Congratulations to our final weekly winner in the 2022 Ecolympics (January 31 – March 26), Biology Graduate Fellow Sophia Anner, who goes green by:
- Skipping the expense, unhealthy options, and piles of trash by bringing her lunch in repurposed jars;
- Avoiding traffic, parking hassles, high gas prices, and pollution by biking to campus;
- Collecting dryer lint to make her own campfire kindling (just stuff it in a toilet paper center roll!);
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Composting her food scraps and paper products to make rich organic fertilizer instead of climate-changing methane in a landfill;
- Making her own kombucha to avoid the costs, packaging, and transportation emissions of store-bought; and
- Using washable, reusable zero waste options such as mesh produce bags at the grocery store, coffee socks instead of paper filters, and reusable beeswax wraps for storing food.
And now…drum roll, please…we are thrilled to announce this year’s Ecolympics Grand Prize Winner! Riding off into the sunset on our Grand Prize mountain bike is the amazing Adrian Dodd! Adrian is a Geography major who really increased their chances of winning by taking an amazing number and variety of green actions throughout the 8 week competition. Adrian’s sustainable actions included:
- Turning off lights when leaving or passing by an empty room (or just when the daylighting does the trick);
- Turning down the heat before bed so as to avoid burning fossil fuels unnecessarily;
- Walking to class without ever having to worry about parking, driving, and fueling a polluting car or e-scooter;
- Avoiding the landfill all together by recycling, reusing, and composting;
- Volunteering in the worm room at the UofL Community Composting project (every Sunday noon-2pm, just past Taco Bell on E. Bloom St.);
- Avoiding disposable cups by carrying a reusable/refillable cup;
- Carpooling with friends and new friends through Cardinal Directions; and
- Picking up litter while out rollerskating.
We are so grateful to everyone who participated in Ecolympics 2022! We hope you discovered something new about yourself, your friends/neighbors, and our ability to take direct action to address climate change and the unsustainability and injustice of day-to-day “normal life!” Keep up these new habits and stay in touch with your new friends!
