When people think of food waste, they usually think about restaurants, food prepared or stored at home, and leftovers that’ll eventually go uneaten and thrown away. Food waste can occur anywhere and even impact schools. If you ever have a chance, at the end of lunch or the end of the day and look at the trash cans around the cafeteria. How much food do you see there? How much of it goes eaten? How much of it goes uneaten?
Why is food wasted?
Food is wasted due to the quality of the food (that may be extremely questionable at times) that is served in school. Another reason that food is wasted is due to the requirement that students have to get a fruit or vegetable as part of their meal.
The impact:
Uneaten food goes to waste and students are taught it is acceptable to waste food. A lot of money and resources that are used to create school food go to waste as a result and impact the quality and money used to create cafeteria food.
What can we do?
Here is a list of things that we can do to reduce food waste:
-Compost uneaten food
-Food that is untouched (ie fruits and milk cartons as long as they’re preserved properly) can be washed and saved for tomorrow to give out to students who may want a snack
-Any leftover food (i.e. cafeteria food) that is unopened can be sent to shelters where people can consume the food due to scarcity
-Post signs near food: Take only what you will eat/drink
Balancing school with extracurricular activities or life in general can be a difficult task. The video below offers one of the many ways that we can balance our schedules. Writing things down helps me the most because it offers me a physical reminder of what I need to do. If I know I need to study for a test or go out for a run I write it down on a to do list. This increases the odds of me doing the task. Even in college I still use this method to get work done. It never hurts to make a schedule so try it out. I do this often ahead of a big week as I know things can get really hectic. This allows for a clear path forward so I know what to expect and not be surprised when the week arrives.
A little bit of advice for a successful social life in high school
I want to start off by saying that not everyone’s high school experience is going to be the same, but you’re all in it together and the next four years are really going to determine your future so make it worth it. All of you are in 8th grade right now and planning ahead might not be your thing, but consider changing some aspects in your life.
If you’re introverted be sure to step out of your comfort zone and make friendships that will last forever, most importantly stay in contact with your teachers; they can really help with your college application process your junior year. If you’re an extrovert keep doing what you’re doing, but be sure you’re being responsible by completing your tasks because being too extroverted can get you distracted from your responsibilities and goals.
Don’t stress about being the most popular kid in high school, it won’t matter to anyone after you’re out of there so just be yourself. If you get to be your true self then you will have time to explore what you like and don’t like, but if you’re trying to fit in with the crowd then you’ll never know your real identity because you will be too busy being what other people want you to be.
Furthermore, let me briefly tell you about my experience. I went into high school being really social, a lot of people knew me and I knew a lot of people. Most of these people were college bound, but they put partying and other things as their priorities and they didn’t end up going away to college. Thankfully way before all of that happened I noticed that they weren’t the best crowd so I stopped talking to them and surrounded myself with more responsible people and now I’m here at UCSB…THRIVING. My point is don’t be afraid of being yourself and surround yourself with good people and your high school experience will be super smooth! Now, I understand this might be too overwhelming and scary for some you guys so this is what Ricardo, has to say about mental health.
Mind lunch for thought
(Troll.me)
Mental Health, the mind, the brains of the operation, your brain, tu cerebro. We all think, or at least I hope everybody does. You’re now going into an environment where you’re going to need to be thinking on maximum overdrive. Or so it feels that way. You might think it’s complicated, but in reality it’s as complicated as you make it for yourself.
You can have all the energy within you to perform. But about that… your energy can go in any way. Panicked, you’re capable of maximizing how intense you might feel in a stressful situation. That or you’ll have enough energy to focus on avoiding what you have to do.
The all mighty magic, “You can’t live without it” solution is mindfulness; the bare bones definition for is maintaining awareness with your conscious self, not acting on it, but realizing where it’s at.(Berkeley,Greater Good Magazine)It’s essentially the feeling of complete relief, like how the last day of school feels. That’s what results from practicing mindfulness. Things might not be the best of situations, but you are the best you can be (Berkeley, Greater Good Magazine). The only catch is getting there.
