For the last two weeks I have been mindful of my habits of consumption. I have been working hard to stay focussed on completing my own personal coffee challenge. My goal was to make the two week period without using a single K-Cup or purchasing a coffee in a throw away cup. I managed to purchase only one coup of coffee in a paper cup that I think can be completely recycled. Here is what I learned from the coffee challenge.
Coffee Challenge: Total Cups of Coffee Consumed: 44 + 1 Purchased Average cost of a single K-Cup: $ 0.48 Actual Cost Saved: $ 0.48 x 44 = $21.12 Purchased Coffee: $2.25 Cost of Tin of Coffee: $12.99 Total: $15.24 A savings of: $5.88 Well, there was a financial savings to be had. More importantly was the savings in terms of waste. Other than the coffee grounds, I managed to keep well over a pound of K-Cups out of our local landfill. Success. Part 2 - My Consumerism and My Plan to Change: Reflecting on the readings, especially Mulligan’s third chapter on Consumerism, I have made a conscious effort of the last few weeks to reflect on my habits. Fortunately, My family and I are not wild and crazy spenders and we don’t often buy lots of goods. We tend to save for family trips in the summer months. This year alone we have been watching our spending habits and I have a hard time trying to isolate major expenses (wants) that have occurred. I plan to continue to work hard to do my part. I am making a conscious effort to use re-usable containers for my lunch. I will focus on grocery shopping in a manner that will account for unnecessary waste both financially and towards the environment. Things i will continue to work on: Reusable container usage I plan to take advantage of the idea of reducing waste through the use of recyclable containers. It have found that it is convinient to use cheap sandwichbags to assemble my lunch in the morning. A did a quick figure and came to the conclusion that I am adding well over 2000 sandwich bags into the environment every year by using them for my families lunch preperation. Continue to drive an older vehicle I have an older vehicle that has been reliable over the years. We have talked about an upgrade but, it is more of a "want" than a "need". Although the vehical would be recycled (for the most part), I feel that keep one less car out of the dump would do something for the environment. Examine every need to establish that it is not a want I will continue my practise of asking myself is this purchase a "want" or a "need". I am also working to establish this practise in the mind of my children. Be aware of planned obsolescence This concept is largely out of my control. I have made it practise to examine technology for the idea of "what can break and how fast will it break". My purchases have been slanted towards the likelyhood of me being able to fix the problem and/or the tech. Be aware of marketing and advertizing strategies Yet again, I will be mindful and ask myself is this a "need" or a "want". Furthermore, is the marketing strategy one of an imposing fear or need to belong. Things I want to work on: Hosehold power consumption and heating We are in the process of looking at a new furnace. I believe that my local power company will subsidize the purchase if the unit is energy efficient. This is a goal of my family. We want to instill the importance of sustainable technology in the minds of our children. Furthermore, I am looking into ways to properly seel the areas around the windows and doors that allow for energy to escape. I have alos begun to change 75% of the household lighting to a more effecient LED alternative. Buy more local foods This practise is easier in the summer months. We have a local market that supplies my community with fresh produce fromlocal farms. The produce is amazing. The market also made ties with local bakers and dairy farmers. Unfortunately, the market is seasonal. I am going to make a concious effort to locate local suppliers that we can approach during the winter months. Reduce my personal carbon footprint I am getting a bicycle! This was plan long before I took this course. I believe it is a good way to spend some quality family time while reducing my carbon footprint in the process. I am the only family member without a bike. I will probably delay this purchase until the spring. Start a garden My wife and I have talked about using a portion of our backyard to start a garden. We don't have much experience growing vegetables but, we have plenty of neighbors who are willing too teach us. Overall, this assingment was an interesting process. I found myself being critical of every ad that I saw on television. I was also spending a fair bit of time wondering how I could be more effective in my efforts. I am glad I was able to start with a small challenge like eliminating the K-Cup usage in my daily routine. This is just the beginning. I will work harder to reduce that carbon footprint and my daily waste. Wish me luck! Okay, So I made it two weeks with my coffee challenge and only made one coffee purchase. I managed to suffer through the process of filling the re-usable “K-cup” morning after morning with great success. Today is Wednesday and another weekly shop has happened. I managed to resist the need to put K-cup coffee on the list. I also managed to stick with another week of altering the shopping list to make an attempt at reducing my intake, waste, and footprint. I few extra minutes in the morning to prepare lunch is worth the savings both financially and to the environment. The Tally so far.. Coffee Challenge Total Consumed: 44 Cups of Coffee K-Cup Usage: 0 Purchased (Take Out Cup): 1 Today is Halloween! I took my daughter out trick or treating in the rain. Woohoo! I cannot believe the amount of candy she amassed in such a short time. I have been doing my best to track my habits and stick to my coffee challenge and all I can see is a mountain of candy. Each piece has a wrapper and each wrapper will be thrown away. What a mess.
