Kelsey Shockley

For my daily challenge, I wanted to try to reduce my food waste by keeping a log to help me be more mindful. Having completed the challenge, I would say that, overall, I have been pretty succesful. Obviously I am not perfect and I still waste food from time to time, but having learned about the effects of food waste and how much money can be saved through trying to reduce it, I have come to think about it much more than I would have before. Now, I try to only prepare or buy what I know I will end up eating and I have even been able to share what I have learned through this experience with family and friends. When we learned in class that if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gases, I thought that was just crazy, and it motivated me to continue this challenge even beyond the scope of this class. I have included a picture of the food waste log I kept back in Febuary when I started this challenge. It may not be the most accurate log, as I'm sure there were things I just missed or forgot about by the end of the day, but it did help me to think about what I was wasting regardless of whether I kept a perfect record. By the end of Febuary, I had pretty much stopped logging my food waste because it had become habit to just think about it when I would prep meals or order food. I hope that I can continue to think about and reduce my food waste moving forward.

Last night I made dinner with my family and my dad nearly threw away a bag of Parmesan cheese because there wasn’t much left and we had another unopened bag. Because of this, I was able to talk to him about why we should try to reduce our food waste and my experience with this challenge, because my family tends to waste a lot of food.

Since I've moved home during quarantine, it's been a lot harder for me to think about food waste. This is partially because my family just lives a much different lifestyle than I do (not thinking about the waste they produce), but also partially because while bored at home I've gotten into a habit of eating just to snack rather than because I'm actually hungry. I've noticed that when my parents have been ordering our groceries, my sisters will add on a bunch of junk food items, even though we already have plenty. Because I have been participating in this challenge, it's a little upsetting to see all of the food being wasted or ordered for no reason when it could go to someone who may need it more.

For my daily challenge, I am trying to drawdown my food waste as I realized this was an area of my life where I would create a lot of waste without realizing. I’m trying to focus on doing this by not only using all of the food I buy at the store and eating everything I make, but also by not just snacking all the time because I’m bored, because I realize this is also wasteful.