Theo Kirby

Micro Wind Turbines
They are turbines that would be a good alternative to fossil fuels on a small scale. With an investment from the government and/or an incentive for the population, these devices would be a possible solution to reducing our consumption of harmful fuels. They can be installed on a property of at least one acre and are quite high up, so they would need to be in an area free of thick vegetation. There are different types, certain ones higher, lower or that can tilt to accommodate different people's needs. The research provided was more aimed towards the USA, but in their country, around 20% of the population could theoretically get a turbine installed on their land. There are however certain restrictions to this solution. They are not yet common, so the initial price is currently quite steep, and there is not much research about long-term noise pollution or environmental impact on the ecosystem. It also isn't a stand-alone issue, and other changes to your building like insulation could also reduce the overall consumption of energy in a home. Overall, this is a great possible solution to reducing fossil fuels, however, it would need an investment from the government, and local officials to be able to work.

Local Climate-Friendly Market

According to the map provided by the drawdown ecochallenge site, there does not seem to be any supermarket in my area that does not use harmful refrigerants.

Exploration of a local area
For my exploration of a local area challenge, I decided to join the Vanier Outdoor's group on a hike at Ste-Hippolyte. Although it is a bit further north, I think the area is still representative of the ecosystem in Quebec and could be very fruitful. The hike lasted around 3 hours and we followed a trail that went up and down the mountains. It was very enjoyable and I was able to read many informational boards about the different types of birch trees we have in Canada. As we were close to the end of Autumn, there was not any vegetation left on the trees, but it was still very beautiful to walk in. There were few birds chirping or animals roaming, which made it easier to concentrate on the trees and plants around. There were also still certain insects, for example, we found two wolf spiders (I have the pictures of one of them). I have gone hiking many times before this semester, so it wasn't a particularly new experience, however, it was fun to see the slow change of seasons over the past three months. I will add pictures of the different changes I saw in the trees as well as the wolf spiders.

Final Eco-Challenge Post

This will be a long one, sorry in advance, want to put all my thoughts in here. Although I haven't been actively showing my progress well on the site, this challenge and class have brought me a lot of reflection on my impact as a person. I feel like I often reflected in my day-to-day life on these different goals I set and all the links they have with my surroundings. I found the challenge to be surprisingly difficult. Although I didn't complete many of my one-time actions, my daily actions caused me a lot of headaches.

To start, the forest-friendly foods challenge of replacing or removing palm oil, coffee, and cocoa products from my diet was quite difficult. Cocoa was something that in general, I did not succeed in removing from my diet. It is found in so many products and snacks that I consume on a day-to-day basis that I would often forget or feel forced to consume them. For example, I often bake cakes for my family's birthday parties, and these cakes often contain cocoa as it's a flavor they adore. It was also difficult during Halloween when I was gifted chocolates and didn't want to consume them but also didn't want to put them to waste. There are so many instances that this was an issue, not only for cocoa but also for palm oil and coffee. Palm oil is found in so many pre-packaged goods, that I find myself reading labels so meticulously. Although it is good for me to be aware of the ingredients being used, it would also cause me a lot of anxiety.

This challenge to reduce these products also made my task in the VCSA more difficult. As I was aware of the horrific impacts that these products have on our environment, I would want to reduce the amount we gave away, but that felt almost impossible when I looked into the specifics. For example, on Halloween, we gave out 500 bags of candy and chocolate to students. While I made the effort to buy the products in bulk and then package them in compostable bags, these treats still contained palm oil and chocolate. I could not find another solution to this problem, as we want to make students happy, but there were no candy producers I could find in bulk that didn't have products with palm oil and there was no good alternative to candy for people with certain dietary restrictions other than chocolate. These types of situations would cause me a lot of guilt and although I knew that there was no solution other than restricting, that is not my place as we want to please the student body.

