Moreau's Prudent Participants

Based on my personal electronic device usage, I really don't use much electricity: I've got a computer and phone to charge, an alarm clock to power, and lights that I use in my room. That's a very small portion of my overall energy footprint, though. Living in a large building with 40 other people, we have a lot of collective spaces that...

My own home is fairly close to an industrial area of a neighboring town, which puts my home in the 90 percentile for PM 2.5 concentrations, which I certainly never thought about. Traffic proximity is in the 38 percentile while ozone is in the 65 percentile, though diesel particulate matter rests in the 87 percentile. Frighteningly, the lead...

Food apartheid is a cause of social stress, physical health problems, and a propagation of systemic inequality. If people are forced to shop outside of their community to get nutritious food, the economy of the community suffers.  With access to nutritious food, a community becomes more resilient because its members are healthier, happier, and...

My fourth core value is a commitment to protecting and healing the natural environment. The Earth sustains our lives and we have a moral duty to uphold the profundity and beauty of nature. I definitely need to cultivate more conscious environmental habits myself and continue to encourage others to be Earth-supporters, not just eco-friendly. I...

A just society needs to be reality. To actualize this potential, equality for all people is necessary; no one should be discriminated based on any characteristic. How could we ever justify saying something like, "You're different than me, so you are wrong"? We must recreate our over/against mentality into a within/together concept of...

Environmental factors contribute a great deal to my personal health. As someone with seasonal allergies, congestion is a common symptom when the weather changes. I also had mild asthma when I was younger, which would be impacted by more air pollutants hovering around the Earth's surface. All of these cleaning supplies, especially ones that get...

I keep forgetting to check in!!

In Illinois, people in prison cannot vote. This is a really difficult issue for me to consider; on the one hand, I recognize that those who have genuinely committed crimes should lose their privilege to vote. On the other hand, though, there are certainly people who are incarcerated wrongly or are imprisoned because of petty crimes who may...

The whole world can greatly benefit from constructive communication by recognizing that we are relating to people first and the conversation topic second. I like to think that constructive communication and compassionate listening are all summed up in this way: our conversations are a people-thing, not a topic-thing. The eight principles of...

The only landfills near my home in Illinois are in post closure or certified post closure stages. The nearest active landfill is in the south side of Chicago, clustered by other landfill in state site programs. Those on the south side of Chicago will suffer the ill effects of living near a landfill and disposal facilities, especially since one...