Eye Opener: Online Learning Activities

I participated in three different online learning activities, on Keith, Kristin, and Amanda's pages.

Keith's Activity
Children as young as 8 years old are being diagnosed with diabetes? TRUE
Can some of these illnesses “actually” kill these children? TRUE
The doctors had to purchase 2 scales to weight children that were over 200 lbs? FALSE - 350 pounds
Daves dad died at age 52 from a stroke? TRUE
John Marx is in shape and healthy? FALSE
Parents are not to blame for childhood obesity? FALSE

Kristin's Activity
I actually scored 10 out of 10 on the Quit Smoking Quiz. A lot of the questions were pretty startling. Before I even took the quiz, she listed several statistics about child smoking that were very eye opening. Such as every day 3,000 new teens begin to smoke, and 1,000 of them will someday die due to smoke-related illness.

Amanda's Activity
I scored a 57 on the quiz, ranking me fitness savvy.

You're standing just outside the ranks of 'fitness buff', so don't stop now. Your score indicates that you've got a good general knowledge of fitness, but are a little hazy on the details. With the recent fitness craze, you should easily be able to find the information necessary to fine-tune your fitness knowledge. With the proper knowledge, you will not only be able to optimize your fitness routine, but you'll also be prepared to avoid injury.

Eye Opener: Photo Essay

For My photo essay I decided to a theme of things I found that are environmentally friendly around my work, St. Luke's Hospital

St. Luke's has been a tobacco free campus since September 1, 2007. It has been a very positive change, but some employees have been mad and are forced to walk 200 feet away from the building if they wish to smoke.

This is a donation box in the cafeteria. You can donate old glasses or hearing aides here to others who can not afford them.

This sign is displayed next to the water/ice machine and this stack of plastic glasses. It says please help St. Luke's in reducing waste by using these re-useable water glasses and please return them later.

This little bin sits atop the garbage cans in the cafeteria. The cafeteria sells Yoplait yogurt, and they ask you to leave the lids in this bucket. Once it is full they send it in to Yoplait, because for every lid they receive Yoplait donates money to breast cancer foundation.

 This is a food recycling bin used in the kitchen. All of the food waste each night goes into the bin. A local farmer picks up the bins twice a week and uses it as feed for his pigs.

This is a confidential paper shred-it bin. The small print reads "each time this bin is filled, half a tree is saved in the forest."

 This is located near the cash register in the cafeteria. These re-useable water bottles are for sale to employees, and the sign encourages employees to re-use, recycle, and use less.

This is a flyer for the Pint for a Pound program St. Luke's is running through January 16th. For each pint of blood that is donated at St. Luke's, they will donate 1 pound of food to local food shelves. So get out there and donate before it's too late!



In taking these pictures throughout the hospital I noticed a common theme. St. Luke's is promoting the concept of re-using items a lot, including donating and re-using. There was also a sign in the cafeteria that said they go through over a thousand paper cups for the fountain soda machine a month, so they sell sturdy plastic soda cups that the staff can keep in their locker and reuse.

Eye Opener: Junk on the Brain

For this eye opener I used the search engine dictionary.com to look up the following terms. Antiques refers to something of the past, not modern.  Also, antiquing refers to the process of shopping or collection antiques. Junk means any old or discarded material, anything regarded as worthless. Such as old metal, paper, or rags. A flea market is an outdoor market consisting of individual stalls selling old or used articles and antiques.  A thrift shop is a shop that sells used articles, especially clothing, as to benefit a charitable organization. Upcycling refers to processing used materials into new products, or the re-use of a defective product for alternative purposes, to prevent waste of potentially useful materials and reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials. A resale shop is very similar to a thrift shop. It is a retail establishment operated by a charitable organization for the purpose of fundraising.

The defined terms above have a lot to do with environmental health. They are all ways that different things are recycled or re-used in order to prevent uneeded waste and that is what environmental health is all about. There is a flea market that my family has gone to many times in the past in Hinckley, MN right down the road from the Grand Casino. At this flea market there are lots of antiques, and also a lot of what some people would call junk. Throughout the Duluth area they are several Goodwill stores, these are charitable thrift/resale shops. Their website is Goodwill.org. There is one located at 700 Garfield Ave and 4883 Miller Trunk Highway in Hermantown. In the past I have donated things to Goodwill, such as furniture, clothes, appliances, even a grill. It is  just a nice way to get rid of things you don't need and feel good about it.

