Day 20 - May 29th

Last blog post? Wow well all I can say is I actually made it, and not just skimmed through it but I actually added to my goals every week! I have to say I'm impressed with myself and anyone else in the class who actually carried through with their commitments. So, update my favourite candle ran out, that kind of is a measurable sign that shows just how much I've been using the candlelight and representitive of the energy I've saved. It was kind of a landmark of this whole experience for it was this candle that stood by me all through it, and now it's gone as this time ends. Well not much else from me, I took some time today to read some of the other blogs and see how my fellow class mates are doing and very impressed with some of their blogs (Rachel's is amazing)! My next blog will be the reflection of the whole experience so I'll talk more in depth about this time then. :)

Day 17 - May 26th

The days of this project are winding down and I've been thinking that I will ease up on the no electricity thing but not completely abolish this new system I've found, the rents on the other hand are estatic that this is ending! Anywho, ever since watching some of the films such as Food Inc. we watched in class I've been trying to get my mother to take me to the Farmer's market to see what it's like and maybe we can start eating more organically and not having as much packaging to throw away to help with my goal of diminishing waste and increasing composting. I've been begging my parents for a while to start buying local meat because I. for about two years now, have been totally against the treatment of animals in these large industry farms and adapted a total vegetarian near vegan lifestyle for nearly 3 years now. The pluses of buying locally is the freedom of being able to visit these farms and see yourself the animal's living conditions. So we did end up going and even bought a few items, I can't promise and say we'll do this every week but I definitely feel as though making it more of priority to eat locally and healthier. Hopefully we'll see my composting goal of diminishing garbage carry through! Below: Byward Market

Day 14 - May 23rd

As I quickly mentioned in the last post, I have recently decided to go all out for this summative and have recently attempted to use no electricity whenever possible. I have found that with no electriticy on in the house I can concentrate so much better and actually get to do more. Instead of watching TV for an hour I find myself just taking my dog out for a walk and enjoying the summer air. And I've gotten so obsessed with doing stuff by the candlelight and leaving everything including my cell phone which I'm addicted to (mainly because I have a full data plan, meaning unlimited internet access on it as well) and just sitting in the peaceful quiet reading or studying. My parents have not gone as full out as I have but they are continuing to turn off their lights for a minimum of a half and hour a night and are enjoying the down time as well. We also as a family have grown accustomed to unplugging everything after we are finished and even the familiar "Bell Signal not found" sign that appears on our TV after being unplugged every time doesn't bother us anymore. Well after that brief little intro I will talk about what happened this evening, my family and I spent the day at my brothers house and unlike usual company I can't really control I had no fear in instilling the usual rules at his place, so while spending the day there I unplugged his appliances and lights when not in use, and lets just say, he wasn't all for it. He threatened to kick me out of his place if I kept this up (what a loving brother right?) so I unfortunately had to halt my ways, but not without ticking off the bro in the proccess, a success if you ask me. :)

Day 13 - May 22nd

Before you watch these, I should probably tell you that I've sort of altered my 30 mins a day no energy thing into pretty much not using electricity whenever possible. It's influenced me to focus harder on school work and not sit down in front of the TV as much as I do, so yes with that in mind enjoy these 'Vlogs' which were alot of fun to make. Hope you don't mind my mindless ranting.

Recap of the experience so far:

(Sorry for all the clanking, I was playing around with the candle while filming.)

Talking about Day 13 and a mini rant:

Day 11 - May 20th

I have spent the ENTIRE night attempting to write an essay for English, now the only problem with essay writing is that it involves the computer and I really didn't want to get off my writing flow tonight sooo I cheated. I forego my commitment to turn off all electricity for the half and hour and kept my laptop plugged in. Now although I did make sure that all lights were off and unplugged and wrote my essay by candle light (I'm running out of my favourite candle scent from Yankee Candle with all this candle use!) I did leave my laptop plugged in. Now the only reason I cheated and kept it plugged in was for fear of me not noticing the battery low signal at the bottom of the screen and my computer would shut off and the essay lost. Even though I did technically cheat I think that having only one plug in use in the entire house (didn't have to worry about the rents this time for they were out at a friends) is not too bad. And as always I loved working by the candle light and kept it that way well in to the night as I slaved over my least favourite course.. don't tell Ms Bigham I said that.

