1460 W. 28th Street
February 20, 2015
Today, Soham and I visited the local eco-op on 1460 W. 28th Street. When we arrived, the members of the co-op were having their weekly Friday dinner where guests are welcome to either bring their own dishes or to share in the number of dishes that their fellow members have cooked. We were welcomed to try some of the bread and curry. And were quickly ushered into the group of sustainably minded colleagues. After meeting a number of the eco-op members, we had the opportunity to talk with Ivan who pointed us to the co-op cleaning schedule. And shared with us, the fact that most of the success of the eco-op relied on the scheduling and efficiency of its members through a system of labeled magnets of chores that were divided equally. He also shared with us the knowledge that the eco-op was a rather new house and had just begun last semester. So far, the house has been successful. When we inquired about how a day is like at the co-op, it was apparent that the difference in living sustainably mostly relied on the mindset of each person living in the house and less so on specialized equipment that helped with lowering water usage, etc.
From this, Soham and I gathered that the difficulty for others to adopt the sustainable lifestyle (away from living in an eco-op) may stem largely from the change of mental framing to being consistently aware of the effect that one’s own actions has on the environment.
Because of this, we concluded that the success of the eco-op was definitely nurtured by the existence of likeminded individuals, whereas it may be more difficult to instigate a sustainable living mindset outside of an enclosed community. We hope to revisit the eco-op at some point later in the semester to get more insight about this.