For some it’s as simple as 1, 2, and 3. For others, it’s as complicated as 4, 8, and 29. I’ll make it a bit easy, to get in a state of mindfulness, you need to understand how you act when you’re stressed. Under stress, you’re likely breathing faster than you normally would be. It’s almost habitual for that to happen(Harvard Health Publishing). But not everyday is a fight for your life, you can pace your breathing to pace away from frenzied thinking. (Harvard Health Publishing). It might not be the end of your problems, but it’s constructive.
You’ll get somewhere that way, and if it feels like you’re not getting any better. But you are, you tried, that’s the first step of it all. It helps keep you in control (There’s also a whole pile of benefits to health(Kane)), and it’ll allow you to decide what you want to make out of high school. It beats the latter of letting defense mechanisms like anxiety or procrastination take control, trust me when I say that, that was me in high school. Now I’m sitting here in college regretting feeling like that, try your best not to copy me in that sense.
Now get out there and be mindful! Or don’t be, your choice… either way, have a good one, you reader person…
(Here’s some videos if you hate reading, are dyslexic, dislike reading, or just don’t feel like going through this portion of your regularly scheduled program, there’s options, you can go to cool math games and listen to this so you don’t get destroyed by your teachers when they ask you questions) (Also quick tip, learn to enjoy reading, it’ll make college that much easier, and you’ll be ready for AP classes in high school, leaving you enough leisure in college to maximize your experience)
Citations:
Berkeley , Greater Good Magazine. “Mindfulness Definition: What Is Mindfulness.” Greater Good, greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/mindfulness/definition.
“Going green” sounds pretty difficult right? But it is not! We provided you guys with small tips on how to slowly convert to going green. By doing this, it will help the environment a whole lot. Not only that, you will improve your health and decrease the health risks. Why not just give it a try? Whether it would be for a day, two days, a week or so on, you would still be contributing to saving the planet. Try it with your friends and family. Make it a challenge!
Eat more fruits and veggies!
This is so essential to you and especially your diet. At this age, we are all still growing, so it is important to feed your body healthy nutrients.
For a day, why not try skipping meat?
Skipping meat every once in a while will definitely improve your health and lower your risks of developing long term diseases. When you consume meat, not only are you eating an animal that was forcefully killed, but you are also contributing to the ongoing pollution through fossil fuel usage, animal methane, effluent waste, and water and land consumption.
Eat locally.
By this, we mean to buy your groceries locally. Go to the farmer’s market to stock up your fridge. It could be a great bonding time between you and your parents. This would help preserve and protect farmland. When eating and purchasing processed food, it affects the environment due to the use of fossil fuels, air pollution from transportation, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Ok, this is quite obvious and I know what you are thinking… but did you know… even though water covers over 70% of the world’s surfaces, only 2.5% of that water is freshwater (the one we drink). The rest is saltwater which you can find in the oceans around us but the amount of freshwater that we have is very limited. From that 2.5% of the Freshwater, we only have access to 1% as the rest is trapped in glaciers and snowfields. So to help the world save the little fresh water we have, we have suggestions on how to save water in many different ways.
Take Shorter Showers
Take a shower instead of a bath. According to Waterfootprint.com, a bath is between 35-50 gallons, and a shower with a low flow showerhead only uses 25 gallons for every 10 minutes. (Side Note: Try using a low flow showerhead and clean yourself as quickly as possible to reduce water waste)
Concerned about Hygiene?
Though hygiene is a good thing to have, on average a human only needs to take a shower every other day. Take body rinses instead. When using shampoo, turn off the water as you are not using it.
Taking Baths?
If you really don’t like taking showers and prefer to take a bath then one way of reducing water waste would be to fill up the tub only part of the way instead of all the way. Still, baths take up a lot of excess water that you do not really need. Try to minimize how many times you take a bath a week.
