colter said that when living in idaho, he noticed a shift in jordan’s interests and priorities. today even 7-year-olds like jordan can be completely consumed by technology in their surroundings. i cringe a little every time i see a toddler on an ipad in a restaurant, but, to be completely honest, i am addicted to my screens in the same way. when i was in alaska, i had a hard time living in the moment and adjusting to life without wi-fi.

cutting back on internet was just the start for this family. jordan didn’t seem to be missing out on anything at all. as an unofficial tour guide, she was excited to tell us all about her home, her dogs, and the spider she watched crawl around for an hour last week. i think there’s a lot to be learned from this way of life.

it would be easy to say that the life this family leads is simpler, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. they do their best to be self-sufficient in every way possible. the food they prepare is either grown on the premises or caught nearby. they drink rainwater. and the limited amount of energy they do use is generated from a hydropower system they maintain. it can’t possibly be easy to save and repurpose every bit of plastic you come across.

i admire the sheer ambition of this family. they are voluntarily stranded on an island. sure, the nearest town is a 20-minute boat ride away, but at the time this was reported, they didn’t even have a boat. and they don’t need one, so they say.

if they don’t need a boat, then maybe i don’t need to refresh my email every 30 seconds.

while alaska is one of the least-inhabited places in the united states, it is still impacted significantly by humans. according to the national climate assessment, alaska has warmed more than twice as quickly as the rest of the united states. a recent study from the alaska marine science symposium suggests this might not be the only way humans are harming the 49th state.

arctic birds such as the tufted puffin have been found to have plastics in their stomachs. a study done in the aleutian islands in southwest alaska found that around 20 percent had some sort of inorganic material in their stomachs. because the aleutian islands are protected like the islands of southeast alaska, tlingit tribe members in southeast alaska are conducting their own screenings for plastics. one would never guess the presence of plastics by watching the puffins fly around, and one might not even find large bits of plastic in the puffin’s habitat. the trouble for puffins isn’t the plastic you can see, but the kind that is too small for the human eye.

microplastics are a huge concern for marine life around the world. these plastics are by definition smaller than the eye can see, and they can take several different forms. some microplastics come from bigger pieces of plastic that break apart and disintegrate into much smaller pieces. microbeads are intentionally added to products like soaps, scrubs, and nail polish and are used as glitter or an exfoliant. microfibers come from clothes that we wash in a washing machine. washing one fleece jacket can release 100,000 microfibers into the ocean.

microplastics make their way up the food chain easily. smaller marine animals mistake plastic for plankton and try to hunt it down. when these smaller fish are consumed by birds and bigger fish that humans like to eat, the plastic makes its way up the food chain.

the pollution in alaska isn’t quite as bad as the pollution from plastics in other parts of the world, but because so much of alaska is covered by national parks and marine protected areas, it is surprising that these areas are not free of microplastics.

because plastic pollution is a prevalent issue for marine ecosystems, it is especially important for entities that interact directly with marine ecosystems to be careful with what they are putting in the water.

cruise ships and fishing vessels especially need to take caution, as they typically dump waste directly into the water. in recent years, large cruise companies have begun to pledge to reduce their use of plastic onboard.

lindblad expeditions, an expedition travel company that works in partnership with national geographic on ship-based voyages aimed at people who care about the planet, has taken this pledge a step further. on june 8, in honor of world oceans day, they announced they have removed all single-use plastics from their fleet. plastic straws have been replaced with paper ones, and drink stirrers are now made of wood. instead of plastic cups guests are given reusable metal bottles and filtered water, and they have even removed all 100% plastic pens from their ships. their effort supports partner national geographic’s planet or plastic? campaign.

small steps like this in the right direction can make a significant impact over time. companies like lindblad expeditions that are dedicated to making sustainable choices should help set the precedent for others. if other companies follow suit and continue to pave the way towards a more sustainable future, the puffins just might live to see another day.

the restaurant is a quaint little place right under the barnegat lighthouse. my great-grandmother’s clam chowder would draw crowds year after year. i’ve heard some people say they come back to the island each year only to get more of her chowder.

it was pretty clear to me, even then, that clams and shellfish were a big part of my family’s livelihood. not only that, the recipes passed down were family tradition, and they brought my family closer together as we shared them with others. i’m the fourth generation in my family to work at the restaurant. yes, that’s me in the pink shirt in the front. my parents met when they both worked at the restaurant years ago, so, if you think about it, i really do have clam chowder to thank for my entire existence.

more specifically, though, i can thank the clams and oysters of the barnegat bay also for every summer day i enjoyed swimming in the bay, or fishing with my dad (and to this day never catching anything). oysters and clams filter out the bay, and they are also essential to aquatic ecosystems. they provide food for some larger animals, and they form coral reef-like structures, which serve as homes for the smaller fish that we could never seem to catch.

these oyster reefs are incredible, and making them is no easy process. here you can find a video of people in my area building an oyster reef in the barnegat bay. in the chesapeake bay area, there are similar projects happening, but on a much larger scale. these projects, which bring together several non-profits and government organizations, capture the essence of what it is to work as a community for the betterment of the ecosystem.

