People in richer countries have more access to meat, and are more able to afford to purchase it. I think that part of our culture, especially when it comes to restaurants, makes it seem as though eating meat -- and especially beef or seafood -- is a luxury, and who doesn't want to have a little luxury in their lives? I eat beef very infrequently and seafood never. (Beef is a choice, seafood I just HATE.) But I do eat more than my fair share of chicken, and not sustainably raised chicken at that. I don't believe that lean meats like chicken have an ill effect on our health, but factory farming of chickens isn't the healthiest. I've been making a conscious effort to eat more vegetarian meals. I'd gotten out of the habit of eating beans when I was on keto, and I am thrilled to have them back in my diet.

I kept a log of how much food was wasted by either my husband or I this month. I did not track the boys' waste. I don't always know what they throw out, and they are wild cards. The older one wastes very little -- he's a vacuum cleaner. The younger one doesn't eat anything, but I have to give him ample food because he's underweight. 

My husband and I didn't do too badly. There was about $12 worth of food that we intended to eat that went bad before we got to it. Most of our waste was the parts of the food I never intended to eat, such as peels, cores, shells, and the like. Other than a few meat scraps during the month, all of our food waste went into our compost bin, not into the trash.

Would I rather have $144 than throw that out? Of course! But this month has absolutely helped me with meal planning with the food we have at the forefront.

In our area, the only option for public transportation is the Glens Falls bus system, which has very limited use. To get to the nearest bus pickup, the amount of time I would spend walking would take me longer than driving to work. For trips to the Albany area, there is a commuter bus, but it has very limited hours. Likewise, the train station isn't close, and only comes through once or twice a day.

One of the options that was suggested in one of the articles I read was that perhaps independently driven "pods" could be linked together on highways. This is something that my husband has been daydreaming about for years, and seems like it could be a viable option for the United States. We have an extensive highway system, but our sprawling population makes it economically difficult to have public transportation that is accessible to everyone.

Even the HFC which we adopted in an attempt to combat the environmental impacts of HCFCs and CFCs are causing global warming. There are natural refrigerants that can mitigate this, and as of 2019, were supposed to be phased in. I'm not sure if that happened, given everything else that started in 2019.

Grocery stores obviously use more refrigeration than your average consumer. Aldi has a remarkably high score for their actions to reduce emissions. Target had the third highest score (behind Whole Foods, which we don't have without a drive), and the parent company that owns Hannaford was rated fourth.

Walking is good for the body, mind, ans spirit!  It's also good for the environment as it eliminates car emissions.

I suspect most metals have a high carbon footprint because of the amount of energy needed in the smelting process.  I'd like to know which metals are better/worse from a carbon perspective.  I'm also curious about the mining processes and which ones are more/less destructive.

I recently found out greasy pizza boxes are accepted for recycling by my curbside waste/recycling company!  My children also love to "reuse" some of our recycling for crafts, but we also reuse plastic tubs as food containers.

Going outdoors is essential for me - especially after a long stretch of videoconferencing meetings.  It's good for my eyes to look at things far away, my lungs to breathe fresh air, my body to physically move, and my soul to know life is not limited to a rectangle of pixels!