Spartan Motormall, MSUFCU,  Living Green contest winner!

Our Congratulations to Mr Richard Kobe and his family for winning the 2008 Livin' Green & Lovin' It Essay Contest sponsored by Spartan Toyota and Michigan State University Federal Credit Union.

Mr Richard Kobe won a paid 2 year lease on a brand new 2009 Toyota Corolla provided by Spartan Toyota for his well written essay on living green. Take a moment and read Richards winning essay below!

Livin' Green & Lovin' It Winning Essay

By “living green,” my family and I embrace both the present and future. Presently, living green invites us to simultaneously lower our environmental footprint and improve quality of life. Although the invitation sometimes can be challenging, it also provides us opportunities to innovate. My wife and I had been commuting in separate cars from our Woodhull Township home to Lansing / East Lansing. This year, we adopted a “hybrid” approach; with my bike on a rack, we drive as a family to my son’s school, where my wife works, and I bicycle the additional 2 miles to my office. We’ve reduced driving by 600 miles per month, created more family time, I get more exercise, and on cold mornings I am very awake when I reach my office.

We also expanded our mostly-organic vegetable garden and now grow the bulk of our produce. Besides eating more fresh vegetables, the garden provides a place to work together as a family and challenges our culinary creativity when buckets of one vegetable ripen concurrently. The garden also has reduced purchases of packaged foods, which together with a concerted recycling effort, has reduced our trash to one bag per month.

I am aware of how these choices shape the experience and values of our son. Looking towards future generations, I recently initiated a garden-based environmental education/ fundraising project for grades 1-6 at my son’s school, Stepping Stones Montessori in East Lansing. The students planted several varieties of pumpkins and squash at our place in the spring, helped weed and maintain plantings through summer, and harvested their crop in the fall. Every aspect of this project offered a tangible lesson in ecology, learning first-hand about plant resource requirements, weed competition, challenges from weather and deer, and the bountiful yields that are possible when working with nature. The harvest was the link between nature’s products and green economics. The students have been selling pumpkins and squash at school and community events, raising $1500 to date. Selling the produce (especially making change!) has honed math skills.

The project also is honing environmental leadership and responsibility, as the students are deciding how proceeds will be spent. One idea that they are discussing is to contract an energy audit for school buildings and to implement some of the audit’s suggestions. We could be creating a model green economy – wealth created from organically-grown crops purchases knowledge and materials to lower energy consumption, which improves the school’s environmental footprint and budget.

The numerous rewards from living greener – both in our personal lives and through the pumpkin project – were not anticipated. We especially derive great satisfaction from seeing a sense of wonder in these children, who are amazed that tiny seeds could grow tons of squash and pumpkins (including a hundred-pounder). But perhaps most importantly, all of our recent changes to live greener have affirmed for us that healthy ecosystems, human quality of life, and fulfilling relationships with family, friends, and neighbors can be tightly interwoven.

- Richard Kobe