Abby Fauss Have you ever been a member of a community that has done work to give back? Maybe it was volunteering at an event or donating to a food drive? What about participating in a trail cleanup or trash pickup? I know I have participated in some of these events and that sometimes I might feel like I’m not doing anything to really help out a cause. So, why does it matter if people volunteer or donate, or participate in cleanup sites? You might not feel like your work is doing much, but in fact it is doing small things that impact the greater good.
I am involved in a discourse community at the University of Arkansas called Leadership Walton. A discourse community is defined as “a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about those goals.” Leadership Walton is a community within the Walton College School of Business, and its main goals are to give individuals the keys to success beyond college in the “real” business world. As a member, I participate in various lectures, dinner events, networking, and other events that allow me to gain leadership knowledge, and other knowledge about different business techniques. When I first joined this community, I didn’t know what kinds of impacts it would have on me, but after one year, I can truly say it has exposed me to new and different experiences that I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be a part of, had I not been in this group. Not only does this community interact with the University community, but we also do different activities within the general Fayetteville community as well. One feature of the Fayetteville community that is very popular and well known is the amount of nature that is not only in the city, but the entire state of Arkansas as well. When I mentioned before about how volunteering for projects doesn’t seem like it’s helping a cause, have you ever thought about how those activities impact nature? After wondering this myself, I began to examine the Leadership Walton community and how they impact nature, and how I impact nature by doing small day-to-day things. You may have never thought about these things before, but hopefully after reading this you will have a new idea and thought about one of your communities. With regards to this topic, I will be focusing on how Leadership Walton as a group impacts nature in a positive way. Now that we’ve discussed all of that, what literary works exist about the positive impact of group work in nature. You’re probably thinking- how much can I actually be impacting nature and the environment from doing one simple trash pickup? Research has shown that small events like these, can have a bigger impact than we think. In an article from the “Plastic Pollution Coalition,”the author uses 10 different words to show how an easy task of picking up 10 pieces of trash a day, can affect our world and the environment more than we know. Two words that they used in this article that really stood out to me where “impact” and “scale.” With impact, they emphasized that “less litter brings benefit to animals and humans. Often litter on a trail ends up in a river and we all know where our rivers lead” (Lawrence). This stood out to me because it shows how one piece of trash can touch all sorts of things between animals and humans and end up in our rivers which leads to watersheds, and ultimately ends up in our drinking water. The second word that stood out to me was “scale.” I thought that the author made a good point here that really sticks with a reader. If you think about it, only picking up 10 pieces of trash by yourself sounds like you aren’t really doing much. But what if you’re with a group of 50 people, and they all pick up 10 pieces of trash? That quickly adds up to 500 pieces of trash in a short amount of time. By having this small task, many people can do something little that ends up having a larger impact. This is just one published piece of work that shows how groups can have a positive impact on nature and the environment. We can see in these examples how generic groups of people can impact nature, but how specifically does Leadership Walton impact nature and the environment positively? With a lack of public research about Leadership Walton as a whole, we don’t yet know how they have positive impacts. In order to answer this question and find out how Leadership Walton does impact nature, I first needed to do some research of my own. My first step in researching this was using my knowledge from being in the group to answer this question. I know what this group is and how it exists, but why does it matter if a bunch of kids in a business leadership group impact nature? I asked myself this question too, because I had never thought to link the two together, but it actually is pretty amazing and cool that this group does have their own impact on nature. The main thing I thought of here was community service projects. Throughout the year, there are many events and opportunities put into place that let us achieve this goal. Each semester there always is a trail cleanup in the local Fayetteville area. Although I have not participated in this event yet, it did come to mind that this is one occurrence of how this group impacts nature. My next step in researching this question was interviewing another group member, and who better to interview than the president of this organization? Mia has been in Leadership Walton for three years while studying at the University of Arkansas. In my interview with her, she talks about how this group has impacted her professionally and touches on how we impact nature in our group. When talking with Mia, she shared with me a few other areas that she believes our group impacts nature that I hadn’t thought of. In addition to the trail cleanup that we do twice a semester, this group also participated in a Dickson Street cleanup that removed countless numbers of cigarette trash from the main street that not only runs through town, but also through our campus. I thought this was a really different type of cleanup that I had never heard of before. Cigarette smoke already causes pollution in our environment, and then you add on top of it the trash that people usually just throw on the ground. By