Terrieann Montplaisir

For the last couple of months, I have been thinking of getting a car and I was looking into electric cars as a more sustainable option. I was going to wait until I got my license, which was supposed to happen last month but because of Covid-19 and the lockdown and has been pushed further by 3-4 months. I have been rethinking the option of buying a car recently. I have come to the conclusion that it is not really necessary for me at the moment especially considering I'm not really going anywhere to avoid contact with others. It would be better for the environment if I simply didn't buy a car rather than buy an electric car that I barely use since it still thinks gas to construct the car. Buying a car would be an unnecessary expense for me, but, my parents have been looking into buying a new car so I have been researching electric options to see if they would be interested in it and if it would fit their needs. Although my parents were impressed with the fact that electric cars require less and cheaper maintenance and that they could receive a tax credit from the government, they couldn't find a model they both liked since the options are limited. They completely eliminated electric cars as an option when they discovered that they have a shorter range than gas-consuming cars. I believe, in the future, when there will be a greater variety of models my parents will be more inclined to get an electric car.

I have been doing some research on transportation and how we can make transportation less of a burden on the environment. I visited a webpage by project drawdown which explained that we basically had three different ways we could proceed to make transportation more sustainable. We could start using more sustainable alternatives such as using public transports or developing our cities in a way that allows its citizens to run, cycle and walk to get to where they need to go. Another option is to simply keep using what we already have and just develop them to make them more efficient. The book I read for my project, Natural Capitalism, also mentions this idea. The author of the book explains how, in many ways, the cars we use today are not evolved enough and are extremely wasteful. They are much heavier than they need to be and, therefore, consume gas wastefully. So, we could better design our cars and vehicles so that they are more efficient and use less gas. The last option discussed was to electrify cars. This would reduce gas consumption enormously. In the same book I mentioned previously, the author mentioned how electric cars may not be an option financially for many households currently, but in the near future, they will become much cheaper which will allow lower income households to purchase and use them. We are also very lucky that the Quebec government is offering up to 8000$ in rebate to individuals, businesses and municipalities who purchase an electric car.

I have mentioned previously that I have been having a hard time finding a website with vegan recipes that actually look and sound appetizing to me. My aunt came to visit this weekend, and she brought me one of her vegan books. My mom had told her the I was trying to eat more meatless and vegan meals but I was having a hard time finding recipes I liked. My aunt was very excited because she has been a vegan for over a decade. So to help me in my journey, she gifted me one of her est Egan cook books. The book is great, it has a lot of simple yet delicious recipes. I have been trying the recipes all week long to see which ones I enjoy the most. This book has helped me a lot because before I got it, I was just eating a lot of pasta and eggs as I couldn't find any other recipes. 

Over the last couple of weeks, I have noticed a reduction in my amount of trash. It is not an enormous reduction, however, I believe I am on the right track and will be able to continue reducing my waste. As the seasons are changing, and the temperature is getting colder, I have found that I need warmer clothes. Because I want to avoid fast-fashion as much as possible, I have been looking in my mother's and sister's closets first to see if I can find anything they no longer want. I was able to find a couple of good pieces but, unfortunately, I will need more. I have been looking for sustainable shops to buy from and I found a couple such as Thredup and Unif. They are a little expensive, but, I don't want to go to a thrift store right now because of Covid-19, so I will save a little and make sure the pieces are durable and will last multiple years.

I have been doing research on the barriers women face that prevent equal participation and representation around the world. Only 23% of the world leaders are women despite women making up 49.6% of the world's population. This underrepresentation is due to several things. First of all, it is due to misogyny. Women are seen as more submissive and emotional and this leads many to believe that they are incapable of taking charge or that they will make irrational decisions due to their "sensitivity". Another reason women are underrepresented is because, on average, women have fewer years of education compared to men. This is often because of the fact that we live in a patriarchal society. Women stay home and cook and clean and take care of the children while the males go to work. Over the years more women, usually white and middle class, have been going to school for longer. However, they are still expected to take care of all the household chores as well as the children. This puts them at a disadvantage because they have less time to devote to their jobs and higher position jobs are very time-consuming.
The underrepresentation of women as various negative effects. It leads to people making decisions that will impact women the most without the opinion of those women being taken into consideration. Leaders make regulations about women's problems without truly knowing and understanding what those problems are. This is especially a problem when it comes to women of colour more notably Black and Indigenous women. Often times, when women are considered, only the perspective of white women are talked about. BIPOC women face extremely different challenges than white women which are caused by their intersectionality. Sometimes, white women are the perpetrators of actions BIPOC women need help against. The number of BIPOC women in a position of power is even lower than the 23% mentioned earlier.