Brushing Teeth
When brushing your teeth, turning the sink off is another way to help reduce water wasted. Many people let the water run as they are brushing their teeth because they think they need the water for rinsing later on. Really, if you just turned off the water when you are not using it, it wouldn’t be that hard to turn it back on in about 30 seconds.
Our lack of energy conservation is sadly a huge problem in the pollution of this planet. While this would not be a hard task for anyone, it may be hard to grasp the habit of doing the action. Many of us were taught to remember to turn off the lights before we leave the room, but it would be surprising that not a lot of people do that. According to Lisa Montgomery, 90 percent of parents claimed that someone leaves the light on somewhere in the house everyday. This is obviously a huge percentage. Now be honest with yourself, do you ever forget to turn off the lights? Everyone makes that mistake every once in a while, but essentially we should learn to develop a habit in learning to conserve energy.
Turn off the lights
When you leave a room, turn off lights to save energy. This step should be easy and simple. After you use the restroom, remember to turn off the lights. Especially if it is in your house, do the favor of helping your parents save money on electricity bills while saving the planet.
Think before you do!
This applies to as little as opening the fridge only if you know what you are getting. When you open your fridge, you will realize that there is a light that turns on. This contributes to the continuous problem of the world. The longer you open your fridge, the more you are harming the earth.
Take advantage of the sun!
We are all super blessed to still feel the heat of the sun and get natural light from the sun peaking through our homes. Use the natural light from the sun instead of the lights from the house throughout the day. Dry your clothes outside in the sun instead of using a dryer. Hand Washing and drying your clothes outside would help preserve your clothes and make it longer lasting. You would also avoid the worry of your clothes shrinking in the dryer.
Live in the moment.
Instead of watching TV all day, try picking up a book and read for an hour. Go outside and hang out with your friends. Play ball with your neighbors. Being constantly on mobile devices would drain the battery and also strain your eyes. Both are serious problems in affecting the world and your health. The more you charge your phone, the more your parents have to pay. The more you stare at your phone, the more your eyes will become strained. Give yourself a break and enjoy life in its presence.
Only if we had the ability to teleport to places we want to be, then we wouldn’t have to find transportation. Sadly, we have no other choice but to use transportation. When using any vehicles that require gas such as cars, buses, etc., we are contributing to destroying the planet. These vehicles release hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxides into our environment which increases our ground level ozone. This is really bad for our health and possible future. To help minimize this, we provided some suggestions on how to avoid contributing to these problems.
Walk!!
Walking may not be your first option but when you think of the alternatives which is driving in a car or public transportation, the emission rates are very different and the benefit of you walking is also good for health reasons. Take time to walk with your friends or family home one day. It may be a fun activity for you guys.
Bike!!
Same with walking, biking is an easy way to get to your destination without having the emission of you taking a vehicle of some sort. Bikes can be used if you have to go to a place that is further than walking distance. Again, biking is also a health benefit.
Take the bus!
Although taking the bus, trains or transportation that is similar to that isn’t completely getting rid of emissions, it is still good because it limits the emissions while using something that a lot of other people use. Imagine if each person on the bus drove their own car instead… This would mean the increase of chemicals from cars would increase tremendously.
Carpool!!
A thing that a lot of people do is tell their friends and family that they should meet somewhere. Instead of doing that, you can offer to pick up your friends or family from where they are and only go in one car. Doing this, you would save a lot of money on gas. You guys can also jam out to music together as you arrive at your location.
By suggesting you guys to reduce, reuse, AND recycle, what we mean is minimalize what you use. Everyone has a hard time doing this, especially when we are forced to buy our essentials (toilet paper, utensils, clothes, food, etc.) that are wrapped in unnecessary plastic. We can’t help it, but to buy it because we NEED it. But there are always small steps we can take to reduce our use of excessive things we do not need.
Reduce what you use in a day.
This can be from printing to using a napkin after meals. Slow your roll when using toilet paper. This would save your parents from spending extra money by just reducing how much paper you use.
