Austin Worrell

I ended up doing the one-time challenge of calculating my household's carbon footprint. We had looked at that one website before, and I just calculated it while living at my apartment. However, I thought it'd be interesting to see the carbon footprint of my family since I've been at home for a couple of weeks. After using the EPA's carbon footprint calculator I found that our family of three emits around 41,241 pounds of CO2, or equivalent, every year. Surprisingly, this was around 8,000 pounds lower than the average family in the US. I found it very interesting that after each step you could choose different options of how you would change certain things to reduce your emissions such as using cold water for washing clothes. I also found it very interesting seeing the comparison between the amount of CO2 emitted by my parents driving back and forth to work during the year. This amount was way higher than I thought it would be. I'd definitely like to take into consideration some of the ways to reduce emissions and help my parents lower their emissions as well.

I thought I would share another one of my meals that I have really enjoyed so far throughout this vegetarian Ecochallenge. Before this I used to really enjoy apple chicken sausage baked with vegetables in the oven, so I thought maybe I could find a substitute for this. I ended up finding a meatless sausage with apple and sage flavoring at Publix that is really good. I usually put this with carrots, potatoes, broccoli, and any other vegetables I have on hand. This is definitely one of my favorite meals and is also very good leftover, so if anyone wants to try out a meat substitute I would really recommend trying the plant-based Field Roast smoked apple and sage sausage.

One of my staple meals before and throughout this vegetarian Ecochallenge so far has been oats for breakfast. This is the one thing I have eaten every single day since starting and is another one of my favorites. If anyone wants to try it, I just use 3/4 of a cup of oats, around a cup of any kind of milk, a whole banana, and some cinnamon. 

I started the three meatless meals a day challenge a while ago and it has been going well although, I did forget to check in for a while. I started this because I have tried going vegetarian before but never kept it up for more than a month at a time. I thought this would be a good opportunity to try again. I especially wanted to do this challenge because of my environmental ethics class from last semester. In this class, my research paper was over the ethics of factory farming. This research paper reaffirmed my feelings about the unethical practices the animals in those farms undergo, but also showed me a new side to the ethics of the environmental impact of these farms. This impact on the environment and climate change reinvigorated my drive to try a vegetarian diet again and has kept me on track for about two months now.