Leadership Walton participating in this project, they are helping to reduce one pollutant from an activity that hurts our environment in more ways than one. Finishing up my interview with Mia, she had one comment that really stuck out to me “by giving back to the community and maintaining our beautiful nature, especially in the state of Arkansas where hiking and the environment are strong aspects of the state’s reputation, groups, members of LW, makes the community feel better, do better, and live better” (Norton 4/12/19). After reading that quote, I was able to fully understand that this group doesn’t only just impact nature for ourselves, but that the work we are doing is impacting others beyond our community as well. Looking back at my own experiences and an interview with a member of the group, I came to my conclusion and answer to my research question: Leadership Walton not only impacts nature and the environment as a group, but we also help other groups and other people by the different cleanup projects we do, and other events throughout the semester. Pretty cool when you think about a group like this impacting nature, right? Hopefully you can see that participating in events like this matter for many reasons. Earlier when we looked at the article about pollution, the author mentioned rivers and the water that we drink. Did you know that all rivers lead into a watershed, which is a larger and more geographic area that contains water, and ultimately leads to the ocean and the water that we drink? By having different groups participate in community service projects that involve cleaning up small river site, this is having such a bigger impact on our drinking water and the water of our planet, in more ways than we can even begin to see in that moment. Another reason why all of this matters mainly is just that it keeps our planet a healthier and safer place for everyone living on it. According to DoSomething.org,pollution is one of the biggest global killers in the world and affects over 100 million people. By participating in local site cleanups, river cleanups, or other things of this nature, not only are you bettering your environment, but you are also helping to save the lives of others. All in all, it is important to take initiative about pollution and nature in our area, and it’s even more important for groups to do projects to help solve this problem. One person can only do so much, but think about the effects that a large group of people have when they come together to work on something like this. I hope that you can now see that something as small as picking up trash or participating in a group event can have an impact on the area you live in. So, next time you go on a walk in the park, hike on a trail, swim in a river, or do anything else remotely related to nature, think about what you can do to help make that area a better place. Never underestimate the power that individuals in a group have to change an area, and hey, maybe you can now be the one to advocate for your group to participate in a cleanup project near you.
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Madelin Davidson As millennial and Generation Z students, we’ve seen technology come to play a major role in education. Yet, I work every day with paper books. I am exposed every day to these books made from trees that are rapidly being stolen from their native ground and eviscerated to serve humanity. So, what is being done on our campus to stop this? At the University of Arkansas Bookstore, each book we buy, sell, and rent goes somewhere, comes from somewhere, and was manufactured somewhere. Because of the way books flow, we are connected to place much like a watershed, housing a flow of goods that benefit people. Are functions are similar to those in a natural environment and are initiative benefit the environment we mirror.
Books are applications, accounts, and presentations which serve as a means of knowledge production, and thus we must be aware of their availability and their impact on auxiliary aspects of life. It is unfeasible to create a book for each and every aspect of knowledge. There are far too many subjects, learning styles, and languages to continuously print new books, however, it is more disadvantageous to not provide appropriate materials to all learners. As the university-affiliated provisioner of educational materials, it is important that the University of Arkansas Bookstore facilitates a flow of material for every ability and observation. Perhaps it is not possible to manufacture brand new, paper, books infinitely, but we can develop new means of providing knowledge. Thus far we have introduced Inclusive Access as an alternative form of knowledge production. Inclusive Access as an initiative at the University of Arkansas was introduced in this semester. This initiative allows students to get what we need at a discounted price without the hassle of going to the bookstore or contacting publishers. This ensures that students are able to access materials without having to worry about if they are getting the best price, whether or not what they need is in stock, or waiting for their books to come in. The University of Arkansas bookstore is able to do this through an agreement with the university and our widely used publishers, allowing publishers to provide materials to departments via the internet. Our professors are given the option to explore Inclusive Access so that if the publishers of their preferred texts are willing to provide those texts through Inclusive Access, they can run their classes using those online materials. As students, our course materials appear on blackboard and our discounted charges appear on our UAConnect accounts per our tuition. Inclusive Access ensures that UofA students have the correct materials on time, rather than waiting for books and watching grades slip before classes have really even begun. Additionally, this makes it easier for students to cover book costs through scholarship funds. Verba VitalSource is the company, which introduced Inclusive Access. This conduit service is what allowed our university bookstore to provide Inclusive Access options. Redshelf would be a similar platform to