Reflection: Weeks 9&10

Hey Everyone!

Wow, two weeks have gone by again....These two weeks went by faster because we only had class for one week, which made the week really easy. During week 9 we got an introduction on the Advocacy Project we'll be working for the rest of the semester. Advocacy is defined as the pursuit of influencing outcomes — including public-policy and resource allocation decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions — that directly affect people’s current lives, clearly stated by Wikipedia. Health advocacy is defined the same except that its goal is toward healthier lifestyle or environment. We also chose our political representatives for our advocacy project during week 9. As of right I only have four representative; President Obama, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Mayor of Minneapolis R.T Rybak, and Governor Tim Pawlenty. I don't know what I really want to advocate about right now since I there are plenty of options.

I didn't even realize when week 10 got was over since we didn't have class. We were assigned to do a photo essay; which at first I thought was going to be very complex, but it wasn't so bad. I did my photo essay on the UMD Dining Center's dish room since that's where I work. It's an idea that's always been in my head. I actually wanted to do a share and voice earlier in the semester, but I am glad I didn't because I would've repeated myself. It was nice eye-opener because I made me see things differently were I work at.

Thanks for reading!

Eye Opener: Photo Essay

Hello everyone!

Since I work at the UMD Dining Center's dish room I decided that I would like share some of the environmentally friendly and unfriendly things about working there.

The DC is a decent place to eat at i think; it serves a variety of foods, for both vegetarians and regular consumers.






Like most dish rooms, its goal to clean all the dishes used by customers of the DC. When we receive a cart full of dirty dishes we make sure the left overs are well disposed. The left overs are well chopped by a machine, I am not sure where it is dumped.




Each dish, is well rinsed/scrubbed before they we run them through the washer.









When everything is cleaned and ready to use we place them here.



Overall, I think the Dish Room has been doing great staying environmentally friendly without even realizing it. The fact that everything is reused is great. I think they do a really good job keeping it clean as well. I think the Dish room needs to work on is water usage, there is SO much water used daily. I also think that we should use less disposable gloves and aprons. Maybe even use reusable plastic aprons.

Thanks for reading!