Two Practice Walks

As I walk across the country in the Great March for Climate Action I will be blogging about my adventures here on Viridorari and also for my school's newspaper (http://theithacan.org/blog/one-step-at-a-time/). Also, follow me on Twitter and Instagram for smaller updates and pictures! My Twitter handle is @viridorari and my Instagram username is bluegirl3666

If this is the first time you've heard of the Climate March, please check out www.climatemarch.org for lots of useful information. The Climate March is a cross country march from California to Washington, D.C. to raise awareness about change. It began on March 1st in Wilmington, CA and will conclude on November 1st in our nation's capital. After finishing my spring semester of college, I am joining the Climate March in Taos, New Mexico and walking the remaining 2,000 miles to Washington, D.C. The approximately 300 people who have signed up to participate, either for the whole thing or for sections, will walk at a pace of about 15 miles each day.

While I did some small hikes at State Parks during the spring semester, I only managed to get two full practice walks in before leaving, each 15 miles. It was a LOT harder than I expected it to be. By the end of each walk my feet were on fire and everything from my hips down were horribly sore. I should have gotten more practice walks in before leaving, but I had only about a week and half between coming home from college and my plane to New Mexico, and that's not a lot of time to tie all your loose ends down for six months!

For my practice walks, I used the Erie Canal Trail and walked from Macedon to Fairport and back. For my first walk, my boyfriend, Bruno, joined me.

Climate March Update #3

Hi everyone! I have lots of exciting news with this update!

With only 41 days left to go before the march starts, it's crunch time! I'm so excited for the people who are starting in California, and I wish I could be there with them as they take their first steps. May 23rd cannot come soon enough!

The Climate March recently received a donation of $20,000 to go toward a food truck. That is half of the cost, and the march is currently looking for an organization or business to sponsor the other half. If you know an organization or business that might be interested, please email Zach Heffernen, the Marcher Director, at zach@climatemarch.org.

As for me, I have reached 25% of my fundraising goal! I owe a very special thank you to an anonymous donor who gave $500 to my cause. Your generosity is above and beyond and if you're reading this, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. You can view a running list of my donors on my CrowdRise fundraising page. 

I have also received two more gold sponsorships! One comes from the Ithaca Hemp Company in Ithaca, NY, near my college. Ithaca Hemp Company carries lots of awesome hemp products, including clothing. Hemp is one of the most versatile and sustainable materials out there, and can be used to make over 25,000 products! Unfortunately, hemp gets a bad rep because of its close relation to cannabis — or marijuana — and currently it is illegal to grow hemp in the United States. To learn more about hemp and all of its awesome benefits, check out this past Viridorari post. To learn more about Ithaca Hemp Company and all of their epic products, check out their website. Thank you, Ithaca Hemp Company, for becoming the first business to sponsor my march!

The second gold sponsorship comes from the Palmyra-Macedon Rotary Club. This sponsorship is very special to me because I have been involved with Interact and Rotary throughout my high school career. Interact, the high school version of Rotary, inspired a love of community service in me and taught me invaluable lessons about leadership. I have learned so much about myself through Interact, and I look forward to becoming a Rotary member someday. I am staying involved and participating in my college's Rotaract Club. It means the world to me that an organization that has influenced me so profoundly has made a generous contribution to my march — which I'm sure will be a life-changing experience that will develop me even further. Thank you, Palmyra-Macedon Rotary Club, for becoming the first organization to sponsor my march!

Green Challenge: Repurpose Your Plastic

20-25% of landfill weight is from plastics. An average plastic container takes about 500 years just to begin the decomposition process. The timing varies depending on environmental conditions and the chemical makeup of the plastic.

Picture courtesy of: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/29/japan-leads-field-plastic-recycling

I wanted to come up with a way to make people understand how many plastic products we go through. I don’t think we always realize it, myself included, because we view plastic bottles and containers and the like as disposable. They hold no true value to us.

So, this week, as an eye opener, you’re not allowed to throw out (even into the recycling bin) plastic products. With every plastic product you use, you must either reuse it or repurpose it throughout this week. This will probably be a little cumbersome and obnoxious, but hopefully, that will help you understand how much you really go through and motivate you to avoid or reduce plastic use in the future.