VitalSource. As of 2017, over 275 institutions are benefiting from the Inclusive Access program. That is 23% of schools with a projected 32% of schools considering implementing the program in their educational programs (‘Inclusive Access’ Takes Off). The University of Arkansas Bookstore was one of the 32% and has since joined, which makes us one of a possible 570 institutions taking advantage of this opportunity to provide students with cheaper, more environmentally friendly, course materials. Each book we sell is made of the binding, pages, front and back covers, and book jacket, as well as the ink- and any extra stickering/tagging. These books are transported in boxes- using corrugated cardboard- through shipping fleets from factories- using gas and oil, that also expend sumptuous amounts of energy. Depending on the type of paper, that can be between ten and twenty trees per ton of paper. This means that we would have to clear an acre of forests three times a year to provide all new textbooks for each student every semester. Inclusive access prevents thousands of paper copies of textbooks from being produced and shipped, taking a great toll off the environment. Just in the first term of Inclusive Access, we have eliminated the footprint of over 4,000 paper books. The textbook community is one that is burdened with providing students with educational materials. This is more than just a community, it is a business. We grow through our service to students, however, we cannot provide that service if we use up all our resources and can no longer acquire the goods students and faculty members need to facilitate education. It is for this reason that we must learn to provide these materials by means of different resources. In reality, it is thinking which considers the idea that we must continue to boom as a business that has to lead to the introduction of initiatives that happen to benefit the environment. The conversation that I have introduced through this discourse is that we can benefit the environment in our work. It is our job not only to grow as an industry but to serve the world that serves us. Through the Inclusive Access Initiative and the market for used books, we are able to do just that. The idea I am sharing is one of the mutual benefits. The textbook industry can profit from the same initiatives that interest the environment and continuing similar actions will continue as a vital and relevant part of education. Sara Wolf Club sports in college has become an increased student activity that you can get involved in on campus. In college, I have found that it is important to join a community to help you be in a social environment and interact outside of your comfort zone. I knew that I wanted to join a community during my first semester at the University of Arkansas, so I joined a club sport. I joined the ultimate frisbee team looking to be more active in my community but I soon realized that it was much more than being involved in a club. As I continued to learn about our environment in my class and from joining ultimate frisbee I became very interested in how the team's actions affected the environment the team plays in. I was curious about these effects because I have been learning about how specific things are connected through nature. I am writing this to inform other University of Arkansas students who want to be involved in a club sport and help improve their environment on campus.
When this question began to develop I started to research by reading articles and interviewing team members on the ultimate frisbee team. I was able to collect more information that would help me answer the question I was curious about. In one of the articles, I found called “Putting the earth in Play: Environmental Awareness and Sports” by Charles Schmidt it talks about how there are multiple organizations that promote environmental awareness for club sports I think it would be beneficial if the university could implement these types of environmental awareness organizations at our campus through UREC. These organizations work with students like you that are interested in club sports to come up with simple ways they can change their actions to promote sustainability. One technique these organizations have been teaching students to spread environmental awareness. What I have found through my research is that there is a sports sustainability movement that has been growing over the years and promoting the awareness of how club sports have an ecological footprint. As students on this campus, it is important that you know what actions we can make to decrease our ecological footprint so we can become more sustainable. A way that sports are using up resources is by developing fields, for example, people who play golf as a sport “get told they can’t build a new course because bad practices have tarred their image. So, sports create opportunities to produce leaders for better environmental practice.”(Putting the earth in Play: Environmental Awareness and Sports). When I learned about the impact of field development for specific sports such as soccer, football, golf, and many others, I changed my question to what ways are sports working towards preserving resources and creating sustainable fields? Sustainability Efforts in Club Sports: The intramural fields at our university are made of turf, therefore, the fields do not need water and other resources to maintain it. This could be a way how the university is moving towards sustainability because of the decrease in resources needed to keep the fields running. However, these fields are less similar to a natural habitat. When the fields stray further away from the natural habitat it decreases the variety of other species that can live there which ends up harming the environment. As students and people involved in UREC, it is important that we consider how these changes will ultimately change how the environment functions. When researching how an organization focused on these issues could fix these problems sports have on nature I found out that, “organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the U.S. Green Building Council” (The Environmental Awakening in Sport) have been talking about