Aidan Doudeau

I wanted to begin my final post with a congratulations. On the team page, it says we saved 1,140 pounds of CO2 which is completely insane and amazing. It also says that the class engaged in hundreds of miles of biking, exercise, time outdoors and saved thousands of gallons of water. These impacts are all super helpful and substantial. Knowing that our class is making small steps towards a sustainable future makes me happy because it shows that people can realistically make these small transitions which have huge impacts. 

In terms of my actions, I made a few substantial changes to my habits that I take much pride in. First of all, the change which I am most proud of is that I significantly reduced the amount of food wasted in my household by writing down every food item that ended up in the compost. I also bought a bamboo longboard when my old board was no longer usable because bamboo is a more sustainable material than wood. Finally, I am proud of my unpleasant transition from almond milk to the extra thick oat milk that I have yet to get used to. 

Despite all of the positive changes made through the course of this challenge, there were a few actions that were wrongfully neglected or that did not get the effort or attention they deserved. Notably, one of my actions was to support local food systems and although I tried to do so, I feel as if I could have spent more time seeing this action through. My family goes grocery shopping once a week and I believe I only spent two of those weeks searching for food that had Product of Quebec on it. I should have done this more often, I regret that now. Also, I had the great idea to use reusable zip-lock bags to store tomatoes and onions or other things that were cut into and half used as opposed to plastic wrap. However, this consisted of washing the zip-lock bags and as soon as I got a taste of the plastic bag washing process, I immediately decided not to pursue this action. Reflecting back on this decision I am ashamed and can’t help but picture the metres of plastic wrap I could have stopped from ending up in a landfill if I had just taken the time to wash a few bags. 

This challenge should definitely be promoted for any and all classes at Vanier. I say this mainly because the actions raise awareness on some less sustainable habits and because they promote positive changes and the acquisition of knowledge in relation to sustainability. This is essential in our current climate crisis where any small change to move away from environmentally destructive habits is impactful. I also found this challenge as being a nice way to unwind. I’m quite anxious when it comes to school and I feel guilty when I take long breaks from doing work even though these are necessary for my mental health. Having work I had to do that was not stressful and promoted pleasant activities such as walking outside, and cooking allowed me to unwind without feeling the guilt of avoiding my work. 

To conclude, I want to thank everyone who actively participated in this challenge because doing this as a group gave me the motivation to make significant changes. Also, thank you to the teachers for getting us involved in this challenge.

I made a change to my consumption habits that I was dreading. Ever since I went vegan two years ago,  I've been drinking at least a glass of almond milk a day either in cereal or tea or just to drink, but I have just made the transition from almond milk to oat milk. I'm having some trouble right now because it's a lot thicker than what I'm used and it feels weird in my mouth but ill get used to it and it's worth it because almond milk is terrible for the environment. I did some research, and I learned that a single glass of almond milk requires about 74 litres of water which is utterly foul. Also, 80 % of almonds are grown in California which is where a lot of droughts occur so this is contributing significantly to water shortages. To water the almonds in California, farmers are pumping up water from aquifers which is causing the ground to sink by up to 11 inches a year depending on the area which is a huge threat for infrastructure. (Reference: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/oct/21/almond-milk-quite-good-for-you-very-bad-for-the-planet  if anyone is interested). Oat milk is so much better because it only needs around 48 litres of water to make a whole litre of this type of milk and it isn't strictly grown in drought-prone regions. 
So that was my big change for the last week of this challenge. Also, after my research, I'm committed to this change, and I have sworn to not buy a carton of almond milk again. 
Well, I hope everyone got as much knowledge as I did from this challenge and changed some of their less sustainable habits. And thank you to the teachers for getting me involved in this challenge it was a nice way to unwind and to feel like I was making some positive impacts. 

This week, I have forced myself to go on a walk every day despite the cold because I find it really helps my mental state in these times. I'm also still tracking wasted food because, even though we have made some minor changes, I think it's still important to monitor our waste and be aware of it because it might lead to more changes with even better results. I didn't have an action to do this week, so I chose a one-time action and read about tidal energy which is super cool and interesting. Im going to try and end this challenge with a good last action. I'll let you know what I did next week!