Day 10 - May 19th

Half way there! Man I seriously underestimated the difficulty of giving up electricity for half hour a night (which now commonly turns into 45mins - 1 hour) since time seems to go so much faster when I spend this time doing homework that is due the next day and I'm running out of time to do it. School work is piling up for the end of the year is fast approaching and it is prime summative time. Yesterday night I actually went over to a friends house after school as we were working on the Advanced Functions summative (9 questions that take an hour per question.. not fun) and for most of the night we actually spent in the park working on math outdoors in an attempt to make it more enjoyable which I counted as a my no energy use time for we actually weren't using any electricity and our light was powered by the sun itself. However, I came home later to find that my parents took advantage of me being gone all night and hadn't turned off electricity at all, and although it wasn't my own actions, I was a tad bit dissapointed and sad that they didn't support this cause as much as I do. However, in order to 'punish' them lights are off for 2 hours tomorrow. That's quite a while, but thanks to the later sunsets alot of what we do can be done in the sunlight now at a reasonable hour so hopefully it wont be too tough to give up electricity for that long, and hopefully it'll not rip my family apart in the process.

Day 8 - May 17th

Everything is going well and as planned so with a lack of things to talk about having to do with the summative itself, I thought I'd take this blog post as an oppurtunity to talk about the different reactions I have recieved with respect to the actions I have been doing. So firstly, my friends; I have been lucky enough to have three of my best friends in this class with me and they are participating in the no impact challenge as well so between the four of us, the rest of our friends have accepted it and understand our respected goals. With that said, after every lunch I now find myself making the rounds and picking up not only my but everyone at my tables uneaten food and throwing it into the newly added compost bin at our school and they seem fairly appreciative that I clean up after them. As for my family, they are always extremely supportive with everything I do and have been a great help in all this, gotta love em. Anywho, all from me right now. Talk back later.


Best friends and I.

Day 5 - May 14th

So Day 5 brought with it a large problem for our 'turn off electricity for half an hour a night' plan; we had company over. My parents are involved in a small group with our church and it just so happened this week that the Bible study would be held at my house, this meant 10 or so people came into our residence and they all used up a lot of power, ate a lot of food and took away the night from my plan to conserve some energy. Because I could not just enter into the living room and demand that everyone there studies the Bible in the dark, I had to allow the upstairs power to be kept on but what I did do was continue my life as usual and spent not just half an hour but whole rest of the night in the dark, in my room. (Which did I mention is already in the dark, windowless basement?) Well you may be thinking, why did I spend the whole night in the dark? To be completely honest it was so peaceful, I lit a couple of candles curled up with a book (not Handmaid's Tale this time, I pulled out the good stuff-- meaning Harry Potter) and just read wihth my iPod in my ears. I had previously decided that I would take the night off from homework and do whatever I pleased with it, and instead of spending it the way I usally would (with the TV on and laptop in my lap) I took the energy saving peaceful approach and I can not think of a better way to spend my downtime now. It was lovely. Anywho, the rest is going well, I even offered to clean up after the company was gone just so I could ensure that any uneaten food was placed in the compost (the parents loved that I was cleaning up for once) and then the lights all went out and everything unplugged while I continued to read my favourite series of all time into the night with candle light. I have to say, best night I've had in a while. Buut now back to reality and all the homework I have piled up, wish me luck.

Day 3 - May 12th

All I can say is oops. So firstly, yesterday (day 2) went smooth sailing just as day 1 but for today, well.... to be completely honest; I forgot. I forgot to unplug everything before I left for school, I forgot while at school to compost the remains of my lunch I didn't eat and it was only through my mother's reminder that I remembered that I needed to turn everything off for half and hour. I vow that this WILL NOT happen again. I have done what is needed to remind myself everyday, I have placed a sticky on my mirror so it reminds me when I get ready in the morning, I have placed it as a reminder on my computer and phone and hopefully after a couple more days I wont have to think twice about it and it will just be normal for me to do these things. However, It turns out my family doesn't suffer from the minor case of Alzheimer's I seem to have as well for the compost bin is slowly filling up, and it seems like the only one in the family not too happy about this is the dog who isn't getting as many of our leftover scraps as I'm sure she'd like to be getting. Well here's to day 4 and 5 going better than day 3 did. Talk back to you later!

