Week 1

The jump from a vegetarian diet to a vegan one is a much larger jump than a meat eating diet to one of a vegetarian. The number of temptations are endless. Three days in a row, I made it all the way until dinner time, when I couldn’t say no to a few M and M’s or a piece of cornbread. It is absolutely shocking just how many of our foods have dairy products in them that don’t really need it. The worst realization for me was finding that one of my all time favorite foods, Poptarts, have gelatin in them. Many of my comfort foods, or the foods that never fail to make me smile, now have to be cut out of my diet. For even just two days a week, this has proven trying. After the end of the week, I came up with a new dietary plan to improve the environment. At this time, veganism does not seem like a viable option for me. Therefore, I will focus my efforts on decreasing food waste. For this I will only eat when I am hungry and will eat everything on my plate. The first two days of doing this have been tough, but doable. My other project is water and electricity conservation. I have discontinued my warm shower for a cooler temperature and shaved with the excess water caught in the bottom of the tub by the plug. My shower times have been cut in half and I only keep one little lamp on in my room, and only when I need it. Compared to cutting dairy and egg products out of my diet, trimming the fat off my excess energy and water consumption isn’t too tough at all. It does not seem like it will be hard to incorporate the changes in water and energy consumption into my daily life.

"Out of the Box" Lifestyle Project

So this past week I began my Lifestyle project. For my project I am attempting to reuse commonly thrown away items by making them into something useful. I have begun by reducing my personal waste and keeping any items that are not already recyclable (paper and plastic) or food products. So far I have a pretty big pile of plastic bags, cardboard boxes, and a variety of other things I would normally throw away. I went and spoke to the manager at Mattress Firm which is just off of University and they agreed to give me their old cardboard boxes (which are really huge since they have mattresses in them) and I'm going to pick that up this weekend. My initial idea was to try to make a chair out of cardboard. I will probably still try to do this but I have begun sketching out ideas about how to make a chair and I think it might be harder than I thought. I'm also faced with the problem of trying to make the chair efficiently because it would defeat the purpose of trying to be sustainable if I ended up having to go buy a bunch of stuff like glue that is not very environmentally friendly. Because of this I am trying to think of a design that would not require the use of something to hold the separate pieces of cardboard (i.e. lincoln log style). In addition to that, the chair needs to actually be functional. My testing process will be that I should be able to sit in the chair without worrying that it will fall apart or bend down. Luckily, I am not that heavy... I am also keeping my other waste products so I am trying to incorporate those too. If I successfully put together a chair I might attempt to make a small bed-stand or something else like that out of extras. As much as I would like to be successful with this I'm pretty doubtful that it will actually be functional but I will definitely give it my best shot! If you have any ideas for how to make cardboard sturdy or any design ideas, shoot me a comment or something =)

week 1...

For my lifestyle project I decided to reduce my electricity and water needs, leave my car at home, and to eat efficiently. The most challenging part of this project has been eating efficiently, I have been a vegetarian for three years, but have never tried being vegan. I thought that being a vegan would not be too difficult, but I was wrong. I did not realize how many things I ate contained dairy products until last week. I also did not do any research before changing my diet and thus was left with minimal food options especially when eating in the Commons. I actually ended up getting really sick because I did not get enough nutrition. Part of the reason I think my body did not respond well to my diet change was because of how much I exercise. Being a member of the women’s soccer team; we had a tough week of practices and games and I think I simply did not get enough food in me to stay strong. My coach and the athletic trainers actually got really frustrated with me because of this project, and one of the days that I had planned on being vegan I was forced to eat non-vegan food, because it was game day. The trainers and my coach actually signed me up to see the nutritionist on campus because they were so worried about my health. I am doing much better now and have been doing some research to check out other vegan food options so that way I can eat efficiently and stay healthy, and hopefully not get sick this week!

First Week- Let's start composting!

I spent this past week researching how best to compost in the containers that we have now. Thankfully the website for these is quite helpful. Also, I checked the state of the compost bins now. They are actually doing much better than I would have expected, although they need a larger volume of compostable material to function properly. Moreover, there was some trash in them, but thankfully not very much. The biggest issues with the compost containers at this point are that things need to be broken up better, and more dry materials need to be added. I hope to solve this by adding unbleached cardboard, paperboard, and some of the dried weeds from the garden. It helps to have a bit of good compost in the bin to speed up the process as well, so I brought some compost from home.
This week I also did two presentations, like the one Kira did, about recycling and composting in order to increase awareness. I am also planning a sort of "Compost Awareness Day" where I plan to have a trash bin in the Commons tray return area for people to put their compostable food scraps. During lunch I will table outside to inform people about composting, posing to them question how much do we waste that could be composted? To determine this, I will weigh the trash bin at the end of the day in order to collect this data. I scheduled this day to be Thursday, November 12th, and I am hoping to have some SEAK members involved. At this point I do not know how I will show the campus that data, but perhaps a campus wide or poster would suffice. Furthermore, I need to figure out how to move the trash bin after Thursday and where I could weigh it.