The plant-based diet luckily caused me less stress. I was able to mostly stick to it and now consider myself an almost vegetarian. I will only eat meat if cooked by my family so that it is not wasted, but I will never cook or buy it on my own. I had some trouble initially when my favorite comfort foods often involved red meat, which is why I have certain exceptions, but on a day-to-day level, I am proud that I was able to stick to it. With this, however, I've become more aware of other people's eating habits, which has caused me some stress. Although this is something new for me, I find myself observing other's meat consumption and feeling uncomfortable with the knowledge of the impacts it has on the environment. However, I know it would be hypocritical of me to judge when I ate meat my whole life until now.

As for food waste, I have become a lot more aware of the waste I cause and have tried to do my best to change that. I have pushed myself to experiment more with cooking, to use produce and goods that are very close to expiring, although this would make me uncomfortable because I knew that they were still safe to consume even with my discomfort. For example, zucchini are a vegetable I often don't touch, but we have had an excess of them in the pat few weeks, so I have been trying out new recipes like pan frying them with parmesan or baking them to then use them in a pasta sauce so that they don't get wasted. This has also affected my VCSA activities, for example, I hosted a pumpkin carving competition and I kept all the seeds and roasted them all. I did not realize the amount of labor it took to roast 25 pumpkins worth of seeds, but I'm proud I did it. Although it has not been perfect, I have tried my best to limit waste when possible, and am proud of my persistence.

Moving on from the daily challenges, I feel like my efforts made some difference, but not that much. If I were doing this challenge as an individual, separate from any event planning, I would have felt proud of what I did. However, I am in an environment in my student council where a lot of my challenges and goals were not taken into consideration on a larger scale, it is difficult to feel pride in my impact. I am now more aware of just how one person's waste may not appear as much, but it is enormous on a large scale and I just feel defeated watching it happen. I wish to think that if I continue this long-term, these individual actions of mine will cancel out the larger scale issues that I caused.

I did not include other people I know in the challenges, as I am not in an environment where the climate is the priority. I appreciate my friends and family, but climate justice is not something that they find important and I felt uncomfortable often bringing up the subject, as I know they are not interested. In certain instances, I would help educate on the impact of a product, but I would always leave it as a fact and did not want to push too hard. I emphasized buying in bulk and using reusable containers within my family, as well as avoiding certain products that would contain more palm oil. So I would not explicitly mention the challenge, but bring up my findings once in a while with the hope that they may interest themselves more in the subject. I did however make friends with people in the class who made this experience less lonely, which helped a lot overall when I felt guilty due to my environmental impact. If more people I know would have participated, I would have felt a lot more motivated and inspired. Not even in the challenge on its own, if the environment was a bigger subject of concern with my inner circle, I would have felt more understood in my worries. This is why I'm happy to have found friends in the class and from the eco-retreat I did with Environment Jeunesse, because it feels a bit less lonely now.

I now feel a certain necessity to continue with these habits, as with my newfound knowledge from the challenge and this class, there is no way I would be able to ignore these issues with the climate without feeling guilty. I also feel a bit better when I am doing my own actions, as it gives me some sense of control, although my student council often takes that away from me. I also feel like I want to do more concerning politics, as I am more knowledgeable about the environmental impacts that large corporations have and how we are so dependent on them. While a part of me wants to fight, I also have a feeling of just wanting to run away to a commune or a similar environment where I could live with the least environmental impact possible and be surrounded by nature. However, that would be unfair to those in countries who are suffering the most from climate change and who cannot fight due to their circumstances. This challenge and class have caused me a lot of self-reflection and given me a certain sense of power due to my knowledge, but also powerlessness within this system.

Currently, I don't think a world without fossil fuels is possible. I'm gonna get political here but with the election of the new U.S. President, I just cannot imagine it happening. His priority has been set on improving the economy while ignoring the existence of climate change. He will probably prioritize fossil fuels and large corporations due to his stance as well as lobbying. The U.S. is one of the biggest producers of fossil fuels and waste, so I genuinely don't think that for the next 4 years, big change will truly be possible. The world kinda feels like an imminent doom to me, that I will try to fight locally, but that's the most power I feel like I can have till I reach the glass ceiling. The environment is also only one of my priorities in life, I currently am going to protests and fighting for my trans siblings in the U.S. and Canada, so I can't completely focus on that issue. I have learned that is often the case with politics, where they prioritize smaller issues, specifically around 1% of the population, to deflect from the true issues that are affecting everyone. We are privileged to be able to live in a place where it is colder, where there are no natural disasters, where there is no lethal invasive species, but not everyone is, which is a hard reality to accept. With all that said, forcing people to live a certain eco-lifestyle could also be oppressive according to many, so I don't know how we could even change everything in such a short period. I don't know where the line is between oppression and being free to make your own decisions, no matter the environmental consequences.

