Colin Russell

For my eco challenge regarding food, I'm going to try incorporating less meat into my diet. I believe one of the easiest ways to skip meat is breakfast, or the first meal of the day. For me, protein is essential, but I also don't like to eat a lot in the morning. My breakfast or first meal usually includes 2 eggs, and some form of carbohydrates, oatmeal, bread, fruit, and I usually have a protein smoothie with fruit. All in all, about 500 calories, and usually 42-45 grams of complete protein are incorporated in my diet. It keeps me full usually until dinner.

I believe learning your diet for what makes you healthy and accomplishes your goals, along with exercise, is one of the biggest challenges someone young in life has to learn. It's a lot of trial and error, but I've found it to be very fun, and incorporating a no-meat "variable" once a week seems like a step in the right direction for me.

I did my carbon footprint calculation from the Carbon Calculator. I produce around 8 tonnes of carbon a year, this comes from my diet (I eat red meat frequently, weekly), my travel (I takke 4 hour flights, 4-6 times a year, and I use taxi services around once a month), and what I buy for food, clothes, etc. I can reduce it to 5.6 tonnes by reducing or eliminating my red meat intake, by flying less ( I plan on staying in Portland over the summer, so that'll save two trips), and buying higher-quality clothes, locally sourced and seasonal foods.

I have been using a lot of single-use plastic or paper utensils and cups this year. Something to think about, too, is plastic lining in paper cups or in canned goods. It almost feels inevitable to have some form of plastic in our food products. It also makes me think of how studies have shown an increasing amount of microplastics in people's bodies, which is not good to say the least.

I checked my water footprint using the water calculator. I've actually done a personal study of my water footprint before, and lucky for me, I live in a building that doesn't let me use a lot of water. This is mostly because of low-flow toilets, I handwash my few dishes, low-flow shower heads, and so on. Where most of my water use comes from seems to be from 2 things. One is diet, I eat meat daily, which requires a lot of water, and secondly, is just the fact I live in Portland, and electricity requires water. And that latter part really surprised me. Now I can't do much about where I get my electricity, as I'm in my dormitory, but maybe I can do something about my diet?