and so it begins

For my sustainability project, I am creating a shade garden for native plants, and possible a few vegetables, next to the greenhouse. The idea is to show people that you can grow plants everywhere, even when they don’t have full sunlight. The first step was to determine how many hours of sun this area gets, I have estimated this to be less than three hours in the winter. which could pose a few problems based on my preliminary research, but the area should get more sun in the spring and summer so there should be no problems. I have started researching online about plants that can thrive in the shade and will continue this research through next week. Additionally, I have talked some with Bob Mathis, Associate Vice President for Facilities and Campus Service, about this and he has agreed to help me. This is more of a long term project, and wont be completed by the end of this class. By the end of this class, I expect to have a list of plants, and possibly some seedlings in the greenhouse to be planted in the spring. I am not sure if any of the plants can be planted at this point in the year, so I will be looking into that. I plan on using books and an online catalog of native texas plants to make the final decisions on plants. I will also look at landscape design to make sure the area is aesthetically pleasing.

End of week one!

Well, my plans changed a tad this week. I first realized that I only needed to do the project 2 days the first week, not the 4 I initially thought. So I decided to do the technology fast on Tuesday/Thursday, and the water reduction/waste reduction on Wednesday/Saturday.
Water reduction definitely has been the easiest of the three. While collecting our baseline data, I noted I took approximately 8 minute showers, which I deemed to be pretty darn fast compared to many other girls my age. However, my suitemates and I have a habit of turning on the bathtub faucet whenever we're using the toilet, as to reduce any potential embarassment. I decided to just suck it up and stop doing that for Wednesday and today. Really, I didn't realize that while it made me feel more comfortable for those couple of minutes, I was wasting SO MUCH water. The bathtub faucet pumps out water at such a rapid rate that I guess I never processed it. Also, I always practiced turning the sink off while brushing my teeth, but every once in a while, I got really lazy and just left it on. I'm determined by the end of this project to have perfected doing that naturally.
Trash reduction has been moderately difficult. Like Dr. Van Horn mentioned, gum is my biggest challenge! That, and the little packets of sugar I put in my oatmeal every morning. While it's terribly tempting to just ignore those, because they're small and seemingly insignificant, I realized I can totally live without gum and sugar packets for a day. Instead, I put salt in my oatmeal which is comparably tasty, and I brush my teeth more often (which probably defeats the purpose of my water reduction, but at least I'm thinking of alternatives to gum, yeah?)
And finally, living without my cell phone and laptop has actually proven to be extremely liberating! While I still instinctively reach for my pocket to check the time, or want to check my mysouthwestern in the mornings, I think this part of my lifestyle project will be extremely beneficial. Luckily, this week has been absolutely gorgeous outside, and instead of going back to my dorm to read MLIA's between classes, I go outside and read or people watch. And not having my cell phone has actually paid off a couple of times when I really wanted to relax and not stress about the calendar stored in my phone or people calling me while I'm napping. While my mother loathes the fact that she can't get in instant contact with me, I think she'll come around if I talk it up to her enough. Of course, it's posed some problems as well. Tuesday night, I had to stay up till midnight to wait and turn my laptop on so I could do some homework I forgot about that needed to be turned in online and I had saved on here. Fortunately, that was a result of my forgetfulness, so with better planning, that should be avoidable. And, it's not like I wouldn't have stayed up past midnight anyway. However, I cringe at the thought of Thanksgiving break when I'm dying to talk to my friends from here while I'm home and I won't be able to. No pain, no gain, right?

I hope everyone's week went as well as mine did. Every keep an open mind, I think this project is an awesome eye opener :)

Initiating the Inevitable

Ookay guys, so tomorrow is going to be day 1 of my technology purge, as I'm calling it. I think I'm probably one of the first to start their lifestyle project...I'm actually really nervous about all of this! I'm going to be doing the technology fast (no cell phone or laptop- I can do homework submission online and once a day I can check my school email ONLY, and only on one of the computer lab computers), waste reduction and water reduction projects. We'll see how this goes. I expect for only the technology purge to be difficult, as I'm decently aware of my other uses, at least I think I do? I'm excited to see how different I am than I think. This week, I'll be without the essentials Tuesday-Thursday and Saturday. I'm probably going to get shot for this by, well my mother for one, but I'm also in UPC, and we're putting on the Bob Schneider homecoming concert and I'm on the team for planning. I'm fully blaming this project if I for "some reason" don't show up for work days :)
To be completely honest, I'm going to need all the help I can get with going without my phone and facebook. If you see me, shoot me an encouraging word please!
God speed with all of your endeavors!