Fall 2018
This week has been eye opening. I don’t think I ever would have realized what an impact all of my decisions have, if we hadn’t done this project.
In my daily life, I can definitely continue to generate less trash, and that is something I look forward to working on.
It would be interesting to do a no impact week back in my home life, where I have even more decisions and control.
I was surprised by how normal everything felt today. Despite my one napkin from the dining hall, because of a squished piece of pineapple on my chair, this was my most successful no impact day. When I walked into my room after my classes I didn’t even look at or think about my light switch. I didn’t eat anything from wrappers today and also had no red meat.
I can’t believe its been a week!! It was definitely harder then I thought to have less of an impact on the environment. Today I actually had a record with water usage where I took a two minute shower, which was really hard. Sadly, I did use a lot more trash today because I got food from slayter.
The last day of No Impact was good, but a little tough. I was invited to go out to dinner with my friends tonight. So all five of us hopped in the car and drove out to Bob Evans. I was excited since I hadn’t been invited to go to eat all week. However, as soon as we sat down the waitress served us water with each of our own individual straws.
Today actually felt normal. It felt normal to take a short shower, it felt normal to not use any paper towels, it felt normal to save my food scraps, etc. It is weird to me that its the last day of NI week, yet today was the first day that it didn’t feel different. I think I will continue these things and allow them to become apart of my routine.
So my last day has probably been my worst day so far. I have definitely had the lights on the most today. I also did not meet my shower goal on my last day. My shower today was 6 minutes long. The longest it has been all week. This is still shorter than my regular shower time of 10 minutes, but I never reached my goal of a three minute shower.
Today is the last day of my NI week. Through the five days, I find it’s hard to do the real “no impact”. Sometimes I fotgot and ate some meat, or something like this. Today, everything is going well. I could take shower within five minutes. I only ate vegetables. I didn’t buy anything but I bought coffee in Stalyer.
On the one hand, I’m getting tired of no tv and am ready for some media stimulation…on the other I’m kind of sad to lose the focus of the week on living with little impact.
Today’s wins: did not eat what I wanted but what I had which was local eggs and sausage and not that bad (but I’m tired of eggs); ate lunch in curtis AND brought my own napkin
Today’s losses: went to the Barney kitchen and instinctively went for a muffin!
I think I’m finely getting the hang of no impact week. Today went very smoothly in terms of following my goals. What stood out to me today was that the hallway light outside of my dorm is always on. Therefore, I went to the switch to turn it off. However, every time I passed through the hallway the light magically was back on.
Today went pretty well I would say. I managed to use less napkins during meals and I was very careful about the bins that I would put composting vs. recycling in. I did however get a cup of tea from slayter, but forgot to bring my mug, so I just used the paper cups they have there.
