must be pledged.
Also, in order to compete in this EcoChallenge fairly, each participant must make sure they are pledging things that they do not already do.