My name is Josephine. I am a junior at Dickinson studying international business and management and German. I chose to do this course program because I have an interest in using my business degree to help corporations switch to more sustainable business models. I have always been interested learning more about environmental studies/science, but I decided to incorporate it in my business degree when I took Environmental Science for Non-Majors as a college requirement. Taking that class inspired me to want to do better for this planet. I want to start at the top by dealing with corporations who are creating waste products and using dirty energy.
While I grew up moving around the Greater Philadelphia Area, I consider my home to be Unionville, Pennsylvania. This is an area about an hour outside of Philadelphia but has the beautiful scenery of the countryside. Living in Unionville, I was able to walk to local farms to get fresh milk, vegetables, and eggs. I’ve always had some connection to nature. Me and my family love going paddleboarding or hiking with our two dogs. Moving to Unionville really helped me fall in love with spending time outside which is why I call it my home.
Unionville is filled with beautiful horse and dairy farms, nature preserves, and big flowing trees. Some of my favorite memories are from driving around back roads in the summer with all my windows down. The cows grazing the fields, the trees swooshing in the wind, and everything except nature just disappearing. Spending time outside was just something my whole community did. We like to support local businesses mostly because a lot of community members have their own business in town. The socio-economic divide was pretty big however. Because Unionville is an hour outside of Philadelphia and only 30 minutes from Wilmington, Delaware, there are a lot of families who are upper/upper-middle class. I think that because of the higher income levels, the community is more open to supporting local, slightly more expensive, businesses.
In my own home, we try to think consciously about sustainability. My mom is vegan so we do not typically eat a lot of meat, no one else in my family is vegetarian or vegan, we just try to think about what we are eating. As often as possible, we use our reusable grocery bags for shopping and lately we have been buying laundry detergent sheets to cut down on plastic waste. While we are able to do the small stuff around our house, we know that something bigger needs to change.
Despite having such a strong connection to nature, sustainability was never really at the top of anyone’s mind in the wider community. I do not remember talking about environmental issues in schools or at home. Maybe it is because I only lived in Unionville for high school but the area cares about schooling and getting into good colleges. It created a very stressful environment in schools. I hope that sustainability becomes something important to the community because the land we live on has been so good to the area.