That's the end of my rant. I am happy with the community that these eco challenges create, as it can feel quite lonely to fight for a cause. I think this is a great tool for people to know that they're not the only person who cares about the environment. I hope this class continues existing so more students can know about this tool and gain knowledge about climate change, no matter how depressing it is. I now know exactly what eco-anxiety is, which is not so fun but I can now empathize with the doom people feel. I don't think I can look at plastic packaging the same after this class, same with every pollutant in this world, but I have mostly accepted that this is just not under my control, that I can change my habits, but that I can't change everyone's way of life.

Today I spent time learning different food labels. I was able to get this information through the links given by the challenge as well as a site by the government of Canada. I have learned that a best-before date indicates freshness, taste, and nutritional value, not safety. It is still safe to consume a product after the date written, so it is not necessary to throw it away. If something is no longer fresh and may not be appealing to eat raw or on its own, turning it into a cooked food like soup or broth would be a great option. These labels are only used for products that last 90 days or less, so they are not products to be kept long-term. An expiration date meanwhile is used to tell you when a product should no longer be consumed. They cannot be sold after that date and could pose a possible health risk if consumed. Packaged-on labels are used as an indication mainly of freshness and for inventory. They are for the customer to know when the product was packaged so they can know if it is no longer as appealing. Use-by labels are used as a recommendation, similarly to best-before, a product is still safe to consume after it, but may not retain all the initial nutrients. Sell-by labels are used by the manufacturer and indicate when the product should be sold to a customer. It is not an indicator of freshness or safety for the consumer. All in all, this research took me a lot less time than planned, around 15 minutes, yet I understand now the importance of these dates and how knowing about them can help reduce food waste. Even so, while having more knowledge about these labels may help, I personally think it is also a matter of mentality instead of labeling. People I know often feel uncomfortable consuming goods that have been packaged a few days ago or stored for a certain period. For example, pre-packaged foods like meal kits often show the expiration dates and will liquidate those closest to them. Although people know that they are safe to consume, these meals will often not be bought out of fear that they will not be safe. There is a big emphasis on freshness in our culture, especially in restaurants, like Subway or in grocery stores like Metro. Slogans often involve freshness, as if that is a necessity while it is a privilege to be able to have products reach our shelves so soon after they are produced. I think that while freshness is important, it's often seen as a necessity if we want to consume an item. For example, certain traditional culinary tools like canning or pickling have become less common, and there is now a certain fear around bacteria and preserved goods. While it is valid to take all the necessary precautions to be as safe as possible, the possibility of getting sick is often quite low and it is an amazing way to preserve goods that will soon spoil while also saving money. All in all, I feel like we should change the way we view food, freshness, and expiration so that we can all together reduce food waste.

Thanksgiving: The overall message I get from these videos is that we, as a society are producing too much. We are focused on growth and using up our natural resources that were generated over thousands of years in a very short period, causing an imbalance and for us to be on course to completely dissipating them. Our total carbon footprint are around 1.5 times the number of natural resources that we currently have. However, this ecological impact is not equally shared throughout the world. Developed countries produce way more waste per person and our carbon footprints are much higher than underdeveloped countries. To solve this problem, we can degrow. This means that we would slowly reduce our global production, causing an intended degrowth of our economy, as if this is not done soon, the economy may completely collapse instead due to the use of all of our resources. This degrowth would primarily effect developed countries due to their higher carbon footprints, and also reduce inequality, a major issue in our current global economy. This degrowth would not cause any social issues for people in more developed countries, as it is proven that income has less of an effect on quality of life than ever. If we degrow together and create more equality, the trust and global happiness of our societies would increase. Inequality causes division, while equality causes more community efforts and collaboration. For things I am thankful for that do not have a negative effect on our environment, there is my interest in plants, I'm thankful to be able to care and take care of them. I'm also thankful for my friends, as they are very important to me. As well as volunteering opportunities, as they help me connect to my community and improve my mental health. Degrowth could improve my life by making me understand what is truly important in life, to not overconsume and to live more satisfied with what I already have.

