The last few days I’ve been thinking about how I could encourage others to engage with me during my litter picking challenge around my neighbourhood. On Wednesday evening, I went out to pick litter in the neighbourhood and made a strategic decision to visit a nearby park where I knew there might be more passers-by. Within a few minutes, my first interaction with a passer-by happened and they thanked me for cleaning up the area. I walked a little further and met three teenagers sitting on park bench. There was litter all over the place so I asked if they wouldn’t mind if I picked it up. As I was chatting to them, they made a very interesting observation that there were no bins around for them to dispose of rubbish. They stated that in a nearby more affluent area there were bins everywhere to encourage people to dispose of rubbish. I immediately was drawn to this point and we engaged in a brief discussion about the relative resources available to dispose of waste in affluent versus poorer areas. The most pleasing aspect of the interaction was that one of the teenagers starting helping me with the rubbish collection without any request from me. I continued on cleaning up the park and met another passer-by who again thanked me for what I was doing. The engagement and interaction of people with the experiment was something I had been seeking from the beginning and as I continued collecting rubbish I felt a genuine sense of pride that perhaps I had changed peoples perceptions of their environment, if even only for the brief time I interacted with those individuals. It also sparked something else in me. The idea of systems thinking immediately came into my head. Are some systems designed to support certain aspects and individuals in society and not others? e.g. the availability of bins in areas depending on affluence. Would such rubbish be tolerated in more affluent neighbourhoods in the first instance? Does citizen engagement in environmental issues differ depending on socio-economic profile? Is it easier to support pro-environmental behaviour when there is more greenspace available? Should individuals, communities, businesses assume a greater responsibility for litter and waste management than they currently do, or should this be left primarily to local municipal authorities? If so, how could systems be re-designed to support this? 

I don’t have the answers to all of these questions yet, but it least I’ve engaged people in change for the first time since I began the challenge. This comes with a sense of relief and optimism of what I might learn over the remaining two weeks of the experiment.

Dear fellow 30-Day Challengers

I know some of you are really embracing the 30-Day Challenge when it comes to reducing/eliminating meat and dairy from your diets. With this in mind, I wanted to give you some inspiration for some of the meals I have tried and tested over the years, and which are still staples in my diet:

Chilli Bean Burritos 

(Tip: I often leave out the corn salsa and use vegan yoghurt to cool the spice down, and if you don’t like kidney beans you can replace with any other tinned beans that you like)!

http://dinnerdujour.org/2010/07/20/chili-bean-burritos-with-corn-salsa/

Vegan Dahl Curry 

(Tip: if all the spices you have is curry powder, just omit the other dried spices)

5 Minute Dahl

Creamy mushroom pasta

(Tip: This is great cooked for 3-4 people and eaten hot or cold the next day too)

https://thehappypear.ie/recipes/oil-free-creamy-mushroom-pasta-2/

Quesadillas

(Tip: These are absolutely divine with some oven cooked wedges. They’re completely worth the effort).

https://thehappypear.ie/recipes/creamy-spiced-black-bean-quesadilla/

Also, in terms of the places that you might like to try for vegan options around Dublin, these are just some of the places I like:

Cornucopia (Healthy)

Pho Kim (Vietnamese)

Blazing Salads (Healthy)

Vegan Sandwich Company (Fast-Food)

McGuinness Takeaway (Fast-Food)

Shook (Middle Eastern)

Umi Falafel (Middle Eastern)

Boojum (Cheap Fast-Food)

If this is helpful, please leave a comment and I can post some more recipes/food places to try.

Darren

Since I began my challenge (picking up rubbish twice a week for 30 minutes) I wanted to stimulate conversations and engage people walking by me about my challenge. I’ve unfortunately had minimal success on this front. I’ve been out picking up rubbish on several occasions in my neighbourhood at this point on different days and times, and to date, engagement with passers-by has been limited. The response has been a little underwhelming and, if I’m honest, a little disappointing, as part of the reason I took the challenge on was to engage people in the practice of change. I’m going to have to figure out a new strategy for engaging others in my challenge beyond what I’m currently doing. I’m not sure what that might be yet, but I’ll keep everyone posted when I figure it out myself.

