Her Campus (HC): Tell me about yourself!
Chase Collier (CC): My name is Chase Collier and I was born and raised in Panama City Beach, FL and lived there for almost my entire life. Ever since I was a young child, I had an interest in the natural world and the things that live in it. I enjoy going out to the woods with my field guides and deciphering what I’m looking at. I try to spread the message of making more environmentally conscious decisions going forward in people’s day to day life.
HC: Why did you choose environmental science as your major here at Florida State?
CC: When I was a young child before I went to school, I would watch Animal Planet. The crocodile hunter starring Steve Irwin would always be on, and his message of conservation and environmental protection stuck with me. Coincidentally, when my senior year of high school came around, I took AP environmental science and thought it was interesting. I fell in love and have been passionate about it ever since.
HC: How are you involved in helping the planet apart from your schooling at Florida State?
CC: I try my best to make eco-friendly choices when shopping for products and buy sustainably caught, harvested and farmed products. I try to use recyclable things and promote recycling in the community. I also drive a fuel efficient car.
HC: How would you recommend people not involved in helping the environment to help in a small simple way?
CC: Promoting businesses that make environmentally friendly choices helps. Supporting those companies helps make those environmentally friendly choices a standard and means other businesses will follow. Try to buy reusable things too. I used to buy shirts from a company in Seaside, FL that made shirts out of recycled water bottles and I loved those. Knowing what you’re buying and where it’s going is the first step is to be active as an environmentalist. If you know where that plastic straw will go and do 20-30 years down the line, is that one drink at Starbucks worth it compared to the X amount of fish that will die from it? Or the other issues it’ll cause? Keeping that in the back of your mind helps you to make better decisions in day to day life.
HC: What is your favorite thing about helping the environment from a science perspective?
CC: Lowering my carbon footprint gives me better peace of mind. Essentially, knowing my children and their children will not feel the effects of me long after I pass.
HC: What inspires you to work toward making the environmental world better?
CC: I always find something new to learn. If I read into something deeper or look at some reference list from one paper, I’ll find a new paper about something I didn’t know about and can use in day to day life. It’s such a broad science and you can’t know everything about it.
HC: Lastly, do you have anything else to say for the people reading?
CC: We can all make better choices. We only have one planet that we share with millions of species. We only have one shot, and it’s our duty to share our natural world and extraordinary wonders of nature with future generations as we were able to see them today.
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