Written By Monique Santoso 

This week’s activity is air plants! We are so excited to have you participate in an air plant making activity with us!

What are some benefits to air plants? We are so glad you asked! 

1. Stress Reduction

With midterms behind you and finals ahead of you, we are all slightly on edge. Surrounding yourself with some greenery in your room can really help combat this stress! Psychological research on attention restoration has shown that plants help you focus, which might be exactly what you need! Plus, they make you feel happier, calmer, and more optimistic. This study shows how hospital patients with green spaces and plants were found to recover faster. 

2. Air Purification

Although we live in Vermont far, far away from the city, one could always have better air quality and lucky for you, air plants help do the job. This study shows how air plants help absorb mercury in the air. No wonder people keep snake plants, spider plants and pothos! 

3. Easy to Take Care Of! 

Air plants don’t need much or any soil to grow, which means that you are mess free! They are epiphytes, which means that they can grow without soil, so long as you provide it with the support structure it needs! Cue wires! 

4. Very Cute! 

Although the aesthetic purposes may not be what you are looking for, you cannot deny how cute they look! (See pictures below). They give you, the designer, a chance to get creative and play around with them! 

5. Dorm-Friendly Size! 

With our dorms being ever so large, we need to save space and look for creative alternatives. Air plants are a great choice! They are soil-free and container free! 

All the benefits here are from, and we cite, the Balcon Garden Web, and you can read their article here.

Potatoes and Nutrition 

Although potatoes are considered a starch, they are rich in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. They are also unprocessed making them healthier than say bread or pasta. Some health benefits include improved blood sugar control, reduced heart disease risk and higher immunity.

Potato inspiration, how can you spice up that plain potato? 

• Butter
• Salt and/or pepper 
• (Brown) Sugar 
• Mashed potatoes 
• Cheese  

Homemade Potato Chip Recipe (Note: you will need a sharp knife)

1. Wash potato 
2. Cut potato into thin slices (⅙ to ⅛ inch thick) 
3. Put the slices immediately into water and soak for 1-2 min 
4. Rinse the potato slices until the water runs clear 
5. Drain the slices and pat dry with paper towel 
6. Arrange in single layer on paper towel on microwave safe plate 
7. Season with salt (and pepper) 
8. Microwave for 3 minutes
9. Flip the chips and microwave for 3 more minutes 
10. Remove crispy chips and microwave in 1 minute intervals until desired crunchiness 

Journaling might not first bring to mind environmental sustainability, but they are more connected than you think. 

Maintaining good mental health is an essential part of activism and caretaking, whether you are involved in climate justice organizing, stewarding the land, or caring for a loved one. Before caring for others, the earth, and the well-being of future generations and ecosystems, we must care for ourselves. Journaling is one of the best ways to do this, as it entails expressive writing, a therapeutic process of making sense of thoughts and feelings on paper. Expressive writing can lower stress and level out strong emotions, as well as increase optimism. Also, writing down negative thoughts and experiences can help us process them and rationalize them, freeing up mental space and energy for other pursuits. 

Studies have shown that regular reflective writing can lower distress and promote resilience in patients with anxiety, and others have suggested that it can even bring about physical health benefits such as immune health, as well as ability to cope with grief and trauma. Considering the often crushing sensation of grief we now experience on a daily basis in response to climate change and a host of worsening global tragedies, journaling could perhaps help us process this pain, allowing us to avoid growing numb to tragedy and instead funnel our emotions into productive action. 

Additionally, on a day-to-day level journaling allows us to heighten and make sense of our awareness of life and our surrounding environments, fostering deeper connection with not only the natural world around us but also with our local communities, encouraging us to build the stronger connections and passions that truly build social and environmental sustainability and justice from the roots up.

Lastly, the piece of dark chocolate you will find alongside your journaling supplies plays a role too. Cocoa is high in flavanols (the darker the chocolate, the more flavanols), which reduce blood pressure as well as help regulate mood and depression.

Information for this article was found in a Mindful blog post, as well as Psychology Today.

