Ecochallenge.org and Project Drawdown

Drawdown EcoChallenge

April 4 - April 25, 2018

Chris Piping Plover Wingate

MSR Design

POINTS TOTAL

0 TODAY
0 THIS WEEK
416 TOTAL

participant impact

UP TO

60

minutes

spent learning
UP TO

2.0

locally sourced meals

consumed
UP TO

15

miles

traveled by bus
UP TO

6.0

meatless or vegan meals

consumed
UP TO

3.3

pounds of CO2

have been saved

Chris Piping Plover 's actions

Electricity Generation

Support Companies Leading in Green Energy

#8 Solar Farms

I will use my spending power to reward companies leading in purchasing green energy and incentivize others to invest more in green energy.

COMPLETED 0
DAILY ACTIONS

Food

Reduce Animal Products

#4 Plant-Rich Diet

I will enjoy 1 meatless or vegan meal(s) each day of the challenge.

COMPLETED 6
DAILY ACTIONS

Electricity Generation

Learn More About Geothermal Energy

#18 Geothermal

I will spend at least 60 minutes learning more about the energy generation potential of geothermal energy and consider investing in this technology.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Food

Support Local Food Systems

#4 Plant-Rich Diet

I will source 1 meal(s) from local producers each day. This could include signing up for a local CSA, buying from a farmer's market, visiting a food co-op, foraging with a local group, or growing my own ingredients.

COMPLETED 2
DAILY ACTIONS

Electricity Generation

Advocate for Solar Installation

#10 Rooftop Solar

I will create a plan to and advocate for solar installation at my business, apartment building, or campus.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Transport

Use Public Transit

#37 Mass Transit

I will use public transit 5 mile(s) per day and avoid sending up to 1.11 lbs of CO2 into Earth's atmosphere.

COMPLETED 3
DAILY ACTIONS

Transport

Use Muscle Power

#49 Cars

I will cut my car trip mileage by only taking necessary trips, and I will only use muscle-powered transportation for all other trips.

COMPLETED 13
DAILY ACTIONS

Transport

Conduct Virtual Meetings

#63 Telepresence

I will not travel for meetings and will instead conduct them virtually.

COMPLETED 7
DAILY ACTIONS

Food

Smaller Portions

#3 Reduced Food Waste

I will use smaller plates and/or serve smaller portions when dishing out food.

COMPLETED 7
DAILY ACTIONS

Food

Learn More about Regenerative Agriculture

#11 Regenerative Agriculture

I will spend at least 45 minutes learning about the need for more regenerative agriculture.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Participant Feed

Reflection, encouragement, and relationship building are all important aspects of getting a new habit to stick.
Share thoughts, encourage others, and reinforce positive new habits on the Feed.

To get started, share “your why.” Why did you join the challenge and choose the actions you did?

REFLECTION QUESTION
Transport

How has your access to various kinds of transporation throughout your life influenced your current attitudes about transportation and your transportation behavior?
Chris Piping Plover Wingate 4/24/2018 6:22 PM
Traveling and living in Europe heavily impacted by attitudes about transportation. Public transportation went from an American stigma to an accepted and celebrated way of European travel. I think about the effort in Bogota to shift the cultural association of public transportation, specifically buses, towards desire by thinking about the experience of using it. Raising waiting platforms to bus floor height made them feel more like trains then buses. Investing in the design of beautiful stations built off of the small elevation change to entice people into replacing a stigma with a smile.

Read More
REFLECTION QUESTION
Transport

How do your transportation choices affect your engagement in your community? Does your experience differ while walking, riding transit, biking or driving?
Chris Piping Plover Wingate 4/24/2018 6:18 PM
Biking through a community fills every place you pass through from just a conceptual line between start and destination into an experiential reality. What is a series of directions from Siri in a car instead becomes memory, experience, and a realized understanding of the physical and cultural three dimensional reality radiating from the line of your pathway. The human brain process geographic connections in a few stepped phases. First comes landmarks when you can remember points on a map. Next comes the memorization of vectors between landmarks. The most realized understanding is formed when places, connections, and the mass between becomes connected and one can freely navigate in all directions on a plane. Bike enough, and that plane becomes three dimensional and fully sensorial.

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REFLECTION QUESTION
Electricity Generation

Geothermal energy is reliable, abundant, and efficient. Project Drawdown states that public investment will play a crucial role in its expansion. What kind of investment seems most feasible for you?
Chris Piping Plover Wingate 4/24/2018 6:14 PM
The decision to use geothermal often comes down to a building owner who is balancing their values with the bottom line. Public investment in subsidizing / incentivising the purchase and installation of geothermal energy systems on private projects will have a large impact. All too often it is considered too expensive because it is being compared to inexpensive and inefficient systems. Reducing the first cost for building and homeowners will help tip the scales when this decision comes.

