Edaena Maldonado-Vizueth

Sorry this is a bit late. This week's challenges were a bit hard! Though, I feel like promoting a sharing economy is something that I have been raised to do, and was inspired to write about. These past couple of weeks have been really hard on me and after our sustainability class today, I could tell that my professor and a lot of my classmates were also going through it, so I thought it would be nice to bring in doughnuts for the class. Sharing is something that has never come easy to me, but I always feel good after I share. This especially applies too food. I feel like I really needed that feeling today too. I am also excited to potentially join a community garden and share the hopefully bountiful harvest while connecting with the earth. I have a lot to learn about gardening be first, but sharing is pretty cool.

I have been keeping track of my spending through an app for a little bit. Ever since I started earning money, I have been keeping tabs on where my money goes to. I have found out that 1/2 of my spending goes to restaurants and food. I have come to a point where I need to really put in the effort and time into meal planning and prepping soon can't not only save money, and promote my health but also reduce my global footprint. I am in the works of reducing my eating out to once a week. It's very hard to make food when I'm already very hungry, so I am going to prepare more snacks. The rest of my money goes to gas, and loans. It would be beneficial to also reduce my car use when I can. I do not spend much money on clothes or other miscellaneous things. 

Public transport is something I always use when going to Portland if I can help it. Not only does it safe me in gas and parking, I get to take a breather and let someone else hold the steering wheel for a bit. Pre-pandemic, that used to be at least twice a week. Post-pandemic, it is only once a week. As for rides, I am always carpooling with my boyfriend. We go every where together, except for work. Though, when we worked together, we would carpool then too. With the increase in gas prices, I would like to bike to the nearest store whenever we're in need of groceries. With gas prices being so high, we try not to travel more than we need to. But we still end up driving a lot. Mostly for work. In a month I typically drive 230+ miles. I wonder how much of that I can reduce by using a bike for leisure, and shorter distances. 

This week, I checked in on my neighborhood association. It's called the Johnson City tenant collective, and I get newsletters every week but them. I live in as little mobile home park (technically it's own city) and have been living here for the past 16 years. My family continues to stay here because the rent is very inexpensive but the policies around here are very suffocating. Policies include not being allowed to own dogs, more than one cat, more than two vehicles, and more than 5 house decorations displayed on them exterior, and being in jeopardy of being evicted from the space, the tenants of this city are under high scrutiny by the property owners. The tenant collective was founded recently, and have already taken the owners to court to fight one of the policies and remain housed. The collective has also created more opportunities for us as neighbors to become acquainted with each other. I am appreciative of the collective, and they make the property owners sweat as little bit, getting a taste of their own medicine for once.

This week was super hard when it came to rejecting plastic bags at the store. I like to buy most of my foods in bulk, but I never know what else I can use as a bag to fill up my grains. I know that the Iady we watched who did the ted talk on living a zero waste lifestyle, uses cloth bags. part of mets worried the supermarket wouldn't like. Especially during pandemic days, I feel a little nervous about others getting weirded out by me. Though, the why bother article helps me reflect on my fears and focus on doing my part. Although I did not choose the toilet tank bank option, I do want to install them into the toilets of my house. I have been super water conscious and only use what I need for cleaning, showers, and dishes. I've also continued to use my reusable water bottle. This week has been pretty brutal and sad. But doing what I can makes me feel better.

I chose to do the weekly meal planning because that has been a skill I have always wanted to keep up with. I tend to get frustrated because of the amount of pressure I place on myself to achieve "perfect" meal planning strategies where the food tastes good, can be safely stored and is healthy with a variety of nutrients and vitamins. When those goals aren't being met, I get discouraged and opt for eating out more. What we are being taught in class continues to remind me that obliging by the needs of the planet also benefits my own health. Though something that has been hard in the past is finding time to cook all of the preconceived meals. Maybe I would be better off to do one meal a day? Something else that would help is sitting down to brainstorm with my partner because as a woman raised in traditional gender roles, I have accepted taking the burden of the endless cycle of thinking of what to cook for dinner. Thankfully, my mom-in-law cooks most days and she feeds us, I will need to hone in on my meal planning and prepping skills before moving out. While we are at home, my boyfriend and I eat all the leftovers in the house because my mom-in-law gets tired of eating the same food everyday and gets tired of clutter, she will discard a lot of food if it makes her feel better. We try and talk her out of throwing away the food, and she concedes a lot of the time. I am very thankful for the time we still have with our parents.

For this week's eco-challenge I decided to re-valuate my global footprint. I have done this test before, and I remember the results being a lot less severe than what I got this time around. My results said that if everyone in the world lived like me, we would need 2.1 earths to sustain us. I gagged! I think my footprint mostly comes from the amount of meat and dairy I eat, as well as the distance I have to travel for my job. I am not someone that buys a lot of things, but I will buy a lot of food. I think that my eco-change really helps me with my footprint because I do enjoy eating a lot of animal products, so I am grateful to be required to practice more mindfulness towards my animal product consumption, as well as my footprint in general. Also exciting is that the change in a one day a week vegetarianism will be followed by members of my household, so that is even more people participating in this mindfulness. I am going to record this in my sustainability journal as well, and re-evaluate my score in one year, after maintaining and hopefully expanding the amount of dinners/meals I eat with at least no meat and possibly no dairy products.

To be honest,  I chose to start the sustainability journal because it was one of the more convenient actions to choose from this week. I did not anticipate for the eco challenges to require my own will to seek out information. I thought that there would be a list of convenient links to look through, so I was a bit caught off there, but I think it will be nice to have a record of my sustainability journey. I guess this is a reflection of how I have previously tackled sustainability. The lack of convenience prevents me from participating in sustainable behaviors. I want to change that, I want to learn, and put effort into this, and help others learn and put effort. This weeks reading has helped my doomer attitude in reminding myself that my actions do make an impact on this world and they are not in vain. I am going to try and make my own recycled journal for this task, but for now I will continue to write electronically. I am also excited to fill up the pages so I am going to come back to the challenges for session one and record my progress.