Kelsey Shockley

UTKSUST

POINTS TOTAL

0 TODAY
0 THIS WEEK
463 TOTAL

participant impact

UP TO

120

minutes

spent learning

Kelsey's actions

Food

Keep Track of Wasted Food

Reduced Food Waste

I will keep a daily log of food I throw away during Drawdown Ecochallenge, either because it went bad before I ate it, I put too much on my plate, or it was scraps from food preparation.

COMPLETED 0
DAILY ACTIONS

Food

Learn More about Silvopasture

Silvopasture

I will spend at least 120 minutes watching videos and/or reading about the environmental benefits of silvopasture.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Participant Feed

Reflection, encouragement, and relationship building are all important aspects of getting a new habit to stick.
Share thoughts, encourage others, and reinforce positive new habits on the Feed.

To get started, share “your why.” Why did you join the challenge and choose the actions you did?

Kelsey Shockley 4/22/2020 8:06 AM

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.

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REFLECTION QUESTION
Food Learn More about Silvopasture

Had you heard of the term "silvopasture" before now? After learning more about it, what do you think is the biggest advantage of silvopasture?

Kelsey Shockley 4/22/2020 7:48 AM

Before completing this challenge, I had heard of silvipasture in a few of my classes, but it was never something we actually covered. I was very interested in learning more about it, since I didn't know much about it. There are many advantages to practicing silvopasture as opposed to traditional livestock grazing, but in my opinion, the most important one was that it is the number one way we can mitigate climate change through our farming systems (statistic is from Drawdown, but I actually learned it through a podcast I listened to that referenced Drawdown). This is because practicing silvopasture essentially creates a small ecosystem, as the trees that grow provide food for the animals, and in turn, the animals then fertilize the trees so that they can continue to grow and sequester carbon.

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Kelsey Shockley 4/18/2020 10:42 AM

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.

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Kelsey Shockley 4/09/2020 10:12 PM

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.

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REFLECTION QUESTION
Food Keep Track of Wasted Food

An average American throws out about 240 lbs of food per year. The average family of four spends $1,500 a year on food that they throw out. Where would you rather use this money?

Kelsey Shockley 4/09/2020 10:06 PM

It's shocking how much people spend on food just to throw it out. In doing this challenge I have become more mindful of trying to only buy as much as I know that I will eat because there are so many more useful things I can then spend my money on. Personally, I would rather save the money that I would be spending on this wasted food for a rainy day when I might need it more, or if I have a big purchase I would like to make. I've always been pretty good about saving, but now since I am thinking about ways in which I can cut back on food and other wastes, I can save even more and think about buying more expensive, quality foods and products that are healthy and will last a while.

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Kelsey Shockley 2/20/2020 9:01 PM

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.

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