Coffee Challenge
*** Extra coffee to stay warm while trick or treating! Total Consumed: 35 Cups of Coffee K-Cup Usage: 0 Purchased (Take Out Cup): 1 The weekend went fine. I only had one purchase that was questionable and one purchased coffee. My daughter got her new hockey jerseys and the already new filled to the brim hockey back was not able to close. We made the decision as a family to purchase another. I was not looking forward to shelling out 150 clams. Luckily, we had been in the habit of purchasing hockey gear at our local “Play It Again Sports” outlet. The only problem is that the season had already started and the chances of finding a used bag was slim to none. Also.. I bought a coffee at hockey. I was cold... :( Found a used hockey bag! 60 Bucks at the used sports store and it doesn't smell! It's big and it has wheels. I got a ten dollar credit for trading in her old one. Maddy's new used hockey bag
Halloween is here...almost
This afternoon we found ourselves at Dollarama buying halloween decorations. We already purchased pumpkins and candy earlier in the week. My daughter was dead set in getting some new decorations this year. We didn't spend a lot of money but, most of the decorations were made of plastics. We did our best to try and find some paper or cardboard decorations. I wish I had realized that we need some decorations earlier in the week. I would have had my daughts make a few on poster paper. Next year maybe. Coffee Challenge: Total Consumed: 30 Cups of Coffee K-Cup Usage: 0 Purchased (Take Out Cup): 1 Thursday is a big day for ads in the daily newspaper here in Winnipeg. I took the time to look through and actually reflect on how I felt. I wanted to see if I had the desire to purchase anything that I may or may not need. We did our weekly shopping on Wednesday at the local “No Frills” outlet. I had no need to look at the ads in the paper that were for grocery stores. I did go through the weekly best buy add. Other than a few deals on USB stick, I didn’t see the need to purchase anything at all. I Passed the test.
Resource:Is Best Buy's 'Showrooming' Campaign Working? Wednesday Weekly Grocery Shopping: I made sure not to add K-Cups to the shopping list. I also made the following conscious choices to alter my lunch habits (reduce trash and increase efficiency).
Everything purchased was placed into re-usable cloth bags (we’ve been doing this for years). Coffee Challenge: Total Consumed: 24 Cups of Coffee K-Cup Usage: 0 Purchased (Take Out Cup): 0 Got home from work today and my wife informed me that we were getting a new used oven. The In-laws are buying a new oven and wanted to know if we were going to take their old one. It is one of those double ovens that is controlled by a computer chip. I asked why they were getting rid of it and her reply was the self-cleaning option didn’t work. I was apprehensive as that could be a sign of things to come. Anyway, I can’t compete with the double oven. I should arrive in the next few weeks. I hope this is good decision. At least I get points for re-using. I think I’ll send our current oven to good will.
Coffee Challenge: Total Consumed: 16 Cups of Coffee K-Cup Usage: 0 Purchased (Take Out Cup): 0 Well it is Sunday. I spoke with my wife about my making some hamburger soup. A favorite winter dish that we tend to eat in large quantities on those cold Manitoba days. I offered to go out for the ingredients and asked if we could make some. It wasn’t going to happen today, but later in the week we would have a batch ready to go. Luckily I found a couple in the freezer. I plan to take one for lunch this week.
My daughter played hockey today. I was tempted to buy a coffee and a snack at the concession stand. Fought the urge. Consumed: 14 Cups of Coffee K-Cup Usage: 0 Purchased (Take Out Cup): 0 Hamburger Soup from the Freezer
I bought lunch today a work. I really wanted a wrap from the caff. I noticed that the wrap was "wrapped" in a foil/paper kind of wrapper. I asked "Sue" our caff leader if I could bring my own container in the future. She was receptive to my challenge and was open to the idea.
I did not sucumb to any of the adds that were playing during my evening news or the episode of Blue Bloods playing on the T.V. I did although purchase a tank of gas on the way home from school. I just finished my assignment on Chapter 3 “Consumption and Consumerism" from Mulligans Book. I felt that I may have gone on a bit of a rant on the evils of Apple. It is hard not to when you are trying to be mindfull of consumerism and the concept of planned obsolescence. The Coffee Challenge: I was successful today in preparing the coffee using the re-usable coffee brewing device. I also, managed to get some coffee during the day from a colleague who used the same device at work. No waste for me today. Since it is a Friday night and I already working on some assignments, I decided that I wanted to find out some numbers related to the waste generated by the Kuerig coffee system. Some Stats:
“Kill the K-Cup, before it kills our planet.” Video Total Consumed: 7 Cups of Coffee K-Cup Usage: 0 Purchased (Take Out Cup): 0 Okay, so I’m going to approach this reflective activity in a manner that will allow me to manage a couple of habits in my life. The requirements for this task have me monitoring a variety of behaviors that are tied to consumerism and the affects of mass advertizing. I plan to draw upon many skills that I have acquired over the years in my attempts to control / limit / avoid wasteful spending and consuming. In business, I learned a long time ago that the little expenses are the ones that you need to be aware of the most. A business can deal with a major expense but, the cost of items like printer cartridges and postage will draw on the bank account. For this activity, I plan to take the approach of monitoring my habits and effecting change in the common day to day activities that appear in my life. I feel it would be easy to say “I just won’t buy a new computer over the next few weeks” but, I know that changing something as small as my coffee consumption and methods of coffee consumption will be difficult. This is where I am going to start… I have a Kuerig! My wife bought it for me as a way of saving time and money (sort of). She also bought me a re-usable brewing container that would a allow me to use regular bulk coffee grounds in the Kuerig. The idea of the Kuerig was to help save money by making coffee and taking it to work in a re-usable travel mug instead of me purchasing (expensive) coffee on my journey into the school. Before long I was using the Kuerig every morning but, became lazy and I found it quicker and less messy to use the coffee that was available in the Kuerig “K-Cup” format. Although I was not creating waste in the for of a disposable coffee cup, I was creating waste by using the K-cup which was not bio-degradable like some of the coffee cup options available when purchasing coffee. My First Goal! I want to complete two weeks of coffee making and consumption with no waste short of the used coffee grounds which are bio-degradable. Total Consumed: 3 Cups of Coffee
K-Cup Usage: 0 Purchased (Take Out Cup): 0 Resources: The Downside to "K-Cups" Inventor of Kuerig - I Feel Bad for.... Image Source: https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2013-11/enhanced/webdr03/3/13/enhanced-buzz-12229-1383503862-16.jpg?no-auto |
AuthorM.Mays - M.Ed. Candidate at Cape Breton University Archives
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