projects like this pan out really well in small shore towns, such as barnegat light, where close-knit communities are willing to take time to go to a museum or show off a flashy clam sculpture in front of their business, but without a lot of support from the community, these movements can fall flat. it is especially interesting to see how shellfish restoration projects scale up to big cities like washington, d.c.

what i think gives these movements the inertia to keep going is a network of dedicated scientists who genuinely care about their work. i’ve had dr. scully in class, and on more than one occasion, she casually brought up waking up at five in the morning to check on how her own oysters are doing, or spending her saturday teaching local kids how to clean up the bay. she actually jumped at the chance to take my film partner jordan and i to film at an oyster hatchery that is two hours away. it would take an awful lot to get me to drive anyone two hours anywhere.

we also met stephanie tobash-alexander, a senior faculty research assistant at horn point lab. she was wearing oyster-shaped earrings, and i think this perfectly illustrates just how much oysters are a part of her life. she explained the oyster recovery partnership as a puzzle, with organizations coming together, with everyone needing each other’s assistance. part of the reason we chose to create a fictional oyster as our story’s central character was to contextualize the care given to just one oyster: ollie. this was validated in our visit to horn point. the treatment process is complex and long-winded, yet researchers share a true, unhinged allegiance to getting ollie back into the water, where he can restore mother nature to a self-sustaining tipping point. 

there are plenty of people who care about the welfare of their local ecosystems. the challenge is getting these scientists, who have spirited debates about which diatoms to feed the algae for oysters, to sound approachable and interesting to everyday people.

we didn’t want to focus on an audience of people who know which diatom they like best, or even the people who grew up riding bikes around the docks in the morning. we wanted to focus on the everyday people who don’t know about all that oysters do for us.

our approach was to find something a little closer to the heart, or stomach rather, of the general public. we used an oyster as a character because people are familiar with oysters, whether they’ve eaten them or seen their shells on the beach. we noticed a common thread throughout the story of ollie and the oysters in their ability to provide balance to the ecosystem, serving as a foundation of hope to rescue and stabilize the chesapeake’s diverse wildlife. that’s exactly what oysters represent to us as well. as the structures they create form homes for aquatic creatures, they also provide citizens of the mid-atlantic and chesapeake area with a sense of home and belonging.

our piece aims to make people understand just what is so special about the little shellfish that keep the bay clean. i urge you to get to know ollie the oyster, watch our video, and then go out and #savethebay.

in addition to the land problem we have, when we drink so much coffee, there are inevitably harmful by-products. if we want to preserve the cherished coffee-growing areas, we need to be more responsible for our earth as a whole. if the climate keeps changing the way it’s going, by 2050, there’ll be half as much land that’s usable for growing coffee beans. if this happens, there’s no way we can make 1,800 billion cups of coffee a year. change needs to happen, and it starts with your cup of joe. by modifying the way we drink coffee, we can cut down our carbon footprint and cut back on waste, which will in turn lead to a cleaner earth. trouble may be brewing for the future, and if we don’t take strong action sometime soon, we will have a coffee crisis on our hands.  and it will be worse than when i found out that the salted caramel mocha frappuccino is only sold seasonally.

here are five things you can actually do to help prevent the doomsday scenario that is a world without coffee.

1. use reusable coffee cups

instead of throwing out a one-use cup at the end of every visit, why not bring your own cup to your local coffee shop?

some stores have programs where they sell a refillable ceramic mug, and others offer discounts when you bring your own. bruegger’s bagels has a bottomless mug club, where they sell a mug every year for a flat rate and give free coffee refills for the year when you bring the mug to their store. starbucks has a program where they offer ten cents off of your coffee if you bring in your own mug. additionally, many other independent establishments have similar programs; you just have to ask.

2. ditch the k-cup

the keurig machine and other single-serve brewing systems seemed like a great idea for the environment at first. while they may reduce the amount of coffee bought in foam cups in a coffee shop, they have an ugly by-product that is crowding landfills: the k-cup. what is it about the little plastic pods that has people making horror films about them? according to the atlantic, keurig sold 9.8 billion pods of coffee in 2014, which, if lined up, would circle the earth more than 12 times. because the vast majority are not recyclable or biodegradable, they hog up landfills.

currently, keurig plans to make k-cups completely recyclable by 2020. they released the first recyclable k-cups in 2016.

3. lose the straw (for those frappuccinos)

okay, so you might already know plastic straws aren’t the best for the environment. if you’re drinking an iced coffee or mixed coffee drink, chances are you don’t really even need a straw. it’s easy to forget to go straw-less, but sparing the straw does make a difference.

a little while back, i saw this video. i have to warn you, it’s a little graphic. if you’re queasy like me and couldn’t get through the whole thing, it is a video of rescuers prying a plastic straw out of a sea turtle’s nose. and if that isn’t sickening enough, check out some of  these stats.

