Accidentally Sustainable - Part 1

I didn’t always focus on the environment… or honestly even think about it that much. In fact, a lot of the more sustainable changes I’ve made over the course of my life have happened as happy accidents – the results of choices I made as a control freak rather than activist… here is one such story:

When I was 16, and I had started to get acceptance letters back from colleges, my mom and I returned to a few of the schools to which I had been accepted so we could try to envision what it would be like for me to live there for a few years. We explored the campus, checked out the surrounding areas, and ate in the school’s cafeteria. On our first such visit, I was so completely HORRIFIED by the look of the meat in the cafeteria that I decided there and then that it was not something I’d be able to stomach during my college years. Although I had eaten meat pretty regularly my entire life up until that point, and ironically, ended up going to a school with a MUCH nicer cafeteria, I quit meat cold “tofurkey” that day and have never looked back. Since then, I’ve ping-ponged between pescatarian, vegetarian, and completely plant based eating. And though my motives have changed drastically, even to this day, I still can picture that grey-ish boiled chicken breast and am thankful for the stubbornness of that 16-year-old kid and where her decision has taken me.