Take what you need, not what you want. When it comes to food, take only what you can eat so you won’t waste it.
Instead of throwing away old clothes, DONATE them! There are many people in need of clothes, hygiene products, food, and more. Even if you don’t think it’s worth it to donate, just try. Many people in need will take anything. Your clothes could be their pillow, wash cloth, or an extra layer to wear in the cold.
Reuse your items.
Change your habit of using throw away plastic water bottles. Instead, get refillable, stainless steel water bottles to reduce your plastic use. We HIGHLY recommend investing in a Brita water pitcher. You can fill it right from your sink and it will filter out the water for you so you can refill your stainless steel water bottle. This would be a very efficient way of reusing.
Reuse your plastic bags or other bags for groceries and other items to reduce waste. Or.. bring your own bags! Instead of taking the extra plastic bags they offer to carry your groceries, put your groceries in your backpack. At the end of the day, you and your backpack are going to the same place (back home) right?
Save your old clothes to reuse them as washcloths. Instead of using paper towels to clean or wipe, use your old clothes. That way, you can keep reusing them instead of throwing them away after one use. BE CREATIVE! Redesign your old clothes into something you would wear, pass it on to your little siblings or cousins, or make scrunchies out of them.
Recycle!!
Anything with the recycle sign, throw it in the recycle bin! If you don’t know if you can or cannot recycle it, don’t be afraid to ask. It shows a lot more good in you to try to help the environment by asking if your trash belongs to the recycling bin than to trash something in the trash bin that was recyclable. Also, a common myth is to rinse out bottles before recycling, but one doesn’t have to as it wastes water.
This fun Tiktok video brings awareness to the state of our planet.
How long do you think this world we live in would last? Do you think your grandchildren would be alive, but suffering from our destruction of the planet? As you might have heard on the news, the many disasters happening around the world are due to climate change. For instance, the recent deadly fires in Australia were fuelled by extreme heat, severe drought and strong winds. We are constantly harming the environment and in return, the planet reacts and puts our lives in danger. Though we cannot save the entire world and reverse the damages, we can take small steps to delay the failure of the Earth’s health. On the bright side, we are extremely lucky to be living in this world with not so obvious effects near us. To continue this, we provided you guys with tips and tricks that would be an easy first step into forming habits and helping the environment.
Thank you for taking the time to check out our blog! We hope you learned a lot and will develop good habits that will help save the planet. We are looking forward to hearing your thoughts about our blog. #savetheplanet
Social media is one of the biggest platforms in our day and age, and like many other things, there are positives and negatives. As a teenager, you probably already have social media or will have some in the near future, so in this blog we will explain to you all of the pros and cons, as well as how to be safe on social media. Before you begin, we recommend you take this quiz to see how much you know right now.( CLICK HERE )
Interact with Others
One of the biggest pros of social media is that it allows you to interact with others. Most of the people in our society interact with each other online because one, it is more convenient to do so, and two, the majority of people have it. You can talk, text, and more, all on social media. Even if you are not doing these things you an also share your thoughts and ideas and other people can react or comment. Just make sure you are being safe when interacting with others online.
Stay Connected
Another big pro of social media is that you are able to stay connected. Usually you live far from friends and family, or at least you are not connected with them 24/7. Social media breaks this boundary. Speaking to our own experiences, in college most of us had to travel far from home and all of our friends and family, so social media gives us an opportunity to share and update our lives with people from back home.
The Bad
Social media can be a very dangerous tool if you do not know how to use it correctly. You must be aware and careful of everything that you do and post online. One bad move and you could be left in a very bad and venerable position. As a young teenager you want to avoid these types of situations that could lead you to negative aspects of social media. The dangers and bad of social media could be implicit and explicit. You may be able to notice some of the bad things but some other things are not that easy to catch. Here are a list of the bad things of social media that you may want to look out for:
Stranger Danger
One of the more obvious dangers of social media is the unwanted attention from people who you do not know. There are people all around us that have bad intentions who could easily have access to our every move because of social media. Most of us nowadays post a story to either Snapchat or Instagram to show off where they are at without thinking twice of who watches. Some apps like Snapchat, even have a feature where you can see the exact location of a person. Social media makes it easier for the wrong people to know where you are at with a simple status update. Be sure to take all the measures you need to in order to avoid unwanted attention from strangers.