4. buy local or fair trade coffee

no, don’t steal the coffee from the person standing next to you. not that local. but there are local options, and if you can’t find coffee that’s grown locally in your area, odds are you can find coffee that’s roasted in your area. buying locally means it takes less carbon in the form of gasoline to get the good stuff from the beans to your cup.

buying fairtrade certified coffee is a good alternative because it ensures that the coffee you’re paying for meets sustainable farming standards, and also that the process of growing the coffee beans is fair to the workers.

some examples of fairtrade certified brands are amazon’s happy belly house blend organic fair trade coffee, cafe altura’s organic instant coffee and seattle’s best’s 6th avenue bistro fair trade organic coffee.

5. reuse or recycle coffee grounds

depending on the kind of beans you’re using and how much of a coffee connoisseur you are, you may be able to get two uses out of your coffee grinds. if you prefer not to reuse them, you can re-purpose them to add to your fertilizer. gardening knowhow  recommends adding coffee grinds to fertilizer to improve drainage, water retention and aeration. if you are without a garden, reader’s digest recommends putting a bowl of them in the freezer overnight to remove any nasty smells. you can find some of their other practical ideas for coffee grinds here.

the time is upon us. whether you’re brewing a cup in your room or shouting your order at a busy barista across a counter, i ask you to act deliberately and with the future in mind. my ability to function during 8 a.m. classes is at stake.

long beach island is a quaint shore community, home to many fishermen and small business owners. the locals are outnumbered in the summer months by vacationing families who typically rent houses for a week at a time. in october of 2012, hurricane sandy devastated the shores of new jersey, specifically long beach island. the storm tore down many of the homes on the island and left others in need of repair. according to andersen, “some people had to leave the island after being here for generations.” this community was forced to be resilient, even though the beaches they had frequented just weeks prior were in ruins.

instead of letting sandy define the fate of the community, spearheaded by andersen, the island was able to rebuild and rethink their approach to sustainability.

with a chance to start fresh in a lot of places, andersen and her team took the opportunity to implement sustainable practices. one of their major accomplishments is the free shuttle bus system that runs the length of the island. they have also installed a rain barrel outside of town hall, expanded the island’s recycling program, and implemented water bottle refilling stations. andersen is currently working towards a switch to solar energy and the implementation of vegetated dunes along all of the beaches.

during the busy summer months, traffic on the island gets congested. especially on memorial day and fourth of july weekend, it can take a long time to get down the island. now, this congestion is mitigated by free public shuttles that drive the length of the island. these buses cut out much of the pollution from surplus cars. andersen says that this project was led by commissioner joe latttanzi who “didn’t like the short answer of ‘you can’t do a shuttle on the island’ so he researched it and made it happen.” because long beach island has one main road, the shuttle system accommodates tourists nicely. kids can hop on the shuttle to the nearest mini golf course because the shuttles make one big loop around the length of the island.

promoting recycling in a community of tourists is challenging because of the quick turnover time. recycling on the island has recently become more convenient, as it has moved to a single-stream system that allows residents to recycle paper, plastic, and glass in one container. additionally, recycling bins have been added to each of the beaches. andersen’s team has gone the extra mile to make education more accessible to the islanders.

“we just launched an app called recycle coach to try and reach the millennials,” she says, “we educate, educate, educate – but it is still confusing to people.” ocean county has specific regulations about what can be recycled, so andersen’s team is constantly educating the changing community about these guidelines.

i downloaded the recycle coach app, and it has the potential to really change the way we recycle. the app has a quiz called “what type of recycler are you?” and it asks questions about your recycling habits (like how often you try to recycle) and also questions specific to your town’s ordinances (like what kinds of things can be recycled). i was surprised by how low i scored, because while i do my best to recycle, i wasn’t aware of all of the recycling restrictions my town had. the quiz emails you your results and provides tips on how to recycle better in your town and shows you how your score compares to other recyclers worldwide. by educating people about how to recycle effectively, the app facilitates the recycling process and answers questions. the app also features a link to a blog with tips for reusing household items and ideas for upcycling.

another innovation was implemented to address the water bottles left on the ground, cluttering the tennis courts in the town of loveladies on the island.

“i was in a bait and tackle shop in beach haven crest one day and two girls came in to ask to refill a water bottle, as they had been out power walking and had run out of water,” andersen said. this encounter piqued andersen’s interest and inspired her to install water bottle filling stations around the tennis courts. in the town of loveladies, one water bottle filling station was installed, followed by five additional stations due to the success of the first one. these stations cut down on plastic waste and have helped the littering problem as well. they are also a town favorite, and andersen hopes to install them in neighboring towns as well.

since sandy, there have been numerous flood prevention efforts as well. andersen says, “when we rebuild, we are going to resiliency standards and above.” the rebuilding process has included upgrades to storm drain basins, new water and sewer lines, and new and improved pump stations.

additionally, a rain barrel was installed outside of town hall in order to collect rain water runoff from the roof. andersen describes these rain barrels as “public pieces of art” and “a community building project as we all build them together.”

in times of distress, it is refreshing to see a community coming together to implement these innovations that will benefit the environment in the long run.