New Goal Old Goal Evaluation

My 3 previous goals were

"1. According to the PB&J campaign (http://www.pbjcampaign.org/), consuming any plant based diet can help reduce the agricultural impact. I plan on consuming less meats, from 4 meals a week to 2.5 (3 every other week).

2. No more vending machine food. Between two majors and work on campus, I tend to enjoy a snack from the vending machines when I don't have enough time to make a meal or purchase something on campus. In order to do this, on Monday's, Tuesday's, and Thursday's I will wake up early to make my own packed lunch (most likely pb & j) in order to fulfill this goal. Wednesday's, being the hump day (you know, the rough day in the middle of the week?), I will plan to treat myself to a nice lunch on campus but only if I successfully reached my goals the previous week. This will serve as a personal incentive to live a greener life.
3. Most days I play an electric guitar for about 1.5 hours through a 150 Watt amplifier. This leads to most of my electrical needs since I don't watch TV and limit internet browsing on my computer to an hour every day. That being said, I pledge to only use the amp if I am jamming with the band. When I am practicing scales and chords at home I will play without an amp, in an attempt to reduce my electricity consumption."


So far in this project I have been successful with all 3, with goals #2 & #3 being the most consistent each week.
- I've been eating meat less than 3 times a week on average.
- I only visited the vending machine once sense goals have been put into action.
- I hardly ever play guitar with the amp on while in my apartment anymore.

That being said it is time for a new goal.
My new goal is to cut back on the amount of paper I consume weekly.
- In order to do this I will no longer be taking notes for classes with pen and paper but rather on the computer.
- At work I will reserve the habitual act of printing everything in order to cut back on paper consumption.
- I will use my kindle more when purchasing new reading material.

Mushroom Packaging?

This is a video I found during a late night TED Talk watching-spree. The video features Eben Bayer who is a environmental activist that is selling the idea of using mushrooms as a new way to package items that need to be shipped.

Eben Bayer has many other types of projects, which are featured on his blog http://ebenbayer.com/, but his biggest contribution I could find is this mushroom plastic concept.

Overall I agree with Eben on the fact that Styrofoam  is very bad for the environment. Now using mushrooms on the other hand is pretty far fetched, although I am open to the idea. For whatever reason I get the feeling of ordering some clothes on Amazon and receiving a moldy package full of mushrooms and wet clothes.... But if I am proven wrong on the idea, this would be great both for the environment but also the retailer because they can green-up their brand by providing this service

East coast V West coast green mentalities

Over the last week and weekend I had the opportunity to explore our nations capital.. and what a wonderful, beautiful city!






Being my first time to the east side of the nation I have to say it was quite a different vibe from the PNW.
I had always heard that the east side of our nation wasn't the most environmentally conscience part of the world, and I wanted to put that notion to the test!

In order to test to see if an east coast city was green or not, I made it a mission to look out for recycling bins and other indicators of greenness within the city. After spending half a week exploring the city, it was pretty hard to find any recycling bins anywhere!

Most of the time I found single trashcans, like the one below, inside most places.



For the first day and a half, I did not find a single recycling bin ANYWHERE!

But when I took the metro, I finally did find a recycling bin. This bin however was for "Newspapers only."



A little disappointing to say the least.
Continuing the trend of pro-environmental let downs was in a restaurant I ate at near the International Spy Museum, and this one was the most pathetic yet amusing. The restaurant strongly encouraged recycling on its packaging, and even had signs that told customers to "please recycle." Funny enough, there wasn't any recycling bins anywhere. Maybe I was just confused, but the sole-sign for recycling was located above a garbage can.... It says "recycle cans and bottles" but yet there was nowhere in the restaurant to do just that!





Although it was difficult to find green-initiatives within the city, throughout the week there was actually some positive pro-green initiatives that did show in action!

Recycling near the Smithsonian.

Recycling near a park



Some basic stuff, right? There was one really cool idea the city had that needs to be shared and optimized in every city.. Bike sharing, where consumers can rent a bike at stations strategically placed throughout the city, where highly utilized by both citizens and tourist alike.


For being a so-n-so green-minded city, D.C. has a lot of ground to make up compared to the west coast initiatives towns like Bellingham and Seattle have in place. That being said, I thought it was ironic how large and spectacular the EPA building is in D.C.

Written Assignment #2 - Degree Deodorant

Like any typical guy, cosmetics are seldom used for my daily life. If anything, the most consistent cosmetic I use is my Degree Deodorant which I apply before school and after work outs.

 

Luckily Degree Deodorant won't be killing me anytime soon. The ewg.org website has only issued this brand of deodorant a score of 4, with the overall hazard ending up just below moderate. 

There are some ingredients of concern however, mainly fragrance and BMT. 

Fragrance is a worry because of Ecotoxicology, Allergies/immunotoxicity, Irritation (skin, eyes, or lungs), Miscellaneous, and Organ system toxicity. The price of smelling good just became more than $3 at Walmart

According to https://depts.washington.edu/soundcit/data/forget-the-fragrance/, 

A single “fragrance” in a product is really a mixture of several dozen to several hundred chemicals, with many classified as toxic — none of which are required to be disclosed to consumers. Exposure to fragrances has been linked to asthma, migraines and other negative impacts.

Currently I haven't experience any asthma or migraines lately so I'm fine with continuing to smell not bad.  

Next on the list is BHT. Cancer, Developmental/reproductive toxicity, Allergies/immunotoxicity, Irritation (skin, eyes, or lungs), and Organ system toxicity are all included in the BHT package. 

However, if the USA FDA allows small doses of BHT into food additives then I am not too worried about it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butylated_hydroxytoluene) Especially sense I am not consuming degree by the spoonful, and the label strictly states "not for internal use."

Overall I am glad EWG has a website that shows the chemicals we apply to ourselves daily.