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REFLECTION QUESTION
Electricity Generation

How does advocating for this type of technology connect to your values? How might you be able to get others involved in advocating for the shift to clean energy?
Chris Piping Plover Wingate 4/24/2018 6:10 PM
Google's Project Rooftop is a huge help to get people involved in advocating for a shift in clean energy. With a simple radiance overlay over the 3D data google has, they make a compelling case for PV directly on people's homes. The radiance overlay gives context for how orientation, shading, and massing influences PV performance. The included install quote makes it accessible and understandable at the scale of their home. And the payback shows how energy generation can be a strategy to reducing overall energy use. Once these lessons are learned, people are more open to talking about carbon at large and how clean energy is incredibly important to reducing our direct impact on global warming.

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REFLECTION QUESTION
Food

What do you think contributes to people in North America eating more meat than other countries, and what does this say about North American values and ways of living? How do we start shifting a meat-focused food culture?
Chris Piping Plover Wingate 4/24/2018 6:07 PM
Availability leads people in North America to eating more meat than other countries. We can easily and cheaply purchase meat. There is no push back to the culture that has already built around the availability of meat. Until there is an understanding of the true cost of meat, people can't be expected to go against the culture of meat consumption they have been raised on. This is difficult for me personally. It wasn't until Drawdown that I seriously considered looking at my meat consumption. We shift the needle through a combination of education on one hand and delicious recipes and food offerings that are completely separated from education. I want to learn about the impact a less meat-heavy diet can have. I also want to enjoy the food of a less meat heavy diet without thinking about its impact at all. As we expose people to the delicious experience of eating a meal without meat and without a narrative overlay of why they should eat like this, we create the opportunity for someone to choose a meat-free meal based on desire alone.

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REFLECTION QUESTION
Food

Dependable fresh food, supporting local farmers and building resilient communities are just a few benefits of local food systems. Which of these advantages inspire you the most?
Chris Piping Plover Wingate 4/24/2018 6:01 PM
Dependable fresh food inspires me the most. All three are important and knowing of the existence of the other two only helps reinforce the benefit, and importance, of having access to dependable fresh food. As with most things in life, enjoyment is enhanced with further understanding. And enjoyment well tended can lead to passionately held beliefs.

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REFLECTION QUESTION
Transport

How can you ensure that your virtual meetings honor your values and your company's culture?
Chris Piping Plover Wingate 4/24/2018 5:59 PM
Values and culture often operate in the softer side of the human psyche. It is true that integrity, trust, and honesty are communicated in large parts through non-verbal communication and that virtual meetings that impede these communication techniques make it a challenge to communicate company culture. However, if someone has met you face to face and established a connection before virtual meeting begin, the human voice can still carry emotion and, in conjunction with their memories of meeting you in person, can continue to communicate company values and culture. Onboarding becomes very important.

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Chris Piping Plover Wingate 4/23/2018 6:24 AM
I attended a CSA Fair this weekend at our local Co-Op. It was amazing to see the wide variety of CSA's that operate around Minneapolis. Covering all the bases from flowers, honey, chicken, and of course vegetables, these are a fantastic way to directly support local and sustainable agriculture. And the food is also just straight up tasty.

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Chris Piping Plover Wingate 4/20/2018 6:37 AM
When planning for PV, it is helpful for our firm to discuss energy generation in accessible and understandable terms. Using a common metric for the energy use of a building and the energy generation potential of a PV array helps put the decision into context. We are installing a PV array on a Learning Center currently. PV is an important energy generation strategy, but should also be the last step in optimizing the energy use of a building. Reduce the energy use of the building first. Lower the heating and cooling loads by the design of the building and envelope. Choose an efficient HVAC system to lower the energy use of a building. And then advocate for PV. When looking for financial incentives to help fund PV, the website http://www.dsireusa.org/ is an excellent resource that lists available incentives by state.

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Chris Piping Plover Wingate 4/20/2018 6:33 AM
Geothermal is a wonderful energy efficiency strategy with an unfortunate name. "Geothermal" wells in my field of Architecture are a bit of a misnomer. These wells do not tap into geothermal energy like a power plant in Iceland would. Sadly, no magma or pockets of superheated steam are part of "geothermal" heating systems used in buildings or homes. Instead, they should be known as ground coupled heat exchangers. I know - not nearly as sexy of a name. But in essence, the proper name may make them seem more accessible to more potential projects. We all are familiar with residential air conditioners. Just imagine a ground coupled heat exchanger as hooking your air conditioner up to the ground - instead of drawing air conditioning out of very hot air, you get to draw cooling from the much lower temperature of the ground. And in the winter, you can draw heat from the mostly constant ground temperature extremely efficiently.

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