Ava Miel

This week I researched which foods use the most water in their production. I learned that we actually consume the most water through the foods we eat instead of things like long showers or using the toilet, though reducing the use of those helps as well. In terms of unprocessed foods, beef takes the most water to make, with one 6 ounce steak needing 674 gallons of water. To my surprise, nuts also need lots of water, especially almonds, cashews, and pistachios. Rice also takes a lot of water to grow as well as wheat and corn, all of which are staple foods. A singular egg takes 52 gallons of water to produced. I also learned that there are 3 kinds of "water footprint" which is the water usage, being blue, green, and grey. Blue is surface and ground water, green is rainwater, and grey is water used to dilute waste to maintain water quality. I had never heard of the last one before and didn't know that that was a tactic. When it comes to animal products, animals raised on farms where they get their food through foraging use mostly green water, meaning that their waste is much less than farms with supply their animals with corn or soy feed. Through doing this challenge I feel much more empowered in terms of knowing the processes that go into making my food because I realized that I was assuming that water use was just about watering crops/keeping animals hydrated when it's much deeper than that. This is also yet another reason why I would like to try eating less meat. Doing this challenge made me reflect on droughts around the world, like the water crisis in Cape Town, South Africa, where residents of this major city were thought to reach a point where water would be rationed out to them in mere gallons. That a single 6 ounce steak needs almost 700 gallons of water to produce makes me realize how much we in the US are eating foods that are maybe not necessary or indulgent in terms of water usage and how this is affecting the planet and other countries. We need to find more eco-friendly ways to produce the food that we eat or otherwise stop eating those foods altogether. It would be challenging to give up eating meat or even just eat it less, but knowing that it would make a difference in hundreds of gallons feels tangible and significant.

This week I watched Episode 1 of Season 19 of Native Report from PBS about food sovereignty. The episode covered three food sovereignty efforts, being a restaurant owned by an Objiwe man serving Indigenous-inspired dishes, a foodshare run by Indigenous Food Network that grows food so local Native American communities have better access to it, and a new elementary school curriculum that teaches children Indigenous values about the land and how to grow and harvest native crops. I felt particularly inspired by Odia Wood Krueger's teaching curriculum as her booklet is similar to my Eco Change project where the end goal is to create a booklet with recipes for people to follow. The teacher who implemented the curriculum explains that her students were more engaged by it because it involved hands-on activities, and I hope to achieve the same with my booklet because it encourages people to create with their hands and have a tangible result from their work. I also think that the efforts of the foodshare are successful because they are sidestepping capitalist food networks like grocery stores by growing their own food and providing for the community, creating their own sustainable policies that do not need to be overseen by the American government. Watching this documentary only felt challenging in the sense that it makes me sad to think that efforts need to be made for food sovereignty because our current growing and harvesting system is so broken that it is destroying the Earth without even feeding everyone. However, the documentary was extremely hopeful in its tone and it made me wonder if there were places in Portland like the restaurant Miijim to go to where I can learn more about Indigenous food and support Native American businesses. I learned about Javelina, the first (and perhaps only) Indigenous restaurant in Portland. They are currently closed as they move to their new location, but I would like to visit them in May when they open again and they are not actually far from my house.

This week I decided to naturally heat the floor that I live on/myself since it usually becomes very cold and I turn on my heaters a lot to get warm since its convenient and immediate. I live in a basement so opening the windows is unfortunately not an option to get warmer, but I was able to open up the blinds to let the sunlight in which heated up the rooms, sometimes to the point of actually being too hot. Nighttime was more challenging, but the methods I found most effective were staying by the oven when I was making food, taking warm showers, and putting on more layers or getting up every so often to move my body and get my circulation going. I would also sometimes leave to go outside when it was too cold and soak up the warm sun, which allowed me to evade using the heaters completely and made me feel better than staying inside. A definite challenge of this week was not turning to the heater. It has become a habit for me when I come home to turn it on to get warmer, since other methods of getting warm takes more time and I find some emotional comfort in being warm so quickly. However, the rewards of this challenge also offered me other forms of emotional comfort, like opening the blinds more which makes the space seem less dreary. In addition, I have heard that sitting next to heaters like I often do can cause permanent burns on your skin, which I have noticed signs of in myself, so this week was a good excuse to begin leaving that habit behind. Finally, by heating naturally I felt more peaceful knowing that I was using less energy, not only making the energy bill smaller, but also not using something that wasn’t necessary. In the future, I would like to use the heater only if absolutely necessary, like in the winter, and at lower temperatures than before.

This week, I chose to do the Personal Waste Audit and collect my non-recyclable and compostable waste in order to raise my awareness about the kinds and amount of waste that I produce. I collected approximately half a bag of trash and found that the type of plastic waste I produce the most is from bulk items rather than individually packaged ones. I am often guilty of buying individually packaged items for convenience, but grocery items that I bought this week such as cheese, bagels, and tangerines all came in plastic packaging. I never put as much consideration into the packaging of items that weren’t individually wrapped, since it seemed like the waste produced from these products would be lesser. A big challenge of this action was not throwing everything away right away because it felt like it was cluttering up my space. Keeping it with me made me feel a sense of disgust, but by reflecting on that disgusted feeling I realized that the origin of it was actually a sense of guilt because I was subconsciously aware that if the trash was not clean enough to be in my home, that it was harming the environment as well. The Systems Thinking Iceberg Model from Session 1 of our textbook definitely came into play during my experience for this project. I realized that I was using a lot of plastic, which led to me realizing that I use more plastic when I do not pay attention to the packaging of bulk items and when I am buying for convenience. This led me to understand that I was not paying attention to the packaging of bulk items because I was making the assumption that they left a smaller footprint and that I was buying for convenience to save time. However, because of this activity I now realize that bulk foods can still leave a large plastic footprint and that the convenience of plastic packaging is not worth the harm that it inflicts on the planet and the disgust that comes from when the plastic must be disposed of. The rewarding thing about this experience was gaining more awareness and control over what I choose to purchase. For produce, instead of prepackaged tangerines, I will bring my own bags and pick out the produce that is not prepackaged. I can also substitute some of the foods I bought, like pre-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, for the raw ingredients and make bulk batches at home. Also, for some drink products like apple juice, I can find these products in glass or cardboard containers. For glass containers especially I can reuse the containers for my own homemade goods.