In order to understand this endeavor, it may help you to understand a bit more about me. I’m a 32 year old living in Washington D.C. with my wife, Leah. We just got married back in May so are still enjoying being newlyweds. We have an awesome dog named Rio who is about a year and a half old and full of energy.
I work from home in the tech industry as a product manager. I spent 3 years trying to explain what this is to Leah without any success so won’t try here. However, working from home gives me a lot of time to come up with crazy ideas like these.
I have always been a bit environmentally conscious. When I bought my first car, gas mileage was one of the most important things I was looking for (along with price). I ended up purchasing a Mazda 3 which, at the time, had highway gas mileage that was about twice as good as my mom’s minivan.
I lived in New York City for 6 years prior to moving to D.C. and began to really reduce my carbon footprint there. It didn’t make sense to take my car to NYC and I found taking Ubers and Lyfts everywhere expensive. So, I would commute to work on the subway or on a bike depending on the weather.
Three years ago, while there, I made probably my biggest change yet, my diet. I began to eat vegetarian Sunday through Thursday. I began to realize that as a society eat way too much meat and fish. It’s not sustainable and our planet can’t support it. That being said, meat is delicious and I didn’t want to give it up. The compromise I made with myself was to limit when I eat meat to 5 days a week. It lets me enjoy meat when eating out on a Friday or Saturday night or when I want to grill on Saturday, which is great but has made a huge difference in how much I consume. I feel like you are supposed to “brand” these things so for now, I will refer to it as my Moderation Diet.
Food has become a more and more important part of my life recently. I have always loved making things with my hands. I used to be an amateur woodworker which was an amazing outlet for this. It became extremely difficult to continue this in NYC, and eventually, I stopped. I hope to pick this back up again soon. In the meantime though, I still felt the need to still make something with my hands so I began cooking. This is something that has taken me a long time to get good at, but when you do it at least 2 or 3 times a week and try new things, you definitely learn a lot.
Despite my Moderation Diet, I did fall into the trap of beginning to order out a lot, while in New York. Seamless and Grubhub made it so easy. At least 3 nights a week, I would press a couple of buttons and 45 minutes later, a delicious meal would arrive, likely in a plastic container in a plastic bag with plastic utensils. So much waste we produce is centered around convenience. And with food, they really got me. This is a habit that has continued in D.C. and what got me to see the waste I was generating.
I would say that besides my “weird” Moderation Diet and now my avoidance of singe use plastics, I am what most would consider a fairly normal 32 year old. I enjoy spending time with friends, hiking, and going to bars and restaurants. I grew up in Philly and love sports. Weirdly, I still have season tickets to the Phillies even though I live in D.C.
I hope this give a little bit of context to me and this project.