Trial 1

Being that I do not have a car, a functioning heater, nor any good ideas for the "Create Your Own" category, I chose to the options of trying to eliminate garbage, reduce my use electricity/water, and eat more efficiently.
Garbage was actually relatively easy for me to do. The only garbage I really produce comes from foods I buy off campus and keep in my room, in addition to paper towels, solo cups, and napkins. For these days I made it a point to eat all three meals a day so that I wouldn't be as hungry for the snacks around my room. This prevention was probably my greatest contribution to this portion of the project because it enabled me to consume less disposable items as a whole. I did, however, throw away a Solo cup, a couple napkins, and a empty Fruit Snacks package. Even though I was not able to completely eliminate garbage this week, I definatley greatly cut down on my rate of throwing things away, and the three things I did throw away were also recycled.
Electricity and water were a couple things that I did not realize I use/waste as much as I do. Ironically, and totally unplanned, I recently misplaced my cell phone so the charging and use of my phone was automatically taken out of the equation, which is a daily part of my life and thus decreased my energy usage not being there. Keeping the lights off, unplugging my clock, turning my fan off and opening a window, along with opening the blinds were all easy things I could do that decreased my usage dramatically. The only thing that was slightly difficult was cutting back the use of my laptop. In part, this was because I had to do assignments and look things up online, but just as much so is the terrible habit I have of constantly going online to check my email, facebook, and surf the web when I'm bored (which made me realize how unnecessary some waste is. The way that I dealt with that was to just leave my room and go to a friends, or even better go outside. The water portion was super easy for me. I just cut my shower time down by about half, kept the sink off when brushing my teeth instead of running which is a bad habit, but drank a good amount of water from the Ruter water fountain since I was also trying to cut back on my garbage output.
Eating efficiently for me was probably the hardest part, mostly because I am used to not regulating what kind of foods and how much I eat, and just eat until I pretty feel content. For the most part I get most of my eating done at the Commons, which is supposed to be very flexible to people's diets. Vegetarians, especially vegans, must have a very frustrating time with eating there. Upon walking into the commons the first time I basically just went ahead and put a little of everything on the salad bar on my plate. I drank some water and some juice, and tried to eat a vege-burger but really did not like it. This basically was what I ate for the 2 days of being as vegetarian as I could. I plan to look much more closely at what is available as a vegetarian option so that I can broaden my food horizons a little better.
Overall, I feel that already I am a little more aware of how much I waste, how easy it is to prevent a lot of it, and how I personally actually do contribute to environmental issues.