Pretty normal day. I’m almost out of food, so I’m looking forward to going to the grocery store again. With all these new recipes it’s hard to predict how long the food will last. I also never bought any snacks, so I was just hungrier at lunch and dinner times. I usually always have granola bars or something like carrots and hummus on hand. I wanted to buy hummus, but I’ve only seen ones with the plastic film on top. I also don’t have a blender to make my own. A blender or food chopper would be a good investment once I don’t have to move houses so often. A lot of good sauces for recipes require them too. If the challenge were to continue longer, I would probably try making my own snacks, like homemade granola bars.
It seems like there is a paucity of research on whether buying kitchen appliances, like a blender, is more ecofriendly than buying the premade version at a store. Although there are probably significant initial environmental downsides to purchasing a kitchen appliance, I personally think if it gets used frequently enough, it would be more ecofriendly. How frequently? I am not sure. This food blog article did a simple cost analysis of buying green smoothie drinks vs. making them at home and buying a blender. She believed that if drinking those smoothies more than twice a week, only then it would probably be worth it.
However, what I did find was a ton of websites with lists and lists of ecofriendly kitchen gadgets and products. This ties into what is known as greenwashing. Greenwashing is a marketing spin by companies that deceptively advertises their product as sustainable instead of using that money to actually minimize environmental impact. I mentioned in Day 9 that "biodegradable" was often used as a greenwashing term. Other examples are words like “eco-friendly,” which have no clear-cut definition or label credibility and often make dangerous products, like chemicals, seem safe.
For example, seeing the word “green” and a picture of a pretty flower on a bleach bottle, when bleach itself is not great for the environment, is a clear marketing tactic. But it works. A 2019 CGS survey found that over one-third of buyers will pay more than 25% for sustainable products and the second highest reason, after quality, for brand loyalty was for sustainable business practices. I don't mean to put a negative spin on those survey results (it's great to see that we want to be environmentally friendly), but it is important to think critically about what proof or claims are being made, as there are truly greener products that do use renewable materials, are designed to be repaired instead of disposed, and are free of toxic substances. An individual Google search for each potentially misleading product may be necessary.
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