Danielle Zilkha

Danielle Zilkha 

Journal 6

ENST 246

For this past weeks challenges, I struggled the most with trying to go for daily walks and adopting a “needs vs. wants” lifestyle approach. I managed to get myself to go on about one walk for 30 minutes and then I got bored. The other days I am truthfully not even sure that going for a walk even crossed my mind until seeing it each night on the EcoChallenge website. Regarding  adopting a “needs vs. wants” lifestyle approach, I am not surprised that I was generally very bad at this. This happens whenever I go to the supermarket, I buy food and other unnecessary items (like a new cooking pan, a pretty candle, different brands of the same food). On the bright side, I do try to avoid products that are sold in unnecessary packaging that are bad for the environment and difficult to dispose of. The community challenge I picked was to offer help to at least one person each day. This challenge was gladly not something that I had to consciously think about to do because I realized that I help people more than I thought. Especially regarding small things like turning off one of my roommates bedroom lights, doing one my roommates dishes when they are in a rush, refilling the Brita Filter, picking up my friends from class, etc. The challenge for this past week that I did best with was choosing organic ingredients. Almost each day I had at least one meal using organic ingredients. Now when I go food shopping, I read the product labels in addition to looking for the least expensive. After last week, I now only buy organic eggs, turkey bacon, chicken, and beef.

For this current week, the challenges I chose are: signing up to vote (completed that!), preserving water by taking five minute showers, driving less, and spending a few minutes learning about toxic chemicals that can be found in cleaning products. I have already started learning about toxic chemicals that can be found in cleaning products because after researching how to clean our carpet, I learned that it is important to let the room air out since many carpet cleaners contain chemicals that are unhealthy to breathe in.  A challenge that I usually would have difficulty with but have gotten so much better is taking shorter showers. I live with five other people and our hot water does not last very long so that also forces me to take pretty quick showers. 

For this weeks challenges, I chose two food, one community, and one health challenge. My community daily challenge is to offer help to at least one person each day. This morning, I helped my friend carry in her groceries from her car and I also cleaned my roommates dishes when they had to go to class. My (one-time) health challenge is to go get a check up for my annual physical. I am going to be doing this when I go home this weekend. The main challenges for this week were my food challenges. One of the one-time actions was to watch a food documentary which we watched for class last week and is also the reason (along with our guest speaker) for why I chose my next daily challenge: choosing organic ingredients. I entered in that I would enjoy at least one meal each day cooked with organic ingredients. Today (as my first day with this challenge) is actually a great start to this week because this morning I made my breakfast with organic eggs and organic turkey bacon. I also bought organic chicken at the supermarket which I will be making for dinner tonight. I really hope that this challenge will be an easy one for me to accomplish each day this week and in the future weeks. After speaking with Professor Stuhl and even a few of my friends, my desire to eat organic products has increased heavily and I want to slowly begin eliminating meat products from my everyday meals although I know that will be a great challenge for me. I choose to eat and buy organic ingredients this week because I think that will be a good start and something I want to incorporate into my daily life permanently, not just temporarily. I have recently learned that buying organic food is super important because it is more likely produced from smaller farms closer to where it is being sold and not to mention, it is overall healthier for you. Organic farming is also much better for the environment so I want to start being more aware of the food that I am buying and where it is coming from. I want to make sure that I am supporting local organic farms as supposed to larger produce industries that are using inhumane methods and not as eco-friendly resources to sell and produce their products. 

My last weeks challenges were to get healthy sleep, go paperless, and to use a reusable water bottle. I have been getting better about using a reusable water bottle as time goes on, also because my house has a britta-filter which makes it easier to fill up a glass as supposed to a plastic bottle. Going paperless is actually super easy for me now as all my classes are online and I have no need to print anything anymore. The only paper I use are my textbooks and assigned readings from books for my classes this semester. I struggled a lot with getting healthier sleep this week. I was only able to successfully get a healthy nights sleep once or twice because of my extremely bad habit of going to bed super late. Even if I manage to put myself to bed at a reasonable hour, I somehow manage to stay awake in bed for hours more just because I am not yet ready to close my eyes. This is a challenge that I know I will be working on for a while.

The daily challenges that I did this past week were to use a reusable water bottle. I chose to avoid sending two plastic water bottles to the landfill each day. I chose this one because I have always used plastic poland spring water bottles and kept them with me at all times. I was always aware of how big an issue it was that I used about three plastic water bottles a day but never really made the effort to stop doing it. I made that one of the first challenges I chose because I want to stop using plastic water bottles altogether. I still have a few cases of them left but I have been trying to not use them as frequently. I did better than I had thought I would because after buying a reusable water bottle, I focused much more on refilling that, instead of using my plastic ones. There were still some days that I used the plastic ones and was unsuccessful at that daily challenge. 

The one-time challenge that I chose was to find a local recycling depot near my house. I live right off campus and we do not have a recycling bin/dumpster.  This was a big problem, as my roommates and myself accumulated a lot of recycling materials especially after moving in. Now, we leave our cardboard boxes and recyclable materials by our front door and then we take it to a recycling dumpster on campus. 

The other daily challenge that I picked was to get healthy sleep. I chose to commit to getting 120 minutes of more sleep each night to achieve at least 7 hours. Unfortunately, I only succeeded doing this one night this past week. I knew when I chose it that it was going to be extra challenging for me but I still wanted to give it a shot because I know that I need to be getting extra sleep each night. 

The challenges that I picked for this upcoming week are to go paperless, use a reusable mug, and to reduce single-use disposables. I have already signed up to pay my house bills online as supposed to receiving them by mail. I have other utility bills that I still need to switch over so I want to make that a goal of mine for this week: to make them all paperless. My last challenge is to use a reusable mug. I am usually pretty good about using a reusable mug and enjoy them as well. I drink coffee every morning and rarely do I use a disposable one. In general, I want to be better at knowing how to limit the waste I generate and limiting single-use items. I try to use glassware whenever I eat food unless I am given paper or plastic from a restaurant.