Week the Last

Food
-I was planning on going four days in a row without eating meat, but wouldn’t you know it? Day 2 was Thanksgiving turkey dinner. And while I realized at the time that refusing the turkey would have truly shown my devotion to this cause, I couldn’t help giving in. I added on an extra day to the end of the week to make up for it, but I still feel guilty.
-The commons had a tofu stir fry dish on day 3, which I decided to take since I couldn’t find much else. I hadn’t had tofu in a very long time and I was surprised how tasty and satisfying it was. If anything, this experiment is reminding me of all these vegetarian options that I forgot about
-I’ve been learning that if you look hard enough, there’s always something vegetarian and good in the commons. I found in a small container in the salad bar a really good pasta salad with all of these vegetables in it. I know that if I was eating meat and didn’t have space to fill on my plate, I would have passed over it. I’m not sure why they hide all of these good vegetarian choices.
-They had chicken tacos on day 3, which I really wanted, but I resisted. I told the woman behind the counter that I wanted everything except for the tacos and she gave me an incredulous look and said “except the tacos???” I didn’t take it personally, but I found it interesting how she was sort of judging me for not eating the meat. I bet a lot of people have problems with that.

Trash
Going wasteless this week was somewhat of a disaster. By day 2 I had a fairly bad cold, and despite my using my cloth napkins, resisting gum, composting leftover food and reusing when I can, I couldn’t help but use lots and lots of tissues and packaging around allergy and cold medication. I went to the Cove to get tea with my own mug, but still had to throw away the wrapper around the tea bag and the receipt they forced me to take. I find it interesting that I seem to be wasting more while trying to go wasteless and being sick than I waste when I’m well and not trying to go wasteless.

Compost
I’m actually doing better every week with composting. My container is brimming with leftover food, banana peels and potato skins as I type this. Even some of my friends who live on my floor are coming by with some food to compost, which makes me feel good.

Epilogue
Doing this lifestyle project was no easy feat. A lot of things I consumed or wasted without thinking about I was forced to take for granted. Yet despite its difficulty, in another light, my life didn’t change significantly at all. Yes, it might have been hard to be conscious of not wasting, but the task was not nearly as daunting after I got used to it. I still had three satisfying meals a day, I still could go wherever my friends went and I could still do almost everything I had done in the past, though perhaps with some slight modifications. Although it wasn’t a piece of cake, ultimately the lifestyle project really didn’t change my lifestyle that much, which I think is a good thing. Being sustainable is not as unattainable or even as irritating as it seems. I think I’m going to stick with some of my strategies even after these three weeks are over. I’m going to continue to use my cloth napkin, I won’t ever use the Styrofoam takeout again and I won’t always eat meat whenever it’s available to me. I will going to go back to chewing gum, I decided, but I’m going to start buying the kind that you pop out from the one package like Dentyne Ice instead of the stick gums from Extra that are each individually wrapped in foil and again in paper. I never thought how wasteful that was before. So yeah, I think this three-week experiment has really shown me some useful tools that I can use for the rest of my college career and even my entire life. In the words of will.i.am, it’s a new day!