NO CONSUMPTION WEEK

How did we reduce our consumption??

Andree' didn't buy anything except snaps and a couple other things for a project she has been working on to make reusable bags and some other DIY projects her family is working on. The reusable bags work just like zip lock bags and are great for bringing your lunch or snacks with you. At the office we are all testing our bags to see how they hold up in the wash and with different foods etc. If all goes well, there will be some auctioned off at the Bash! We'll keep you updated! The purchases that Andree' did make went towards projects to make her and her family less consumptive in the future:

I also had to buy ear plugs for my daughter who had tubes put in her ears, and Joe had to buy a couple parts for his VW (but, he went to the pick and pull and got them used rather than new!).
Overall I think we did pretty well with our week. We do have a list of things we need to buy for our upcoming vacation though...

Charice was pleased at the little impact that no consumption week had on her wallet although there were a few humps that she had to get over:

1. Meals- Planning and packing for me! I have been planning my meals the night before to take the next day. It doesn't take that much time and I even created a new recipe for potato salad. See below! A small problem that I encountered was the bulky packaging. I ride my bike so, I carry everything in my backpack. I try to use packaging that is reusable but, it tends to be bulky and take up a lot of room in my pack. Luckily Andree's reusable cloth food containers fit right in my bag - problem solved. Thanks Andree'!

Not your Mama's potato salad

6-10 Red potatoes
3/4 cups -Greek Oikos yogurt
1/2- red onion diced
tsp- truffle oil
salt and pepper to taste
extra- add cilantro

Boil potatos and mash to your likeing. Personally, I like bigger pieces of potatoes. Then add Greek yogurt, diced red onions, truffle oil, salt and pepper(and cilantro if you're up for it) mix all together.

2. Social life- Hanging out. My friends all wanted to go to the climbing gym on Wednesday night. My membership expired so, I would have to pay an entrance fee. I suggested a bike ride up city creek. We were able to enjoy a beautiful summer's night and a good work out.

3. My purchase-- face wash. I ride my bike practically everywhere so, I get sweaty often and I wear makeup- this was one purchase I couldn't go without.

"I really enjoyed the no consumption week and I hope to continue with packing and planning my meals as well as, choosing a couple of activities per week that involve no spending."

Maria also enjoyed a week that was easy on her wallet, but did give in to bring a friend out to dinner at Omar's Rawtopia. At least it was raw, organic food. She has also been making use of Andree's reusable bags to bring lunch to work. At USEE we tend to enjoy our lunches while catching some hot direct afternoon sun right outside out office. Maria also enjoyed a (mostly) consumption free camping trip to Southern Utah.


We brought all of our own food with us and enjoyed cooking over the campfire. We discovered an interesting treat of roasting Starbursts and putting them between two Nilla waffers.

There's every reason to be skeptical, but they were great! We also enjoyed banana boats and traditional s'mores.

Although it was a purchase, my favorite part of no consumption week was the purchase of a perfectly good light brown sweater that I got from a little thrift store in Green River while camping. Yes it was shopping but at 20 cents, it certainly will make me think twice about my future purchases!


Aaron enjoyed a consumption free biking trip:

Ironically, going out to enjoy nature is usually a highly consumptive activity. Every time we go camping, boating or trekking, we end up destroying or diminishing the very things we set out to find. We drive hundreds of miles to pretty places to start our trips, and in our adventuring wake we leave a stream of waste that could otherwise have been avoided. Most people take disposable plates and utensils camping, buy bottled water because they'll be away from a tap, consume disposable fuel canisters for camp stoves, build bonfires that contribute enormously to air pollution, etc. Anyone who has been camping knows what I'm talking about. Hypocritically, environmentalists to go great lengths to experience nature, and as a by-product they wreck exactly what they strive for.

But not me. As part of no-consumption week, I would experience nature without doing it any harm! And so begins the Impact Free Bicycle Naturescapade.

So I left at around 5:00 on Saturday, from my home near the U of U, to ride my bicycle out to the Great Salt Lake and spend an evening watching the sun set over the water. Never mind that I don't have an effective setup for bicycle touring; It's no consumption week and I need to go adventuring with the stuff I already own. So I just rode my racing bicycle, while wearing a large overnight pack I usually take backpacking. This turned out to be massively uncomfortable for a number of reasons.

My bike's front-pitched aerodynamic riding position did not mesh well with wearing a pack, and by the end of the 25 mile ride, my entire body was excruciatingly sore. I had to exert my back muscles to keep the extra weight upright, giving me a sore back, and the extra weight put more pressure on my feet and butt as I rode, giving me even more additional pain to the already strenuous ride. As for the strenuous ride, a big backpack doesn't really help that either. The pack was not in any way aerodynamic, and its weight meant extra heft to push around. So this all added up to a very trying bike ride, and by any measure the trip should have been a failure.

So why did I have such an awesome time? The trial made it worth it. Would I have been more comfortable driving to the lake and car-camping? Most definitely. Would I have been more comfortable riding a touring bike with panniers? Oh yes. But I'm equally sure I would not have had any more fun, and that makes all the difference. Giving up consumption is not always easy, but it is almost always worth it. We trick ourselves into thinking we need a lot more things than we really do, but what's important is being happy with whatever we have.

NO TRASH WEEK

Waste Art Collages by Chris Jordan

Reduce our trash for a week? How'd we do it??


Andree' took the week to pay attention to what her and her family do well and don't do well regarding trash in their house.

She found that her family's strengths included recycling, composting, limiting packaging, reusing plastic bag/plastic containers (i.e., yogurt containers, etc), and re-purposing/getting second hand materials. That will come in handy during no consumption week!

