Habitat for Humanity in Lee County

As a part of my colloquium experience was an integrated service learning component. As a class to fulfill this service learning component we volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. My experience along with my other classmates in my group involved helping painting the entire interior of a home. This physical experience allowed me to understand how much I can contribute as a volunteer. Habitat for Humanity follows a mission of volunteer-driven construction of houses in order to help those facing home insecurity the ability to purchase their own home and have a level of certainty when it comes to having a place to live. Habitat for Humanity also helps drive the idea of sustainability by trying to utilize existing properties rather than developing new land. In addition, by having those who receive Habitat for Humanity homes pay it forward by volunteering 150 hours to the organization they are able to have a sustainable way of continuing to be able to bring home security over their long existence as an organization.

I personally learned the difficulty of something as simple as painting the inside of a house. I also learned how rewarding it felt to be able to contribute to my community and make a contribution that directly affected someone's life by helping to make them a livable, certain, and secure home.

Footprint Challenge

As part of the footprint challenge I decided to reduce my footprint by attempting eat and drink more locally sourced and produced food and beverages. The steps I took were eating less fast food, utilizing locally sourced ingredients, and for beverages I stopped drinking imported and commercial domestic beers and instead drank beer from Fort Myers Brewing. This experience was eye opening to me because all in all everything tasted better compared to what I was eating and drinking before. In terms of locally sourced ingredients my favorite meal was ribs made with a locally made rub and coleslaw made from locally sourced vegetables. It tasted great and it also tasted much fresher compared to prepackaged coleslaw. In terms of the beer that was the biggest difference. Fort Myers Brewing has some fantastic beers such as High 5 and Gateway Gold. These beers packed so much more flavor than commercial domestic and imports and I also felt great contributing to the growing beer industry in Fort Myers. In retrospect, I think I will continue with these changes as much as I can going forward to help reduce my footprint while also being able to enjoy better tasting food and drinks.

Turning Waste into Renewable Energy

This week's trip to the Lee County Waste to Energy Facility was not my first. I had been to the facility before as a field trip when I was in middle school. Going into this trip I thought I basically understood what the facility entailed, but my memories of my earlier, like other memories, were incomplete or incorrect. From the get go I had questions involving the environmental impact of burning waste, in my head it seemed like it would be impossible to maintain a clean way of burning trash that would not hurt the environment. I was wrong, however, because I learned that the way in which they clean their emissions involved a laborious process of cleaning through specialized filters and that their emissions were even much cleaner than the government implemented EPA emissions standards. In addition, my understanding was that the facility did two things, burn waste and process recycling. However, I learned that they do much more including composting and processing electronic and hazardous waste. In addition, I did not realize how much of an impact tires had in terms of waste or recycling. I now understand how difficult they are to dispose of or reuse and that the Lee County facility is able to process a large amount of tires in a clean way while also creating a renewable energy resource. Knowing what I know now I think more of these types of facilities should be implemented across the U.S. as a way to provide renewable energy as well as to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts caused by other methods of waste disposal such as landfills.