I have continued to look for more meatless/vegan meals. I try to have at least one meatless/vegan meal per day. This is very easy to do for breakfast. I'll usually have some sort of oatmeal with a little bit of honey and fruits or eggs with some brown toast. It is harder to not eat meat or have vegan meals for dinner because I can't find any recipes that are both easy and appetizing. Until I can find more recipes I have been eating a lot of pasta. 

Today I did some research on the correlation between family planning and sustainability. I was surprised to learn about how interrelated the two concepts are. Family planning can lead to tons of positive effects on both the women, her children and the planet. Access to contraception allows girls to stay in school longer. This allows them to get a better education which in turn gives them access to better-paying jobs. When women have access to contraception, this gives them the freedom to choose when to have children. This is good for the children because this decreases the chances of their growth is stunted due to lack of nutrition caused by the mother's inability to provide nutritious food and breastfeed. It has also been shown that women who have children further apart have healthier children because they are more able to provide for these children. This leads to fewer children within a family which helps with overfishing and overfarming. The reduction in the number of kids in one family decreases greenhouse emissions as well.

Today I researched the impact of refrigerants. Eliminating our current refrigerants would allow us to decrease the temperature of the earth by 0.5°C which may not seem like a lot but could have significant effects. The problem are not the refrigerants themselves but the products used to keep them cool. The gas used to keep the refrigerant cold is called hydrofluorocarbon or HFCs. This gas is thousands of times more damaging for the planet than C02s are and therefore has a greater effect on climate change. The damage begins when the gases evaporate from the system. This happens when there is a leak in the pipe or when the refrigerant is damaged allowing the gas to leak out into the atmosphere. A fact that I learned while doing research that really amazed me was that a supermarket could leak up to 1/4 of its refrigerant every year and stores usually have dozens which multiplies its impact. If they are not disposed of in the right way all the gas from the refrigerant could be released into the air.  Refrigerants are very bad for the environment but are not brought up nearly as much as they should be when climate change is discussed. Sustainable alternatives exist but companies won't change their ways if not for an outside force, like their customers, pressuring them to do so.

I have been looking for vegan/meatless recipes and have been trying different options during the last week. I traded out my usual sausage and egg breakfast for a meatless omelette and I've been having that all week for breakfast. For supper, I have been making been different variations of pasta and making sure to never use meat. My sister and I made vegan tacos last week and they tasted interesting. I'm going to need a little more practice before I master vegan cooking by I think I'm on the right track. I've managed to convince my family to have one vegan diner a week and two meatless meals a week which is very exciting. I'm happy I'm going on this journey with my family.

For the last couple of weeks, I have been incorporating the five R's in the I consume products. I never used to question or think before I would buy something. If I wanted it simply got it but now I think about if I really need the products or if I could use an alternative I already have. I have been refusing and reusing more in the last weeks than ever before because now I think about the impacts of my consumption. My family has always recycled but after recently learning that a lot of stuff isn't recycled or simply can not be recycled I encouraged to just consume less especially products with a lot of useless packaging. We now reduce the number of single-use items we buy and just replace them with sustainable and reusable options. This is often cheaper than buying the single-use options but we never knew because we never looked into it before. My sister and I have been going around our house trying to find things we can repurpose. She very artistic so a lot of the things she finds she turns into art. I've been using old mason jars as pots for my plants because I had run out. It saved me money because I didn't have to buy plants and I was also able to find a use for old jars we don't use.