Her family struggles with things that aren't as conveniently set up in their home. For example, she rarely remembers to recycle toilet paper tubes because they are put in the bathroom trash, not in the trash next to the recycling. Coffee filters and coffee - her "compost" goes directly to her chickens, so she doesn't put her coffee grounds in it. She made an effort this week to walk them out to the green waste bin rather than putting them in the trash. She decided that she should still use them, so she set a tupperware next to her "chicken treat" bin on the counter to gather the grounds for her plants.

She is also planning to make some reusable, washable "ziplock" bags out of an old jacket.


Charice carried around her own "spork" for the week so when she was at a conference for two days she didn't use any of their plastic silver ware!











Aaron decided to be a rebel at the grocery store and instead of separating his veggies, use only one bag! I didn't want to butcher his cleverly written story so here it is in original form:

"I was at the Grocery store, trying to fight the unacceptable trend of vegetable appartheid that has gripped our produce sections nationwide. I did the unthinkable. I rejected the notion that vegetables should be kept separate, that each one needs its own container. I ripped one produce bag from the spool. I pried one little green twist tie into my hand. Then I picked up a few carrots, and placed them in the bag. I felt a rush of adrenaline at the anticipation of my next move, as I walked left and lined myself up for the first act of rebellion.

Another spool of bags taunted me from next to the greens. "Keep 'em separated" it whispered to me through the lettuce-wetting mist. I ignored it. The pulse-pounding adrenaline of my rebellion reached a new level as I took my spinach and lowered it into the bag. High on my anti-segregation activities, I pranced over to some fat looking mushrooms and added them too, just to show I meant business. What a rush; I got tunnel vision from the thrill, and I reveled in the knowledge that a balding middle-aged man watched me with bleary eyes and a slack jaw.

I came down from the excitement as I moved on to buy garbonzo beans and minced garlic. A creeping sense of dread snuck up on me, and nagging doubts appeared in my mind. The mushrooms may have been a folly. Did I take it too far? There was something unnerving about my plastic produce mix; the variety of colors was at once fabulous and terrifying. I knew I was going against convention, and I got strange looks from all around the store. I overheard someone call me a hippie, and I felt like I was drowning in a fluorescent world of negativity.

I had to leave. I HAD to leave. But I knew my diverse produce bag would be an unimaginable detriment at checkout. So I walked up slowly and avoided eye contact. Hoping it would attract the least amount of attention, I put the bag on the conveyor belt in the middle of everything. But despite the sneaky placement, the green, orange and white showed through the opaque bag in the distinguishable shapes of the veggies to which they correspond. The conveyor belt advanced as my nerves rose. Now there are only four items between my highschool-age cashier and my non-segratory produce bag. Now three. Two. One. And my youthful cashier, eyes hidden behind a thick mask of makeup, picks up the bag, feels through the plastic at everything inside, and looks at me piercingly. I thought the gig was up, that my attempts at being a good person had entered a harsh checkout-line judgement zone. Then she smiled. "I don't know why more people don't do this. It seems stupid to take a bunch of bags if everything fits into one."

Maria also had a similar reaction when she brought her own ziplock bag to get bulk granola from the grocery store. She was worried about how they would react but the cashier just smiled and said "Oh! that's creative!".

To keep track of everyday trash, Maria set aside a small paper bag under her sink to separate her trash from her roommates. She is happy to say that the majority of the trash (minus one piece of saran wrap and the plastic wrapping of an ice cream container) was all food scraps. Now she's just gotta find a way to compost it! She has gotten around throwing many things away by saving containers. She turns jars into drinking glasses and uses containers from yogurt and hummus etc as containers to bring lunch to work!

At work she was able to recycle paper and keep a pile for scrap paper when we are testing printing and her garbage looks pretty empty besides those few nasty gum wrappers!

Crystal cleaned out every closet in her house over the weekend while her sister and mom were here from AZ to help. She did not throw away one thing! Instead, she had a pile to donate, pile to recycle and things to turn into rags. She listed a few things on KSL for free and donated other things to the DI. She ended up with 5 garbage bags of stuff and none of it ended up in the trash bin!

As far as her day to day household garbage, she is recycling and reusing but needs to get a new compost bin and get to things before her husband does so that he doesn't throw them away! Still a work in progress :)


Thanks for tuning in to our no trash week! We hope you can try some of these strategies for yourselves and your families. Let us know how it turns out and stay posted for next weeks no consumption week!!

No Impact Summer

Inspired by the readings of No Impact Man, USEE has decided to take on a No Impact Summer!! For the next 5 weeks, USEE will be taking a new challenge every week to reduce our impact on the environment. We will be posting the stories of our successes and frustrations as we work through this project. We hope you'll join us in trying some no impact challenges for yourself! Here's what our summer looks like:

Stage 1: July 9-15 NO TRASH WEEK
-Reduce amount of trash, compost, use reusable bags, scrap paper, recycle

Stage 2: July 16-22 NO CONSUMPTION WEEK
-Don't buy anything new that is not food, no extra shopping, try second hand if needed

Stage 3: July 23-29 REDUCE ELECTRICITY WEEK
-Work with the lights off, turn off lights in your house, unplug chargers and appliances

Stage 4: July 30-August 5 EAT LOCAL WEEK
- Buy from the farmers market, get creative, incorporate at least one local food into every meal

Stage 5: August 6-12 SAVE WATER WEEK
-Take shorter showers, turn off water in the sink, hand wash

Keep checking our blog and facebook for posts throughout our journey and feel free to share stories with us about how you are reducing your impact!