One thing that has inspired me though is the conversations I’ve had with our GY111 class on the successes and challenges they’ve had with their own 30-Day commitments. I am genuinely encouraged by what they have been doing and how they are pushing themselves outside of their comfort zones. The conversations that they have managed to engage in with family and friends has been fantastic. The fact that some family members are also taking on the challenges is testament to the commitment of students to lead by example and influence others. 

P.S. Proof of my most recent haul on the streets of Artane in recent days!

Darren 

On Tuesday this week I started my challenge of picking rubbish around my neighbourhood. One of the challenges I’ve been facing since we started ago is making time.

I’m normally good when it comes to prioritising and forming new habits. For instance, in recent weeks I’ve decided to start cycling to work since we began face-to-face teaching a few weeks ago and I considered this a relatively easy transition, perhaps because I know it’s quicker than taking public transport or the car. I’ve also developed a habit of bedtime by 21:00 and that normally works quite well. Perhaps because this is a new challenge and it involves an additional task, and takes time to complete, I’ve been thrown off by the fact that it’s another new habit to form and a new “thing” to add to my “to-do” list. I think I need to reframe this in my head though as something positive for the community and my personal involvement in the community. I know I’m not unique here and I can make excuses for not having enough time so I know I need to do better on this front in making time for my challenge and in setting priorities accordingly.

The challenge itself has been good however and I’ve managed to get outside once to clean the neighbourhood on a wet Tuesday evening. There’s always a sense of accomplishment in giving something back to the community and when I came home on Tuesday evening I genuinely felt a sense of being a part of a community, and that I was doing my little bit to help my community. However, given that the evenings are darker, colder and wetter, there are less people around than when I began weeding the neighbourhood during the summer. This means there are less opportunities for social interactions and that’s something I miss as I feel there is real value in engaging with people for what I’m trying to do. I’ve therefore decided to change the timing of my challenge and only pick rubbish during daylight hours when there are perhaps more people around. I’m hoping this might increase interactions or at least people might recognise and see rubbish around them and engage in conversation with me.

Personally, it’s important for me to take responsibility for changing my habits so I’ve been telling friends, colleagues and people I meet that I’m doing the challenge along with my students to create a sense of personal responsibility and ownership. Otherwise, I might fall off the wagon and not commit to it fully!

Looking forward to rubbish picking in daylight hours tomorrow to get a change of perspective and a sense of accomplishment.

So I’ve a little story to tell. I decided to set a 30-day sustainability challenge for my students and I as a way to encourage us to reflect on whether changes to our own sustainability actions can have ripple effects and lead to transformative impacts on climate change or environmental sustainability.

From when I posted the challenge on our learning platform at DCU the BCES students have been brilliant, and have really taken on the spirit of CChallenge, pushing themselves outside of their comfort zone – exactly what the challenge is about!

– Your challenge and why you chose it?

During the summer I decided to get involved in cleaning up our housing estate by picking weeds around a small green space near the house. Within a few days, what seemed like a fairly small act had impacted the entire community. Everyone wanted to stop and talk to me as to what I was doing and offered me words of encouragement and tell stories about how the community did these things in the past. However, as people aged they weren’t able to continue with the upkeep of the estate. Within a day the news spread and several people in the community came out to help me. What turned out to be a relatively small act had transformed the entire neighbourhood and allowed me to get to know people I would otherwise never have met. This was the inspiration for my current challenge to pick rubbish around the neighbourhood for 30 days.

– What do you think will be difficult or easy about this experiment?

1. I think finding the time twice a week might be a challenge but I’m optimistic! 

2. The novelty of the challenge might wear off after a few weeks. 

3. I think it might be difficult to engage people to be involved or engage in a chat as the weather and daylight is not on my side! 

– What qualities do you admire in others, and how can it help you the next 30 days?

I admire people who:

– are persistent

– are committed 

– push past their boundaries / comfort zone

– are environmentally conscious

– don’t follow the status quo

– can talk to strangers 

Looking forward to starting my journey and finding out more about sustainability and myself and the people around me! 

Darren