Catherine Dee

     As for my final post, I'd like to share my reflections during my experience in participating in the EcoChallenge. I personally really enjoyed this activity!! I find it is a great way to engage people and motivate them do to activities that better the environment and population. I also really enjoyed this website and found it well organised, easy to manipulate and fun to operate! Furthermore, the fact that we can be part of a team and see what others are accomplishing while being able to view their experience is really uplifting en encouraging as well, and I think this activity should be promoted for our school at Vanier since I don't think it only pertains to the Sustainability course. I believe anyone could participate in this challenge! Even my sister wants to sign up and she doesn't even go to our school.  
     The one daily action I was most proud of accomplishing is reducing the three foods that cause the most deforestation: coffee, cocoa and palm oil. In fact, I've been going a little over a month now without coffee and I think I will continue this for as long as I can! I do not have the urge to consume it whatsoever and I'm very proud of that. Another daily action I was really proud of achieving was trying to follow the 5Rs: refuse, reduce, reuse, repurpose, and recycle. My family and I have been trying to be creative in reducing our waste ever since I started this action and we've been getting better and finding ways to do so! However, something I would have liked to improve on is saying no more often. I tend to still have a hard time refusing when someone wants to order out a few times a week since I've fallen into the trap of liking to indulge on take-out. I think part of this reason may be because of the situation we are in with COVID-19. I find when it comes to cooking, especially for supper, we've become more susceptible to ordering out. Besides this I feel quite satisfied with the actions and knowledge I was able to gain during this challenge! 
     Finally, I'd just like to congratulate everyone on doing an amazing job! Again, this was a really fun activity to do with the class and being part of a team made it really enjoyable!  
     
     

So far this week is difficult for me to apply some of my daily actions since my father went into surgery Monday, therefore my sister and I have been taking turns in caring for him. 

Update on my coffee consumption:

I haven't had coffee in over a month! The first 2 weeks were the hardest. Especially first thing in the morning. It was so part of my everyday routine that stopping completely was very hard... I would also get migraines and headaches and thought that coffee was the only thing that I needed to have energy. I thus replaced my morning coffees with tea for a couple of weeks, but now I don't even need tea, and I don't crave caffeine whatsoever! I might have tea once or twice a week but I find that my body and mind don't need caffeine for energy now. I also don't feel the downsides of coffee anymore which is the biggest plus-side of it all. I use to feel so shaky after drinking a cup and then a few hours later I'd feel extremely tired and would need another refill. However, now I feel like my energy lasts throughout the day and I'm so happy that I'm not dependant on coffee anymore. 

Update on my action of eating more local foods:

These past few weeks have been going well for this action. My breakfasts and lunches seem to be the easiest when it comes to eating locally. We really try to focus on buying as much produce and food items from Quebec as possible. If we can't find a certain item from Quebec we try to find ones that come from elsewhere in Canada. It's not as close but better than buying foods coming from outside the country! 

We also turned strictly to a Canadian oat milk now since before we were alternating between almond milk and the milk we are now drinking. We realised the almond milk had a much greater environmental impact than the oat milk, especially with the fact that almonds don't grow in Canada. 

Here's a little update on my action of removing palm oil, coffee and cocoa from my diet:

I found that a few times this week was harder to avoid palm oil than normal. My mom made apple pie where she uses Crisco for the crust which contains palm oil and I didn't want to not eat her pie because I felt bad for saying no and I honestly was craving her famous apple pie! So I allowed myself to have a slice every day for 3 days now. We also don't consume any dairy products so for our butter we use a vegan margarine which also contains palm oil. I don't consume a lot of margarine anyways but we sometimes cook with it. So I decided to go to the grocery store with my mom to see if there are any alternatives to the margarine we buy. Unfortunately we noticed that most margarines contain palm oil. The options that do not contain any are obviously butter and also coconut oil. We already buy coconut oil but are not as big of a fan depending on what we use it for.. But I am now on a mission to find a margarine that does not contain any palm oil!!

I'm taking up a new challenge this week of removing palm oil, coffee and cocoa from my diet which contributes to the major deforestations on this planet. I think for me the hardest one to remove and replace is coffee! I realised that I was already not consuming many products with palm oil in it, and cocoa I can live without! However, coffee used to be a staple in my morning routines and to get my day going. So I've been trying to replace my coffee with black tea and so far this week I've only had coffee twice on the days I've been really struggling to wake up! Therefore, I will try to stick with my black tea as much as possible and hopefully my body will adapt to having less and less coffee :). 

This week one of the actions I decided to take-on is to donate a Femme Kit to a girl in need in Twaweza, Africa where menstruation is seen as taboo and dirty. Women and girls are prevented to go to school and activities when they are menstruating, so these Femme Kits include sustainable and reusable menstruation products for them to feel safe and healthy during their period, while being able to do daily their daily activities. 

This action might not be the most environmentally friendly since if these products need to be shipped to Africa, it creates a big carbon footprint. However, as a woman, I understand the struggle of menstruating and can't imagine living in a community that bans something that happens naturally to us and that we cannot control. Therefore, I wanted to do something to help these girls and women, even if it's only a small gesture. 

Also, when I talked about it to my sister she thought it was a great idea and her too decided to chip-in and donate a Femme Kit as well!! :)