Eco Chic Lifestyle Change Week 3:Weekly Update

  To remind everyone again, my SMART Goal for my Eco Chic Lifestyle change is: 

"I will use a cloth napkin for 2 out of the 3 meals i eat daily in my home for the next 10 weeks." 

  This goal is Eco-Chic because it reduces waste from paper napkins that you use for one drop of a spill and throw away. We as a society use way too many paper napkins, and they add up to so much waste! This is why cloth napkins are so good: they do not contribute to waste. You use one, wash it, and use it again, and they last for years. My grandmother has multiple sets of cloth napkins and she has had them for over 20 years. They are very environmentally friendly. 

  This past week has gone GREAT! I have not used a single paper napkin, and have used cloth napkins quite a lot. It really helped me to have one already sitting at the kitchen table so I remembered it was there and actually used it. The only challenge was going places where they did not have cloth napkins, and I worked hard not to spill my food as to not use any paper napkins at all. It made me feel really good to not use paper napkins; I felt accomplished and like I was really helping the environment. I learned that if you have them in plain site, you (and others) will use them instead of searching high and low for paper ones. I plan to keep more available on my kitchen table for this coming week as to help my roommates start using them too. If you want more information on how to have an eco-friendly kitchen, click here to go to Best Green Home Tips website. Below is a picture of cloth napkins from their website. 

Eye Opener Week 2

After doing the Eating Green calculator, I found out that I use 0.5 acres of grain and grass for animal feed, 0.2 pounds of pesticides to grow the feed, 18.6 pounds of fertilizer to grow animal feed, and that I 2854 pounds of manure created by the animals I eat. These numbers are only for 1 week of my diet, and I barely eat any meat; it is mostly eggs that upped this calculator. These numbers for the week added out to be 338 calories.

After clicking on the button to help improve my diet and environment, I chose to not reduce any of the servings I had previously entered. I chose this because I barely eat meat as it is, and I cannot reduce that number because I need to protein and nutrients that come from meat. I aso chose to not reduce my dairy intake because I am lactose intolerant and only have about a cup of milk a day with my cereal, so I cannot reduce this any more than it already is, and milk is a vital ingredient in many recipes. These two factors made me hesitant to take the pledge since there is really nothing I can do to help them, but I will definitely do my best.

To me, this all helped me realize that I never think where my food comes from other than the grocery store shelves. When I go home for the summer, I eat at least half my food from my garden, but living in an apartment in Duluth for the school year I do not have an opportunity to grow a garden. If there are any more farmers markets before the winter hits I will definitely purchase food from them, and do whatever I can to eat locally (within my budget range).

                                                            http://www.mirchiblog.com/vegetable-garden.html

Eco Chic Lifestyle Change Week 2: Weekly Update

My SMART Goal I have made for myself is...
  "I will use a cloth napkin for 2 out of the 3 meals I eat daily in my home for the next 10 weeks."

So far this goal is going well for me, with only one slip up: I used a paper towel to cover my food in the microwave yesterday for dinner. I feel that this is pretty good considering I have not used a paper napkin in a week except for this instance. To not do this in the future I will just cover my food in the microwave with a small plate or anything I can find that is microwave-safe.

My feelings on this were me being slightly upset with myself, but not entirely disappointed since it was only once the whole week. This week I learned that you cannot beat yourself up about things you cannot change (that you did), and just keep trying :)

My plans for this coming week are to keep doing the cloth napkin deal, but this time to extend it to when I eat a meal at my boyfriend's apartment, and to keep a cloth napkin or two there so that I do not even use a paper napkin at all (as much as possible).

Eye Opener Week 1

http://www.carbonindependent.org/ told me that I am a medium carbon foot person [while at home]. I drive the average amount and do not eat that much organic food, but I do compost as much as I can. After seeing this, I realize that I need to use less waste. I am going to try to not eat out as much, or only eat at restaurants where they use reusable things (like washable dishes).

Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week 1: My SMART Goal

For my Environmental Health class, we are assigned to do an "Eco-Chich" lifestyle change. For this, we need to make one aspect of our lives more environmentally friendly for 10 weeks. My SMART goal for this project is...

     I will use a cloth napkin for 2 out of 3 meals I eat in daily in my home for the next 10 weeks.

I chose this goal because cloth napkins reduce waste by not throwing away and wasting muliple paper napkins daily. Cloth napkins are environmentally friendly and sustainable...you use one, wash it, and reuse it. I chose to use cloth napkins because my grandmother always uses them, and I have always like the idea. Many restaraunts (such as Olive Garden and Grizzlies) use them, too. To me, now seemed like the perfect time to start using them in my own home.