Day 1 - May 10th

So it is the end of the first day and I can happily say that I have not cheated yet! Great acheivement, I know. Well my mother and I went to the store today and bought some compostable bags (I hadn't even realized that compostable bags were needed. Oops), 1 smaller sized pack to keep underneath the sink for easy access and the bigger sized pack that is to fit into the green bin in the garage, I even ate an apple and banana so that I could throw the peel and core into the green bin to say I already composted. Who knows, maybe this summative will influence me to eat more fruits and veggies? So far the family is doing well and we all read our respected books during the 30 min no electricity time (their books were for pleasure reading, unfortunately Handmaid's Tale for english class wasn't as fun for me) but it did influence me to actually do some reading so I guess that's a plus. We also had a few slipups when it came to unplugging everything not in use, (I forgot to unplug the toaster this morning) but for the most part, smooth sailing so far. The only real nuissance that we've found so far is that every time we unplugged the T.V. after our use of it, the Bell signal or whatnot has to relaod, which however stupid it seems really annoyed my father when his friend called him seeing if he had seen a play on some football game and the extra minute the TV took to load made my father miss the play. However, I think small annoyances like this will be worth the good we're doing for the world. :) Check back later!

Statement of Intent

For the next three months I have decided I will be doing 3 things that I feel will (however little) make an impact on my environmental footprint and hopefully encourage and inspire others to make small steps in the right direction as well. So 1) I will finally start composting. I am very guiltfully telling everyone that my family has not touched the fairly newly implanted green bin, it has been sitting in our garage for the longest time and we never thought twice to compost our unused food and other compostable items. 2) For (atleast) 30 mins a day (tried for more with the family, however no budging...yet), we will turn off ALL electricity, no tv, no computer, no nothing. And 3) I have decided that we wil plegde to not only turn off but unplug anything not in use and to ensure that nothing stays on in our 'away hour' I will make my rounds of the house everyday before school and before bed and unplug ALL plugs. I chose to do these 3 actions, because although they are relatively easy to do, I do honestly feel that they will not only help in however a small way the environment, but also could inspire my family (and maybe anyone else reading this) to extend this project for longer than 3 weeks and actually think more about what we're doing for this earth and the different ways we can help.


So, you may be asking yourself "How does this help the enviroment?". Well, did you know that the amount of garbage we produce is one of the major environmental concerns in North America? Us North Americans produce more garbage than anywhere else in the world, and to be frank, we're running out of room to put it. Each Canadian alone on average produces over 2.2kg of waste per day, which adds up to be about 30 million tonnes of waste per year! No wonder we're running out of room to put our waste, that's an insane amount of waste! Well to atleast attempt to diminish my family's waste we will be composting. Composting not only lessens the amount of waste going into landfills but allows for useful plant product to be placed back into the ground and be used again. This earth really needs to consider reusing stuff more often, why not our food wastes? The second environemntal impact will be my diminishing of electricity I use. When I googled the question "How much electricity does Canada use in a year?" the number contained a whole lot of 0's behind it. What people don't seem to think of though is the energy they are wasting when their lights and appliance are not in use but still plugged in. So much energy is wasted each year, and our energy burned produced more carbon to be emitted into the air, contributing to large environmental problems such as Global Warming.



Although my actions are not very precisely measurable, perhaps I will see a slight diminish in the amount of garbage bags my family puts on the curb and best of all an increase in the amount of compostable bags that will be put out as well. As for the amount of electricity, perhaps our hydrobill will be lessened however slightly (then my parents will thank me for the annoyance I'm placing on them!)


I don't see any reason why I would want to cheat on the composting aspect, it's fairly easy to toss our compostable items into the compost bin rather than the garbage. However, I do anticipate myself having a couple hard times turning off all electricity for a whole night, I had a hard enough time making my family turn everything off for an hour on earth day I can't imagine the struggles I'll have everyday. So I have set a couple of rules, although we will start at 30 mins a night (it must be at night since we're always gone during the day) the family is allowed to change the time of the 30 mins off period to fit our scheduale best. Also we have no limitations on what we do as long as it involves no energy. My mom suggested that we use this time to spend some quality family time together but we'll see how that goes over. Also as for unplugging things not in use, I don't anticipate myself cheating, however for the first couple of days I'm sure people in the family will tend to forget to unplug.


I think the most difficult aspect of this blog will just be to REMEMBER to do it, as of now unplugging things not in use and composting do not come second nature to me and will take a little while to get into the swing of things. However, I do not anticipate too much difficulty as the tasks I have set out for myself are fairly do-able without causing too much inconvnience on myself.




Alright! Lets get to it and finally practice what I preach and get around to this, keep you updated!