A few months ago I deactivated this site because I wasn’t really sure what to do with it. I didn’t think I should leave it up, but I got so many requests to access it that I decided to just put it up again. I won’t be writing it anymore though.
I stopped writing this blog after I went to university because my perspective changed. I started this blog because I wanted to be eco friendly. I thought that purging plastic from my home was the best way to do it. But then I had to take a course at school about human impact on the environment. There are environmental issues other than plastic that are very serious. I don’t believe that focusing solely on one issue - plastic - is the right course of action. I think it’s better to take an approach where I consider the overall environmental impact of things, not just whether or not they’re packaged in plastic. The ingredients I use might be plastic free, but a lot of them are bad for the environment in other ways. Additionally, I realized that the solutions to the plastic waste problem that I propose on this blog are inaccessible to a lot of people. Going to university made me realize that not everybody can afford the expensive ingredients that having a plastic free kitchen requires you to buy. I feel that this blog gives off the message that if you have money, you can make a difference because you can afford to buy environmentally conscious goods. I grew up a bubble (Silicon Valley) and once I left it, I realized that this blog is unreasonable. I don’t have enough money to run it at school, and I don’t have enough time to make every single thing from scratch. What is the point of this blog if it doesn’t offer reasonable ways to be eco friendly? Is it just for show? That’s not what I want. I went into this actually wanting to help change things, not to promote the twisted notion that you have to be rich and have a lot of time on your hands to care for the environment.
I’m going to start a new blog about environmentally friendly living as a university student. I’m doing this because I want to show what’s possible with limited time and money, and I don’t just want to write about plastic free food. I want to write about environmentally friendly solutions to a lot of things that are accessible to everybody - not just people who have a lot of money and time. I think if I wrote about what I could do with limited resources, it could make more of a difference. If a broke busy university student can be environmentally conscious, so can a lot of other people.
Thank you for supporting this blog while I wrote it. I think it was a good start, but it needs modification. I hope you’ll join me at my new website once I start it in the fall when I go back to school. I’ll post the link here.
I hope you will pop by and post your new website here!
Mary Kat, I subscribed to your blog because I was impressed that a 16 year old would care enough about her plastic consumption to prepare meals from scratch. I know many 16 year olds who won’t even try to cook. You taught this 60 year old some great recipes, and I thank you. No, I don’t have access to the bulk foods and farmers markets like you did. And, no, I don’t always have time to prepare the foods I would like to prepare. I thought how lucky you were to live in a place to get products and produce that I could only wish for, and that you were actually taking advantage of having those products available! Attending a university away from home certainly changes a persons perspective and on more things than cooking plastic free. I look forward to reading your new blog.
Thank you for the update. I think this blog is very useful for those who do have access to the tools necessary to make stuff from scratch, so I’m glad you’re leaving it up. But I look forward to seeing your views on your future blog re: being environmentally friendly on a budget/as a student. That’s definitely a lot closer to what I personally can manage so I look forward to seeing what you have to say about that.
Please don’t be so hard on yourself. I didn’t see your blog as telling me what to do, I saw it as a place to see options of what I could do if I wanted. Some of your recipes were very cheap - what’s cheaper than saving veggie scraps to make veggie broth? You inspire people to think outside of the box (of packaged food, haha). It’s fine to discontinue the blog, but please don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m excited to follow your new adventures.