Vinny Taylor

This week I started a sustainability journal. It's been really handy for writing down thoughts on sustainability and practicing mindfulness. It's also helpful to have a place to put ideas/recipes and other resources.

This week I got a mushroom grow kit for pink oyster mushrooms. The videos about mycelium we watched a couple weeks ago really inspired me, and this week my grow kit finally came in the mail. So far I've had it for a little less than a week and it's already sprouting mushrooms. I'm really glad I got it, it's been a really fun project related to my eco change and it's been rewarding to see the mushrooms grow. I really wanted to grow something for my project, but with the snow and not having a lot of time to set up a bigger balcony garden, this has been a good solution. It's very simple, you just mist the mushroom brick and make sure it's got enough moisture and doesn't get too much sunlight. It's very beginner friendly. I also started growing my green onion scraps and they've been growing in nicely. I'm excited to make a stir fry with the mushrooms and green oninos once they grow enough.

This week I cleaned up a bus stop by picking up the trash that had accumulated. It was kind of remarkable how 5 minutes of my time made such a difference to the bus stop's appearance. Hopefully this small change made people more likely to use the bus stop.

This week I watched The Story of Bottled Water. It was really interesting learning about the breakdown of manufacturing demand. It made me reflect on some of the other industries that are particularly culpable to manufacturing demand. As I've been working on eating more sustainably for my eco change, I've noticed more and more diets and wellness products that employ manufacturing demand. They begin with claims about how unhealthy the average diet is (which is true in part), and then go on to make claims about this product or diet decreasing your risk of cancer, helping you lose weight, increasing your metabolism, increasing your brain function etc. It can all be very anxiety inducing. I really appreciated that this video gave me a name to put to this phenomena that I'd been noticing. It makes it easier to think critically and not get swept up in the marketing scheme. I wonder what advertising would look like if environmentally harmful products like plastic water bottles were required to have warning labels like cigarettes. It could be an interesting environmental campaign idea to create these warning labels and raise awareness/demotivate people to turn to these harmful products.

This week’s reading really made me reflect on the impact I make by using single-use plastics. Generally I try my best to avoid them, or reuse them in some way, but I realized one source of single/use plastics that I use most regularly is to-go cups. I regularly get coffee/tea in single use containers, I probably get a coffee to-go 2-4 times a week. That means I’m using anywhere from 10-18 single-use containers each month. I thought about not going to coffee shops at all this week, but I realized that that change wouldn’t be sustainable for me. Getting coffee at cafe’s is something I really enjoy and on the days where I’d get it to go, I’m usually running late or am too low energy to make my own coffee, so I decided to ask the baristas to fill a reusable travel cup instead. It added a little bit of time to my routine since I couldn’t order ahead from starbucks when I was really running late, but it was a good medium between making it myself on early mornings and using a to-go cup. I’ll definitely be continuing this.

This week I reduced my animal product consumption by eating 2 out of the three meals of my day without meat, and 1 meal out of the day without meat, dairy, or eggs. In this challenge I actually found that I eat mostly vegetarian anyway. I almost never buy meat at the grocery store, I really only eat meat when I'm eating out. Making the switch from the non-vegetarian option to the vegetarian option was overall pretty easy for me. I did mess up twice this week, I got two meals with chicken in them. I also feel like I sort of copped out on the vegan meal. I just switched my breakfast to cereal with oat milk. I think if I continued to try and eat more vegan meals I would want to get more adventurous with my recipes and ingredients. I think another challenge I might try for myself next week will be cutting out all food packaging by making the majority of my meals at home and making sure any meals I eat out come in reusable dishware.

This week I got all of my fresh produce from the farmers market. My goal was to reduce the amount of food I bought at my closest grocery store, and reduce the amount of packaging waste that normally comes with the groceries I buy. Instead of buying the salad mix I use that comes in plastic packaging, I bought fresh greens from the farmers market. I want to make this an ongoing goal. Not only did I reduce my plastic use, I bought local, supporting low transportation. I also got to enjoy myself at the farmers market and get some really delicious produce. The kale that I got definitely tasted better than the kale I’ve gotten previously at the conventional grocery store, which I was not expecting. The downsides were that I had to walk farther to get to the farmers market, and I had to split my grocery shopping into two places. The main obstacles I keep running into when it comes to making sustainable changes end up being time and convenience. (I completely forgot to take a picture at the farmer market ): )

For my eco challenge last week I watched an episode of Our Planet about fresh water and started a freezer bag for vegetable scraps so I can make veggie stock. The episode of Our Planet was really fascinating. One thing I learned was about how climate change can affect lake currents. When global temperatures rise the water mixes less. The water at bottom of the lake doesn't rise to the top. This can reduce oxygen flow and make it less hospitable for living organisms in deep lakes.