Personal and Mental Health Safety
Another major negative part about social media is the amount of personal information that is put and the access that others have to it. It is easy to put everything out there on the social media platforms, but you gotta take a step back and figure out not to post online for the safety of you and the people around you. With this also comes the problem of cyberbullying.
There are toxic people online that can make your life miserable by harassing you online. This could have a great effect on your mental health causing depression and anxiety. There are numerous examples of people that commit suicide because of cyber bullies. When being on social media it is important to take care of your mental health and not get consumed by the online world. It is important to moderate yourself and have a healthy balance between social and real life interactions.
If you are interested in further information and statistics about this problem here is a related article Click Here.
Here is an interesting article that goes into further detail about what social media can bring to people. Click Here to learn more.
Tips
As you may know there are many pros and cons regarding social media, it is important for you to know how you can be safe online and use social media in a moderate way. If you do not know already there are many simple things you can do to prevent your account from being hacked and implement simple self care habits for your mental health.
Safety
Remember, Stranger Danger. Be selective of friends’ requests, social media can be a great way to connect with people, sadly you can come across someone with bad intentions. Do not just accept friend requests for followers.
Keep Personal Information Personal. Do not post your home location out to the world or other sensitive information, you do not want the wrong hands to get hold of that information.
Stay Unhacked. Keep your passwords to yourself, and make sure you have a strong one. Do not have a single password for all of your online accounts, it is best to have multiple ones incase someone does hack you they will only be able to hack one of your accounts.
Don’t Press on Unknown Links. Don’t fall for the trap. If you get a link saying you one money and it asks for your information it is a scam. Hackers send links to people of fake websites to get information off them, these websites sometimes contain a virus.
Avoid Games That Ask For Personal Details. Most games that require you enter personal information will use your information and give it to spammers.Once again, you do not want your information to fall into the wrong persons.
Mindfullness
Track Your Usage. It is not healthy for you to be on social media all day. Check to see your daily usage on all social media apps, if they are taking most of your time, then cut back on your usage.
Do not Compare Yourself To Others. People use social media to post their highlights, although the person may seem they have a perfect life they most likely don’t. You do not know what is happening behind the scenes. Remember that every person is unique and perfect in their own ways.
Acknowledge Your Feelings. Take notice of how you feel after using social media. If social media is making you feel angry, depressed or envy first reflect on your feelings and then try to understand where they are coming from. It is probably a good idea to take a break from it.
Positive Vibes Only. Do not go online to spread hate through a comment or post. There is no need for you to do that, because there is enough hatred in the world.
Don’t Check Social Media First Thing In The Morning. Do let social media be your main priority. Enjoy your morning by interacting with others face to face first, before you go online.
Conclusion
Now that you have learned a lot more useful information about being online and on social media, retake the quiz to see how you improved! ( CLICK HERE )
Hello RJ Frank students!! Our team here at UCSB is going to try and inform you guys on why to avoid social media’s influence on communications and fashion. Some of the ways it could influence our everyday lives is shown in our style and how we talk. We hope that our guidance can hopefully make a change in your life regarding social media usage. Read on and enjoy ! CLICK LINK BELOW :)))
About Us
Shayan Maghsoudi:
Pre-Biology Major
Fun Fact: I’ve played soccer since I was 4
Kassandra Guerrero:
Environmental Science major
Fun Fact: I started my own lash extension business a few months ago
Joseph Lopez:
Film/Communications Major
Fun Fact: I am the only boy in my mother’s side of the family
Grecia Zelaya:
Undeclared Major
Fun Fact: I am the second person in my family attending UCSB
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Plugged In 
