lifestyle project

Lifestyle Project Week One

Before starting Lifestyle Project I would never thought that our normal everyday activities would make such a big impact on environmental footprint. Food consumption, for example, requires tremendous amount of energy, physical labor, and water just to produce a tiny fraction of food. Therefore, in attempting to participate in this project to reduce my environmental footprint, I decided to work on food consumption, waste generation, and car usage all simultaneously for three weeks.

Food consumption is probably the hardest part of the project because I am a regular meat eater. I do not remember the last time I had not eaten meat for a day. Instead of going cold turkey vegetarian, I decided to just cut down to being a pescatatrian for three weeks. Instead of red meat I would substitute seafood and lots of vegetables and fruits. I was never a fan of chicken so chicken will not be on my diet at all for these three weeks. My rice and carbs consumption will stay the same because there is no way I can cut down on that.

Waste generation would probably not be that difficult since the project days are pretty reasonable. However, I do tend to buy stuff without thinking and would end up with piles of trash around the house; it could be anything from potato chip bags to makeup boxes and/or clothing bags from the mall. This is something I really need to work on. Instead of buying stuff without thinking, I need to think ahead and plan my days accordingly without generating any trash at all on those project days. I will only buy things that I can recycle and if not I would not buy anything at all unless it is for personal hygiene.

Car usage is probably the easiest to do since public transportation is easy accessible in my area. I will cut down driving by not driving at all on project days. Instead, I will use public transportation to school and other places around Long Beach since CSULB offers free pass to anywhere in Long Beach. On weekdays I usually do not go anywhere other than school so it is quite easy just to take the bus around.

Monday October 10, 2011

Today is the first day of the project. I am excited since I have never attempted to become a “vegetarian” at all. Just thought of it already challenge my brain. While being a vegetarian occupied my mind the most, I do realize that I have other two lifestyle categories to work on as well. Conserving waste is not as easy as I thought. The first thing I had this morning was a banana, and this makes me feel uneasy because after I finished my banana I do not know whether it is ok to throw away the peel. But I figured since I already purchased this days before I did not contribute to waste generating on project day, or at least I hope so. Going to school was quite a breeze. I walked to the nearest bus stop which is only about two blocks away from where I live. The bus goes straight all the way to school without me having to make any transfer to different buses. I also took the bus back home since I had only one class on Monday; and I skipped lunch for today. For dinner I had fried fish with ginger and soy sauce. This is something I’ve always loved so it this is a win win situation. So far so great; I feel great that I survived the first day with a breeze.

Tuesday October 11, 2011

Today is also school day for me so I took the same bus to school again. For lunch I had cup noodle. This is the challenge: after I finished my lunch I realized that I had to throw the Styrofoam cup away. Although I did great on the part that I did not consume any meat I still messed up about my waste generation. I did, however, use a reusable water bottle instead of the plastic bottle that I had always bought at school. Although the water bottles at school are recyclable I still think that it is better to just reuse everything I can since it does generate energy to recycle materials. I took a different route going home today. I carpooled with my husband because I figure it gets quite dark after I got off of my last class. My husband got off work at 5p.m. and it took him about 40 minutes to get to CSULB so I waited for about 40 minutes at school until he picked me up. When we got home we had grilled fish and stir fried tofu with veggies for dinner. I felt like my change of diet affect his as well but he has been very supportive of this project. I am proud to say that I survived the first week of this lifestyle project with not many problems at all.