Journal #9 Food Intake/Packaging

Each day we eat food that we either make or has been pre-made, but we tend to not read nutritional labels or even realize all the work that went into creating the food we eat on a daily basis. I recorded my intake for 24 hours on Sunday March, 20th:

Breakfast:

3 Large Eggs- 360 calories
2 pieces whole wheat toast – 200 calories
Water bottle oz

Lunch:
1/3 Uno Frozen Pizza =350 calories
Frozen Edamame = 99 calories
Water Bottle 20 oz

Dinner:
20 oz blue Gatorade- 120 calories
2 chicken breasts – about 350 calories
Romaine lettuce – about 20 calories
Zesty Italian dressing - 109 calories

Total Calorie Intake = 1,608

Some of the foods I eat require packaging that creates a lot of waste. The water and Gatorade I drink require plastic bottles, which in return creates 3 bottles of plastic waste on average each day. I do recycle the plastic though so hopefully I am not doing as much damage to the earth as simply throwing the plastic in the trash would. I try to make most of my meals myself but with my busy school and work schedule it makes it hard. Typically my breakfast and dinner and prepared by myself but my lunches are normally pre-made.

In todays time basically everything we purchase comes with some type of packaging whether to make the food last longer on store selves or keep products from becoming damaged before reaching the homes of consumers. Every day I use; about 5 Textbooks, my laptop, my cell phone, my car, my furniture, health products, etc. Each product comes with a receipt of sale which normally is just discarded in the trash. Everything you buy comes with some type of wrapping, even if you buy fresh vegetables and fruits, you still have the bags that you carry them home in. Items such as electronics normally come in boxes within boxes, within plastic, within Styrofoam.I believe a lot of things use unnecessary packaging. Then again we also don't think about how much of our earths precious resources are being wasted on creating all the items used for packaging. My household on three college students produces on average 3-4 large black garbage bags of trash each week. And if you think of that on scale of everyone in the world thats a ton of waste.

Below is an interesting video that I found on youtube that talks about waste and alternative packaging:


All my research on calories was collected from:

http://caloriecount.about.com
http://www.livestrong.org/

Journal #8 Sense of Place Interview

I recently interviewed one of my grandparents and during this interview I asked him a series of questions to figure out his philosophy on sustainability. Above is a photograph of my grandpa Stan. The first question I asked him was, Do you know what environmental sustainability is? I was not surprised at all when he told me he really had no idea what sustainability is. He said back when he was a child his lifestyle was completely different that mine. My grandpa was born in Bronx, New York where he grew up and spent most of his life. After explaining to him about what was being covered in class he was able to give me a better idea on his idea of sustainability. He first went on about he was born into poverty and had to work very hard to get to the place where he is now. While I was born I into a loving and caring family that is well off. Back than people didn't even think about what they were doing was causing negative effects to the environment, let alone did they care. Now we realize what we have done and need to try to fix what we have done. My grandpa has always loved the outdoors and spends most of his days at the beach or lounging in his lanai.He said his views have changed as hes grown older, from not caring to doing what he can to better the environment. He was happy to hear about what I was learning in class and found the class to be a very interesting subject of discussion.

Journal #6 Sense of Place

While venturing through my neighborhood I took close notice to wildlife, the environment and objects in the environment. Walking through my neighborhood has made me realize how a lot of things we do in today's time is not sustainable at all. Out of 92 homes in the housing development I live in one or two houses had solar heating panels on there roofs which are used to collect heat from the sun to warm their pool or spa. All the other houses either had electric heaters or gas heated pools. The reason why many people choose gas/electric over solar is solar heating takes time while electric and gas heat up much quicker. Below is a photo of a house with a solar heater on their roof.

I noticed that almost every house in the neighborhood had some type of plant species that is not native to Florida. This in itself disrupts the natural ecosystem. These plants can become invasive and steal nutrients from native plant species. My neighborhood is located a little ways out of the city in a more rural area, for that there is more wildlife. You can bet that every morning you will see a few deer running through the backyard. There also is a huge lake where alligators and many species of fish can be scene all of the time.