I learned about fungus and how many uses there are of mycology to solve ecological issues.

I felt frustrated, but knew that arguing would not be productive and would get me worked up and upset.

I can support small businesses and advocate for things like green spaces and ecologically friendly practices.

I watched the Minimalists; Less is Now. It talked about the movement made by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus started to reduce the amount of stuff of in there lives to live a simpler life. I was really excited to watch it and was expecting to to talk about sustainable ways to reduce the amount of stuff you have and discuss some issues of consumerism but I hated how Millburn and Nicodemus framed minimalism as a religion and almost glorified poverty to explain how they founded the movement. I thought the guest speakers to the documentary were great in that they talked about how minimalism is a way to regain your independence and freedom from consumerism and the pressure to purchase things to look better socially but the segments with the founders were my least favorite parts. Overall, I thought the documentary made some good points and explained some good concepts with the exclusion of the founders of the movement

Absolutely. I'd think of that mostly in terms of people, since when people do nice things for me most certainly feel the need to do something for them in return. Nature is a little bit harder for me to conceptualize that way, being inanimate and not able to judge me for being ungrateful, but I can see that too.
Cultivating gratitude, my thought would be to intentionally deprive oneself of something. Rather than taking it for granted but having it, having it be entirely absent and not being able to even passively enjoy the benefits of its presence might jog one's sense of gratitude. Sort of the idea of not knowing how good you have it till it's gone.
Consider what things would be like without those things we might be grateful for..

Like Lindsey said, once we throw our trash away, it just disappears and we never have to deal with it again or think about where it goes. For this challenge, I collected all of my trash and recycling for a week. Seeing it every day made me realize that it doesn't just go "away", it goes somewhere once it's out of my sight, and will probably end up in the ocean. My recycling bin filled up much faster than my trash bin, which surprised me; it was probably a combination of the trash can I used being a little bit smaller, and the items I recycled taking up more space due to being more structured (e.g. hard plastics, glass bottles, and cans). My bedroom trash can filled up in one week, which made me realize how much trash I produce (along with carrying around all my trash until I got back to my dorm each day!). I also realized that I don't really compost outside of the caf and snar, because I don't know where to put my food waste to compost it. I just throw out my banana peels and apple cores with everything else. If Dickinson made composting easier outside of the caf, it may reduce our waste further. Also, I always feel guilty for throwing away my smoothie cups, but I don't have time to rinse them and don't want to contaminate the recycling.