Don’t worry, this is not another blog post telling you that you SHOULD be a vegan or vegetarian! Instead, we are here to help you make environmentally-friendly food, in a microwave! Now you might be asking yourself, is a microwave even eco-friendly in the first place? 

About 60 percent of our conventional ovens are powered by electricity, not gas—and they’re less efficient than standard microwaves. In the first place, conventional ovens operate at a higher wattage—about 3,000, compared with something between 600 and 1,650 for a microwave. They also cost us energy by cooking food more slowly. One University of Bristol study found that a chicken cooked in a convection microwave resulted in energy savings of 30 percent over a conventional electric oven. 

Microwaves do have a few other environmental advantages. For one thing, they produce a lot less indoor air pollution than other cooking methods. Plus, they don’t heat up your house the way an oven can, which means lower energy costs associated with both your A/C and your refrigerator. Heating up a meal on the plate you intend to eat off of also means fewer dishes to wash—although regular use of your microwave might encourage higher consumption of ready-to-eat convenience meals and all their extra packaging.

Food waste is an important environmental consideration: Not only does it mean more garbage, it also means squandering all the resources that went into growing, storing, and preparing that food. Therefore, although the amount of energy that you consume while preparing the food matters, it is just as important for you to ensure that you do not waste that food! 

This blog post is from the Slate Article titled, Are Microwave Ovens Good for the Environment? 

This week’s event with Energy2028 First-Year Eco-Breaks is Terrarium Making! 

Since it’s probably too cold for you to garden outside now, we are offering you an opportunity to indoor garden with terrariums, giving your room some greenery and life while the leaves slowly fall outside. 

What is a terrarium? A terrarium is a small, typically sealed container, and has a base of gravel, charcoal, moss, and soil. This environment supports the growth of a miniature garden of moisture-loving plants. The plants draw moisture from the soil and evaporate it through their leaves, through transpiration. Water droplets form and drip down the sides of the container, returning to the soil. This process mimics nature’s water cycle, and sustains plant life. 

Here’s a picture of what you could have! 

Terrariums can look like a fairy garden, with pebble paths, toadstools on mossy hills, tucked away cottages, and animals peering through lush foliage. It can also look like a woodland hike that you miss, with plants like ivy, bugleweed, baby tears and peperomia. 

We will provide all the supplies you need to unleash your imagination at this very moment! All you need to do is sign up and we will deliver the supplies to your dorm! 

Nature has been a muse to so many poets and painters over the past centuries, up until today. With art as a lens, artists have been able to draw attention to some of the most pressing matters in human and environmental affairs. Here are a few of the most famous nature-inspired art works: 

1. Van Gogh: “Irises”, 1889

Although Van Gogh’s work was more popular posthumous than they were in his lifetime, nature greatly influenced his work. From Sunflowers to Irises, his paintings of flowers have a life of their own on his canvases. 

2. Paul Cezanne: “Mont Sainte-Victoire”, 1895

A little more obscure to non-art buffs, Paul Cezanne sought to depict human forms and buildings as simply an extension from the natural landscape – blending in almost seamlessly to the side of the hills – the inherent quality of the landscape giving it its light and color. 

3. Claude Monet: “Water Lilies”, 1919

A celebrated Impressionist of his time, Monet’s nature paintings are well known in the history of art. He promoted direct contact to nature and used it to develop new trends in painting. 

4. Georgia O’Keeffe: “Waterfall, No 1, ‘Iao Valley Maui”, 1939

Famous for her abstracted paintings of the American desert, not many people knew that O’Keeffe spent several months in Maui, one of the lush islands of Hawaii. This painting serves as a tribute to the land, untouched by human development or pollution. Seeing the purity of the landscape is a religious experience for anyone who visits Hawaii. 

5. Winslow Homer: “Gloucester Harbor”, 1873

A self-taught American artist, Homer was fascinated with nature and used the traditional oil medium to paint his landscape and marine subjects during his working vacations. His painting of Gloucester Harbor showcases the beauty of color, the shifting light, and the serene atmosphere of the vacation at sea. 

We hope these paintings inspired you for the watercolor painting activity this week! 

Post Written By: Monique Santoso