the environmental impacts of sports but not taking actions to move forward to their goals. Steps the University of Arkansas and UREC could be taking to make their club sports more sustainable would be to create a committee that regulates the actions that could have a potential of harming the environment and then come up with more sustainable solutions. I think because sports are becoming more and more popular over the years it is important that we figure out exactly how much harm our sports are having on the surrounding nature on campus. In ultimate frisbee I have observed ways that our team keeps the fields sustainable, for example, we make sure at tournaments we don’t leave anything behind so we don’t leave litter on the fields. Another way the team is cautious about the environment is when we travel to tournaments out of state or even going to practices we carpool, this decreases the amount of carbon dioxide pollution. This strategy brings the teammates closer together physically and forms friendships. By carpooling our team is able to help the environment and get to know our teammates better. Our community works on doing small things to improve our ecological footprint and make sure we are lowering our impacts on the environment to become more sustainable. The ultimate frisbee team is also concerned about conservation and not using up resources that pollute the earth. For you and me, it is more relevant to talk about these issues because Arkansas is the natural state and we should learn how we can keep its natural beauty. I think it would be a helpful decision to bring together a group of people who have creative thinking skills to come up with ideas to help the team and other club sports at the University move toward sustainability. Cause and Effects of Club Sports: I was unaware of all the effects sports have on the environment. In my research, I found that there are multiple organizations that do research on each possible effect a sport could potentially have on the environment. For example, in one of my sources, they listed out all the possible ways sports can impact the environment this included, “spectator travel, land use change, facility construction, pitch irrigation, chemical treatment, catering and so on, sport’s environmental impact is considerable.” (Sport's Responsibility to Our Planet). In this article, they addressed the issues club sports have and when I was thinking about these issues I reflected on what my community does to decrease our impacts. Some of the movements we have made to work toward keeping our community clean are by carpooling so there is less carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. This is an important step to take because the depletion of our Ozone layer (which is a part of the atmosphere that protects us from the sun's radiation) has been breaking down due to the increased amount of emissions. Another way the club sports at the University of Arkansas is fixing the impacts the article mentioned has an impact on the environment is we are preserving our fields in an effort to decrease the amount of litter and land use change. Not all of the causes can be solved, however, it is possible to focus on all the small things we can change to make a big difference. Even though these are small changes to people's actions it still will have less of an impact than someone unaware of the problems sports can have on the environment. It is impossible to still have a sport and not have construction for some of the specific fields sports need to play on. Some of the issues sports have on the environment are inevitable but it is our job as students researching these topics to make sure we do the best we can to keep our community clean. To effectively make these changes work is to work in groups just like how our ultimate frisbee team has to work together in our games. I think it is upsetting that our entertainment and enjoyment of being involved in club sports comes at such a high cost. It is unfortunate that something multiple students enjoy ruins the natural aspects of our earth. However, now that technology and humans have advanced and gained more knowledge more people are figuring out the things that cause the most harm to the environment. Environmentalists and creative thinkers are coming up with ideas that could potentially solve a lot of these problems that sports are creating in the environment. My Concluding Thoughts and Reflection : From researching this topic I learned a lot about my community and how it is a team effort to actually make a difference in our environment. I believe as long as we keep taking small steps and doing all we can we will be able to make a difference. Another step our community would be able to take would be to start an organization on campus for people in club sports at the University of Arkansas who are interested in coming up with ways to better our fields and want to decrease the ecological footprint of our University. This will help bring people together to form a community with people who share the same values and have a place where people can contribute to the movement of making sports more sustainable. Maricar Van Hecke Where do your clothes come from? Have you ever thought about how the clothing that you put on daily come from? If I’m being honest, I had never once had that thought go through my head. Since clothing is something that is something that will always be a need for the human kind, many people don’t think about how clothing produced. When the question above is asked, many peoples thoughts go straight to the thought of the different stores that they go through the many hangers that hang the newest trend. The mastermind behind these trendy clothing is the community that people are the people who are providing the world with something that will always be a need. These masterminds could be someone like Vera Wang, who has her name projected throughout the fashion industry because of what she has created, or it could be someone such as a freshman in college aspiring to be someone like Vera Wang someday. These two completely different people may have the same question. How can we make fashion something that is helping the earth, not hurting it?