I went on a few walks in the past week. They were nice, and they heightened my mood. Last week, I mentioned that we transitioned from plastic wrap to zip-lock bags and this lasted for a few days but after a while, washing zip lock became too time-consuming for the amount of work I was receiving (washing them is quite odd and difficult). At least I can proudly say that I saved a few metres of plastic wrap from ending up in a landfill. I think I will try to resume this action when school is finished because I will have more time. 
I said I would update everyone on the progress from tracking wasted food so here it is. My father used to buy frozen lunches for himself and bring them to work so that he could leave us the leftovers for me and my mother who spend our weekdays at home. Although, by tracking the wasted food it became clear that he was leaving too many leftovers behind. So he changed his habits and began taking leftovers for lunch which is in fact in his best interest because it is so much healthier than sodium-filled microwave dinners. I've also been eating leftovers every day for lunch now so my parents don't buy me things I used to eat for lunch before like microwave ramen noodles. These small changes which also made us eat healthier have significantly reduced our wasted food. We aren't perfect and food is still wasted in our household but at least it's a lot less than before and I don't think we would have made this minor change had I not started tracking our food waste.

In terms of my progress, I have stopped my daily walks because it has become too cold for them to be enjoyable; however, considering the weather, I will probably resume on Thursday until next Wednesday because it is supposed to be above ten degrees for those days. I definitely have noticed that these walks give me time in a day to get away from technology and spend time with nature outdoors which has improved my overall mood and mentality during these times. I especially noticed this when I stopped because I now feel a lot more anxious and less satisfied with my accomplishments and with my life in our current situation. It is also becoming increasingly difficult to purchase local produce because we are approaching winter and I am vegan so the things I eat will not really be able to be produced locally in the winter. I will keep tracking wasted food in my household though (we are improving I will give an update next week). 
For this week I decided to create my own one-time action. I have been wanting to transition from plastic wrap to reusable zip-lock bags for a while because then they are not single-use which is much more sustainable. I believe I have finally convinced my family to make this change. We're about to finish a pack of plastic wrap from Costco and I convinced them not to buy another one. The deal we made is that I would have to wash the zip-lock bags so we'll see how long I last. 

I wanted to return to the Kenya project about turning human feces into fuel sources because I feel like it's an interesting topic that I should have spoken more about. The company doing this is called Sanivation and basically what this company does is provide special toilets that collect feces and divert urine. Then they use the feces to create what they call briquettes. They essentially use cheap solar treatment technology that transforms the waste into a safe and odourless fuel source that (according to the Sanivation website) can be used for cooking or heating. This is a somewhat sustainable practice because this fuel is renewable because it is constantly created and it does not require extraction which emits massive amounts of CO2 and pollutes the environment. Personally, I would not use it for cooking because that just seems gross; however, if I was living in a region that wasn't fueled by renewable hydroelectricity, I would consider the purchase of these briquettes for heating. Also, another benefit of this project is that it will help manage sanitation. In Kenya, public defecation is a huge problem because many people do not have toilets and for those that do, the sewage treatment system in the country is awful. So by giving people these toilets, Sanivation will prevent public defecation to a certain extent (this is essential because untreated human waste in the environment is hazardous) and they will remove feces before they reach the horrid waste treatment system which will improve the water, sanitation and hygiene. 

I decided to engage in some small scale philanthropy this week by donating 20 US dollars to the Native American Rights Fund. I feel like supporting indigenous rights is essential for sustainability because reconciliation is a key part of achieving social, economic and human sustainability. Also in terms of environmental sustainability, these people have the rights to an extensive quantity of land and they should be supported financially and given the proper resources because they possess the legal power to fight against dirty extraction on these lands. Also, other drawdown updates are that I have been keeping up with tracking wasted food and I have been going on my walks. This weekend was a little crazy so I didn't really get a chance to go get locally sourced produce apart from what we have been buying for years. I did get a butternut squash that had a sticker that aliment du Quebec and I'm planning to make soup with it so at least there's that. For this week, I'm going to see if there's another one time action I can do. 

I did it! I got my family to go to the Atwater Market, and we hunted for vendors who were selling local produce and we bought some of our usual groceries from there. It was the first public market I went to since Covid so it was really weird and a little stressful to see all the measures put in place to stop the spread but I am happy with the fact that we bought locally. So now I have three daily actions to keep up with as opposed to just two (walking, tracking wasted food) but we only really grocery shop once a week so I don't really expect the three tasks to be overwhelming. 

I've been quite busy for the past week studying for midterms but I'm still keeping up with my daily actions (daily walks and logging wasted food) for the most part, and I even completed another action I selected. Yesterday, I was getting very low on paper while doing practice problems so I went to Staples and I bought a pack of 100% recycled paper. I go through a lot of paper when I'm studying (I've gone through 15 pages today doing problems) so this makes me feel less guilty about killing trees. My mission for next week is to start transitioning to a diet comprised of at least 10% locally sourced food. I'm aiming for more but 10% is a more realistic figure since I am not alone in my house and I do not pay for groceries.