Brady Pierce

Similar to my mom's birthday earlier in the term, we again had a bunch of extended family and friends over for Thanksgiving so I did my best to minimize trash and food waste. I made sure everyone had reusable cups with their names on it again. We also still had a ton of leftover chipotle paper bowls that we were able to use to send everyone home with leftovers. My parents are not big on leftovers and we still had a lot after sending everyone home with some so we took the extras and made plates to give to some of the homeless people around my step dads office in Vancouver. Overall it felt pretty good to know that none of the food we made went to waste, when it otherwise would've sat in a fridge until it got thrown out a week later.

This week I added a smoothie to my rotation of foods as part of my eco change. I'm not very good at eating fruits and vegetables so a smoothie seemed like a pretty friendly way to introduce some color to my diet. I have an old vitamix that's great for blending anything but when I took it out of storage I noticed the bearing on the pitcher was rusted and it made a bad sound trying to use it. Instead of buying a new pitcher which was surprisingly expensive I was able to clean up the rust and give the bearing some lubrication and it seems to work perfectly again. It took hardly anytime to fix, I saved a good chunk of money and didn't have to throw more plastic into a landfill so I'll consider it a win.

This week I've started doing more meal prep and trying to reduce the amount of processed foods I consume and the waste associated with them. Today I made a bunch of brown rice, sweet potatoes, chicken and ground beef for the upcoming week. I'm interested to see how I feel as a result of eating cleaner too because the foods I'm introducing are much lower in sodium and contain much more nutrients and vitamins that I was previously missing. I'll be sure to include the new recipes I tried in my final project website and I'll be bringing in pre-made mix for my protein oatmeal as part of my project too for a couple of people to try in they're interested.

I work remote most of the time but I usually have to go into the office a few times a week to catch up with my boss and do a progress report. These usually only take 20ish minutes but its a 20 minute drive to the office both ways. This week I was able to switch those meetings to teams meetings instead which was super convenient. I was able to save money on gas and not pollute the air for a meeting that can easily be done remote. I think my boss still prefers to meet in person but hopefully going forward we can at least split the meetings between remote and in person.

This weekend was my mom's 50th birthday and we threw a big surprise party for her with over 20 people. For my challenge this week I tried to make sure we didn't waste any food and used a minimal amount of single use plastic. I suggested that instead of everyone just grabbing a new red cup for every drink, I put out a sign that told people to write their name on the cup and reuse it the whole night. We got chipotle catered so I tried to get everyone to take home some of the extra food because I knew there was no way my mom and step dad would finish it through the week. Overall I was pretty happy to not see a bunch of half eaten food thrown out at the end of the night.

This week I tried to take shorter showers using cold water. Using cold water wastes less energy on heating and has numerous health benefits. A cold shower in the morning wakes me up really quick and research has shown it can spike your dopamine production for several hours afterwards. It's definitely not the most fun in the moment but I did feel pretty good after I got out and I heated back up quickly. I'm not sure If its something I'd do every day but I see myself doing it every once in a while.

Over the past year I've been trying to eat a cleaner diet with less processed foods and figured this was a good week to start trying to cut some of the refined sugars that I still eat. One of my staple meals are protein pancakes but I'll usually add some chocolate chips to make them better. Skipping the chocolate chips definitely didn't taste as good but was an easy way to cut out 30g of sugar. Another source was the fairlife chocolate milk I usually get which I swapped out for the normal milk. Overall I was able to cut 45g of sugar from my diet on average by making some easy albeit less flavorful changes.

I went to a local food co-op called our table that a friend of mine used to work at. I bought some of the produce I would use throughout the week, mostly some potatoes and onions. They also have really good chocolate milk the they sell in a glass jar. The produce and milk were good but It was definitely more expensive than Fred Meyers. The milk for example was like $6 with the glass jar for a half gallon, compared to $3 at a super market. It was nice too that they either have you bring in your own bags, or give your paper bags, their website has a lot more info on how their sustainable which makes you feel good for shopping there even if its a bit more expensive.