Would you believe me when I say that agriculture is a key camptonite to everything that comes with apparel? People often commonly associate agriculture with food production and farming but they don’t know that there has been a huge increase of agriculture used in comparison of apparel.1 Many apparel products are produced with things that our agriculture community provides us such as textile materials. Clothing would not be made possible without the help of agriculture. As a student who has a love for fashion and who is personally studying fashion merchandising it has been an eye-opening rollercoaster. The kind of people who I surround myself that have very similar passions and aspires. I truly believe that we have the same question. Many people already know how clothing is manufactured and marketed for the world. But I propose a question on how can we figure out a way to produce and merchandise clothing without hurting the world? This question isn’t just about how it could be greener but is a question on how the workers who are giving us clothing that we wear could be safer when they go to work every morning. To some people, clothing is their world. In other instances, the world is something that is dearer to them. As I thought more about this question, I went to a close friend of mine and asked her about her opinion on the production of clothing and how she thought about how us, as young minds who someday aspire to become producers of clothing, could produce clothing in a greener way or in a safer way. In our Textile Sciences class, we were informed of different occasions that workers who are to produce clothing for the everyday person are most likely in a working environment that isn’t safe to even step foot into. Kashyap says that “the $2.4 trillion apparel industry, which predominantly employs women as garment workers, witnesses a host of labor abuses.² An example of labor abuses that turned out to be fatal is when the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh collapsed. On April 2013, news broke about how a building that had more than 1,000 people that came to work thinking that they were just working a normal shift. This building that stood as a garment factory had visible work then their pay would be docked. So, guess what many seamstresses did; they went and worked like any other day. At the end of that warm spring day, the building was collapsed on many of the workers who were trying to provide for their families as much as they could. This happened to kill 1,1129 people.³ Many of us students were old enough to remember this tragic moment and many of us were left asking how could that been avoided. Instead of making the people who were employed work that day, those deaths wouldn’t have been counted. If the owner of the company that was using that factory had come to maybe check on the building once in a while, I think that he or she would’ve seen that something had to have been done. The factory should’ve been better regulated and that instead of wanting to push out product to get money, they should’ve put more money into keeping their workers safe. This isn’t the only time things have gone wrong in the apparel world as one could imagine. There If the people who weren’t working in the actual factories, who were working higher up than them, saw and did something about the working conditions, there would be a smaller amount of people who would have to be announced dead. This is a different way to look at how we as younger people could produce and merchandise clothing without hurting the world, because there are people who have lost their moms and their dads due to these factory conditions. What was the last thing that you recycled? Maybe it was a soda can that you sipped on a hot summer day by the pool or a shoe box that your new favorite pair of shoes came in. As of 2013, 34.3% of Americans have recycled.4 This may include throwing the plastic water bottle in the recycling bin that is sat outside in your garage and even giving clothing to second hand companies that recycle the pieces that aren’t worn anymore by one person to a person that would wear them at a discounted price. If I’m being honest, I don’t recycle enough of my clothing. Growing up, I was raised to believe that giving my clothing to Goodwill or Samaritan House was me doing something for charity. I never once thought that giving my clothing that I may have grown out of or don’t wear anymore as recycling. I’m sure many people have grown up with the same thoughts. Larger companies such as Nike and Madewell have tried to get their customers to recycle their old products so that the company could give back to the company but every time I was in a store, the boxes were nearly empty. Companies that are big such them should be putting in more effort to recycle. Just like other products that should be recycled like cardboard or plastic, clothing takes a lot of space in landfills. Nearly 12 million tons of clothing end up in landfills. Somethings aren’t able to be recycled but people should be putting in an effort to do what they can to recycle. There are many opportunities to recycle around us. There are local curbside-recycling bins, stores such as Goodwill and Plato’s Closet, and small organizations such as small clubs on campus that are willing to take clothing off of your hands if you are not in need of them anymore. Clothing can be something that doesn’t have to be worn by one person and it also makes the landfills not as full. As you read, the apparel community may be something that will most likely be around for quite some time but also is a community that needs to put some energy and thought into how it could be less harmful to the world. There is way more issues that are caused by the industry but the ones discussed are some of the biggest problems. I am not sure if those solutions would be able to completely save the world, but it could be a start. The start must start with people who are producing for the everyday folk but if everyone was informed maybe there we would see a change in the world. I think that people would like to see the world less dirty and less polluted. When you scan the racks in your favorite store in your local mall, remember what could be done with the clothing that is taking space in the back of your closet. Go plant a tree to help the amount of gases in the air or go donate clothing that you think that someone else may enjoy more than you do. The fashion industry is way more than just clothing. |