A few weeks ago, Loyola students and faculty had the wonderful opportunity to view the documentary The Dirty Truth About Coal and have a discussion with the director, Alexia Prichard. Check out her blog post about the event!
Project Clean Stream successfully gathered 42 people on a Saturday morning to clean up and care for the environment around us. Focusing on the Loyola area and immediat
e surrounding community, 24 bags of trash were collected and properly disposed of. That’s 24 full bags of things that were dispersed across our environment. Additionally, everyone used their gardening skills to clear ivy off of native trees so that they have a chance to survive and flourish. Participants included members of biology, ecology and chemistry classes, as well as environmental activists and members of the community.
The project runs throughout Maryland annually, and is organized by Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay. It’s a wonderful opportunity to spend a few hours giving back to the community and get connected with others who are doing the same.
If you’re interested in participating at Loyola’s next Project Clean Stream event in either the fall or the spring, join the Facebook group, where updates will be posted and there will be opportunities to sign up.
Instead of the same old boring chicken, challenge yourself today and try to build a balanced meal around a vegetable. A favorite meal of mine is eggplant sandwiches with feta, basil, and homemade garlic mayo. Sometimes I substitute my favorite goat cheese for the feta and I always toast the bread. It’s not even 9 am and I’ve made myself hungry.
I don’t know about you, but my allergies have been HORRIBLE this year. Allergy medicines usually cure me of symptoms but leave me extra loopy (think Luna from Harry Potter.) I read an article this morning about natural allergy remedies and I can’t wait to give them a shot. You can read it here. I’ve also heard that eating local honey helps, although this seems to be controversial.
This past weekend, I sat down with my parents to watch The Age of Stupid, a “docudrama” (as my mom termed it) starring Pete Postlethwaite and directed by Franny Armstrong. Made in Britain in 2009, the film shows an apocalyptic world, with Postlethwaite looking back at our current decade to see where we went wrong. Mixing the predicted future with real footage and stories from the present creates a truly frightening depiction of what we are doing to the world. It explores issues such as energy, climate change, and consumerism, and how this has already affected the human species as well as the earth. From a British family who looks carefully at their carbon footprint and fights for wind farms around England to a Nigerian village that struggles with poverty as their country, paradoxically, becomes wealthy off of oil, the film explores different results of our actions. Even with the drama, the film sends an important message, asking that we contemplate our lifestyles and consider the differences we can make. Although often depressing to watch (the film’s premise surrounds our downfall), I found there was hope and motivation behind every story told.The film is available on Instant Netflix, and I think it is definitely worth putting on your queue.
This post was submitted by Megan Carlucci, student sustainability intern.
The York Road Partnership has been working extremely hard trying to get fresh local food to Govanstowne. Their work has paid off and I am excited to share with you information on the inaugural season of the Govanstowne Farmers’ Market. It’s kind of a big deal 
Last week we had our first garden group meetings, one on Tuesday, and one on Wednesday. There were only four of us at each meeting, but it made things that much more fun. It gave us a chance to get to know each other as we weeded, planted, and admired our growing plants. We now have an entire box devoted to watermelon, which I can’t imagine anyone complaining about. The peppers are starting to show themselves, the jalapenos get bigger and more beautiful every time I see them, and the tomato plants continue to twist and climb around their supportive stakes. Just as exciting is the hose that was installed last week, which means we don’t have to lug full watering cans back from Campion in ninety-five degree weather. Hopefully we will see more plants growing in the next few weeks, and will have a decent harvest by the end of the summer. But even if we don’t, we are having fun with this new experiment, and it is a chance for us to really earn what we are going to consume.
This post was submitted by Megan Carlucci, summer intern in the sustainability office.
Each state has environmental strengths and weaknesses. Here is a map of the United States highlighting what each state excels in and what each state has to work on.
Each year the Environmental Working Group (EWG) comes out with the “Dirty Dozen”: A list of the 12 fruits & vegetables that have the most exposure to pesticides.
Here is this year’s “Dirty Dozen”:
To reduce your risk of pesticide exposure EWG suggests avoiding these items. Personally I don’t think that my body can function without bell peppers so I will just have to grow my own or buy organic from my favorite farmers market.
For a list of items safe to eat check out the study at EWG’s website.