Eat From Home Challenge

A great way to go green and save green is to stay out of the drive through lane. Even sit down restaurants have a huge impact on your wallet and the environment! Upon examining our next step in this green journey, my husband and I quickly decided that eating out was the next eco-vice to tackle.

Although I take the plastic milk bottles home with me, and recycle the paper and cardboard, it's just not enough. The fact is that the food industry is a major contributor to many environmental concerns, including energy and water waste, deforestation, and huges amounts of wasted food. Not to mention that the majority of food purchased for our convenience are animals that have been treated inhumanely and treated with antibiotics, as well as other crops that have been fertilized and pesticide-ed to the hilt!

Here are some stats:

• Restaurants consume more energy per square foot than any other US industry—over 2.5 times the average commercial building
  
• Restaurants use large amounts of water. The Massachusetts Water Resource Authority’s studies have found that, depending on size and popularity, a single restaurant meal requires anywhere from 6 to 29 gallons of water, meaning most restaurants use anywhere from 1 million to 13 million gallons per year.
  
• Restaurants produce an average of 50,000 pounds of trash a piece per year-EACH!
  
• Americans go through 15 billion disposable hot beverage cups per year !
  
• All of the paper packaging to wrap up every tiny bit of food comes from somewhere. According to the No Free Refills campaign, the Southern Forests are paying the highest price for our convenience. As if the southern biodiversity wasn't threatened enough!
  

As a mother with 4 small children, not eating out is definately going to be a sacrifice for me. The convenience is always beckoning me, and my kids sure do love the "treats" they otherwise wouldn't get at home! So I am issuing a challenge to help keep myself on track, and so we can share success stories and tips. I am thinking of doing a giveaway at the end of this challenge! So, comment below to enter the challenge, and I'll have a check in post every week or so during the 2 months. The challenge will start Oct 1, and run through Thanksgiving. Let me know if you are just going to cut your eating out down, or go cold turkey like me! Feel free to take the button to put on your blog, and start sharing your tips to end our convenience eating addictions!