It’s over
(Not the world, my project)
So, my Do One Thing (DOT) project is over, and as 8th grade comes to an end, I’m really glad that I went through this experience. Going vegetarian, and Ms. Riggen’s science class, put a lot into perspective. I’ll begin by saying that I’m not trying to hate on meat lovers or anything of the sort. But I did realize, or well, internalize, that change doesn’t happen on its own. We have to consciously make an effort to change, to do better, to BE better.
When I started this project, I thought that it would be easy, or not that difficult, but as time went on, I concluded that it was rather hard to keep making meatless choices. For this reason, I understand if giving up meat or animal products may be too much for you or your family. My family was unable to do this as well, even for the project’s 28-day span. My mom did the project with me and my dad and sister tried but they were unable to complete more than two or three days. My dad has a reasonable explanation and that’s because he’s a pre-diabetic, which means that carbs and sugar are big no-nos. But my sister announced, “Never will I give up meat, the Earth can die” before even trying and then about three days into our family project she quit altogether. Obviously if it came down to meat or the Earth, she would choose the Earth. Hopefully. Anyway, the point is this project wasn’t the easiest thing to implement. I saw it through all the way to the end, but I did make mistakes. I ate some chicken in mac in cheese because I didn’t know that it was included. I ate some sushi — it was delicious — but I felt kind of guilty afterwards. However, for the most part I made meatless choices for the 28-day time period.
Once this project concluded, my parents sat me down to talk about my protein intake. They were very worried that I wasn’t getting what I needed and although they respected my choices and reasons to do this project, they decided to reach a compromise. From now on I will eat chicken, turkey and fish. However, I will not consume sheep or beef. I haven’t eaten pork in about a year (I quit eating it to support one of my best friends whose favorite animal is pigs). I don’t really eat sheep anyways, so the largest change would be the beef portion. I want to stop consuming beef because cows are the number one type of animal that is releasing methane into the atmosphere.
There are approximately 1.5 billion cows on the planet, each and every one of them expelling upwards of 30 to 50 gallons of methane each day.
According to my data, I saved 63.12 oz of chicken and 35.24 oz of fish during the four-week project. If the entire population of Washington D.C. did my project and went vegetarian, we would save about 39,981,912.2 oz of chicken and 22,321,967.5 oz of fish, (this is about 2,498,869.5 pounds of chicken and 1,395,123).DC’s population is 633,427 people and in order to produce a single pound of beef it puts 22 kg GHG into the atmosphere.
This DOT project, and our class’ focus on sustainability has led to another change that I have made to my life — COMPOSTING! I started to watch our trash and saw that food waste is a large portion of it, which is stupid because 90% of that food waste could have been composted into new soil. My family is using Compost Cab and this has been a very convenient process. They gave us a bucket and come weekly to pick up our food waste, which then doesn’t give us excuses like, “We have to drive all the way over there” or “We don’t have a bucket.”
Although it may seem that this was just a drop in the proverbial bucket, change has to begin somewhere and small baby steps over time will eventually lead to a movement. Small changes over time with a small group of people can lead to changes that influence a large group of people and lead to a tipping point that can create societal change. For example, my dad and I found out that someone else on our block is also using Compost Cab. Before there were 0 families on our street using this program and now there are two. In the future, there will hopefully be more. This is but one small piece of a larger puzzle. At the end of the day, I’m not asking you to go vegan or to buy a Tesla or start a cult where you worship vegetables and persecute meat eaters, but I am asking you to take a good look at your life, the way you live, and ask yourself, “Will I take the step and Do One Thing?”