Next I visited Junk Market Style and found several interesting projects. I thought the Leafy Sail Sculpture is really cool and creative. It is a really neat looking scuplture that spins freely made entirely out of reused metal, brass, copper, and steal. The next thing that I found that was really interesting was All Hallows Eve Junky Movie. This is a list classic scary movies that are filled with junk, simple enough. I thought it was great because looking over the list brought back a lot of childhood memories of me being scared out of my mind. Lastly I found Another Crazy Lamp, this is a very creative piece of artwork. He took an old paint bucket and made it into a pretty neat looking lamp, with a paint scraper as the pull chain. This was a very clever way of turning some old junk into something very useful.

Eye Opener: Environmental Working Group

For this week's eye opener exercise we were instructed to visit the Environmental Working Group web site. This site contains a database where anyone can look up any cosmetic item you use and find out the real safety of that product. I chose to look up the information on Aveeno clear complexion daily moisturizer that I use.  I was kind of nervous of the results before I even saw them, but they weren't as bad as I had thought.  This moisturizer is labeled as a moderate hazard, scoring a 6 on a 1-10 scale.  The results showed that this product has been linked to violation, restrictions, and warnings, allergies/immunotoxicity, and several ingrediants showed concerns.  It also had an option on the sidebar to buy a different product online, saying that 77% of acne treatments have lower concerns.  That figure was kind of startling. I looked through the list of dangerous ingrediants and will be aware of their danger in the future.

Once again this activity was very eye-opening. I don't feel like I am in danger from the results on the moisturizer though, but it does make me wonder if I use any other products that could score a higher hazard. It is crazy to me that companies can sell products that are a hazard to the customers, even a moderate hazard!

Eye Opener: CSPI

I chose to take a tour of the food I eat for this weeks eye opener.  This was a very informational exercise and at times very disturbing.  It presented facts of the processes foods go through, from the slaughterhouse, to the fields, to factories, all the way to restaurants and grocery stores.

The slaughterhouse section was one of the more disturbing sections. It talked about all the bacteria around from animal remains and diseases they can cause.  A troubling stat was last year 9 billion chickens and turkeys were killed for dinner-table-consumption, thats 30 birds for every American!  Another one is that the average american consumes 53 more pounds of poultry PER YEAR than he/she did in the early 1950s.  Just reading about the ways farm animals are treated sounds inhumane. 

This activity has definitely opened my eyes to the brutal world of meat and how it is prepared, even some troubling facts about pesticides and fertilizer. I am for sure going to think twice about buying or ordering certain foods form now on, just in the back of my head wondering where it really came from or went through. I now have a new large respect for vegetarians.

Eye Opener - Ecological Footprint

I was pretty unaware what an ecological footprint was befor this assignment.  Now I know it is a measure of human deman on Earth's ecosystems.  Most of what I have learned about ecological footprints, I have gathered from Wikipedia.

Within the last decade, quizzes have been developed to show individual's own ecological footprint. I took some of these quizzes found at Ecological Footprint Calculator.  The particular quiz I took calculated the number of planets it takes to support my lifestyle.  Most of the questions consisted of what kind of food I eat and where it comes from. There were also questions about my home and what kinds of transportation I use. The results were kind of surprising. It said that if everyone lived like me we would need 4.3 planets to provide enough resources. I am very shocked by the high number, I thought I was living a little more eco-friendly.

There are a number of things I can try to do to bring down the results from the quiz.  First of all, I could try to buy mostly locally grown non-processed food.  Also, I could try to drive my car less, and when I do drive I try to carpool.  Or instead of driving all together I can start to use some public transportation.

Introductory Post

Welcome to Getting Green with Jake!

My name is Jake Eastwold, and I am currently a senior at the University of Minnesota Duluth. I am majoring in Healthcare Management with a minor in Health Education. I am originally from Andover, MN which is just north of Minneapolis.  This blog is going to be about environmental change. I will discuss how to "go green" and make a smaller impact on the Earth for future generations.

There are 6 possible types of posts on my blog. They include:



Advocacy Project

Eye Openers

Reflections

Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change

Read 'n' Seed

Share and Voice

If you notice at the bottom of this post, the categories will be listed as labels. This post is has been labeled with all six kinds of posts.  You will also see the number of each kind of post in my Labels Gadget at the top of the page.  All post titles from now on will begin with one of the categories above.



The members of my web group are:

Amanda@amandaswaterbottlewatch

Kristin@kristinsgreenworld
Keith@keithsgreenbike

You can subscribe to my blog by clicking the subscribe gadget in the gadget column. You can also follow my blog by clicking "Follow this Blog" in the gadget column. I am subscribed to all the blogs in my blog list gadget. You can see my complete profile and all the blogs I am following by clicking on "See Complete Profile."


So that's it, I hope you enjoy my blog.  I hope it makes your day just a little better each time and helps you to make some environmentally friendly changes you've been thinking about.

"Blogged for the Welcome Linky Party hosted by http://ecochicwithamy.blogspot.com/?."