There’s a pretty hilarious site called Stuff White People Like that makes fun of many of the views and practices mentioned here at 8 weeks. In particular, posts on veganism, recycling, fancy reusable water bottles, Whole Foods and organic foods hit pretty close to home. I also find the grad school entry quite funny.
It’s been a while since my last post. In that time I finished a stressful quarter of graduate school and then spent about a month traveling around for the holidays. Ever since I finished my last eight week project I wanted to start another to investigate some topics that I didn’t get around to the first time. This quarter of my graduate program looks to be much more relaxed than the last, so I feel that this is a good time to get it under way.
For the next eight weeks I’m going to do everything I was doing before (save the cold showers *shudder*), along with some new tricks that I think will be interesting. First, I’m going to focus even more on food, by practicing veganism instead of just vegetarianism (vegans don’t eat any animal products, including milk, cheese and eggs), as well as avoiding overly packaged or processed foods. I’m also going to be a bit more concrete in limiting my driving, by staying below some goal number of miles over the eight week period. One of the things I’m most excited about trying is vermicomposting, which involves starting a worm farm to compost one’s food waste.
I hope the results are helpful and insightful!
Well, my eight weeks are officially up tomorrow (let the hour long hot showers commence!). Unfortunately I have not had a chance to explore some of the issues that I am interested in, such as worm composting and veganism. To that end, I’m intending to start a second eight week project (same bat channel) that will focus primarily on practical and environmentally friendly eating habits (though I’m sure I’ll slip in some more general environmental topics from time to time). There are plenty of extreme examples of environmentally friendly foodie journalism, but those examples aren’t particularly achievable for the normal busy person. I will focus on the substantial changes one can make without living on a farm or learning how to hunt.
Over the next week I am going to write a few essays summarizing my experience, and then I will take a two week break to attend an academic “boot camp” that is a requirement for a fellowship I received. I hope to start my new project October 1st. Thanks for reading!
Well I’ve reached the halfway point of this experiment, and so far things are going pretty well. Most of the changes that I’ve made haven’t been as onerous as I imagined they might be (due to the warm weather even the cold showers haven’t been that bad). Most of the compromises I’ve had to make have stemmed from the transportation side of my efforts. Several times, due to either social expediency or some form of luggage I’ve taken the car when the bus was a conceivable option. Overall though I think I’ve managed to stay reasonably consistent with my initial goals.
I’ve also learned a lot about environmentalism in general from a host of sites that have been recommended to me and that I’ve found in my online wanderings. Along with the sites listed on my blogroll to the right, I’ve been reading sites like Lighter Footstep, Green Options, No Impact Man, and The Sietch Blog. In my day-to-day life, I’ve had the chance to talk to an interesting variety of people about this project as well as environmental issues in general. It turns out that having an environmental blog helps spark environmental discussion. 
During the next four weeks, I’m hoping to spend at least a week being vegan (milk and eggs have most of the same environmental problems and inefficiencies mentioned in the vegetarianism article below). I’ll also try to post some recipes and talk about vegan eating strategies. I hope you are enjoying the site, and thanks for reading!
Hi, my name is Josh. Professionally I’m a graduate student in Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego, but by night I like to sit around and think about the right way to do things. The tasks in question can be large, like driving a car, or small, like choosing between canned beans and dry beans. Either way they have consequences (for the environment, one’s finances and one’s health, among others) that must be weighed in order to make the right decision.
I’m going to spend the next eight weeks of my life trying to consistently make the right decision. Note that this is different from simply knowing the right decision. Intellectually I know that it’s better to buy local organic vegetables for dinner than to order a couple of pizzas, but that doesn’t normally stop me from ordering pizzas. So I’m going to be making a lot of changes: I’ll be switching to a vegetarian diet, walking or taking the bus whenever feasible, and feeling extremely self-righteous during the whole process.
In this blog I will try to document my decisions, hopefully supported from time to time by some amateur analysis. I’ll also occasionally write some pure opinion posts. Finally, I’m hoping to ensnare some of my friends in guest writing duty, since they probably have lots of cool thoughts that I haven’t come up with. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the site—please leave comments, and email me with any thoughts at josh (at) 8weeksofcleanliving (dot) com.