This is my weekly check-in regarding my daily challenges. Throughout the week, I only threw away 2 food items, some strawberries that expired as well as some leftover pasta that had sat in the fridge for 5 days. This is luckily not much waste; however, I have started to also track my single-use plastic food waste, and that is not as positive. In the week I counted at least 5 items that were packaged in single-use plastic, a cookie, some Welch's, a granola bar, a protein bar and a takeout box. This packaging will be sitting in landfills for a very long period and there's so much waste for the tiny amount of food wrapped in it. I also saw plastic waste in my VCSA committee, as the peaches we ordered for students were found in plastic boxes and the cookies we are giving out today are wrapped in single use plastic as well. This makes me realize how much environmental impact things can have when they are at a larger scale, as things don't look that bad on your own, but when multiplied it can really pile up. To do with the coffee, chocolate and palm oil, I only consumed coffee once at a local coffee shop, I had chocolate however it was fairtrade, which minimizes the impact on the planet, and lastly, I did my best to avoid palm oil and discovered that it is found in many candies, so I have to read the packaging very clearly. Lastly, I have been doing my best with the vegetarian meals, however it is difficult at home where we consume a lot of chicken, at least it's not red meat, but it is still difficult to completely convert to vegetarianism. I hope to talk with my parents about it, so we can acknowledge this issue, however most of my cultural foods or recipes I have been consuming since I was a child contain chicken, which is hard to easily replicate or remove. I hope to find time to do at least one one-time action this week, as I am slightly less swamped with work.

I am writing this post today to track my week's progress of my daily actions. To start with my challenge of reducing food waste, I tried my best to limit the food I throwed out, but I still had to get rid of a chicken leg I didn't have time to eat in my lunch, an expired school snack and a slice of pie I left in my lunch for too long. I do share a fridge with the rest of my family, so I am not aware of all the waste I contribute to in total, but for my personal items, I kept track. Throwing the chicken leg did make me reflect on how only two of them compose a chicken and how only one other one would have to make a whole chicken. It made me want to put more effort into having vegetarian food as much as possible. To delve into that, I was able to consistently have at least 2 vegetarian meals per day. The only times I had more issue with it is when I went out to restaurants that did not have plant-based options or when I ate food that my family cooked that already contained meat. I did however completely avoid red meat all week, as the pollution caused by that industry is the worst (from my understanding). As for consuming forest-friendly foods, I only consumed fair-trade coffee once provided by the school as the environmental repercussions are less. As for cocoa products, I managed to not consume products that are primarily cocoa, but still ate certain desserts that had chocolate, for example cookies that are partially dipped in chocolate. As for palm oil, I do not think I consumed any, however as I do eat out sometimes and I eat some prepared foods, it is hard to keep track of every possible time I could have consumed some. I also have wanted to eat cocoa in a more eco-conscious way, but buying chocolate that is fair trade or part of the rainforest association is a lot more expensive. It is also not possible for Halloween, as I am currently starting to buy food for the event, and buying individual small packages is just not possible for eco-conscious chocolate.

Although reducing/getting rid of my chocolate and coffee intake has been easy, the challenge of not using any palm oil has been more difficult, as even though I dont necessarily cook with it, it's a staple in my family and replacements long-term are more expensive.

I have been paying more attention to my overall food waste and have been challenging myself to track the food in my fridge so I can eat the most of it possible before it goes bad. For example, we bought strawberries a few days ago, and I saw one of them mold, so I froze some and am eating the rest of them, stems and all, so that there's the least waste possible.