Kirsten Tilleman

Learned about the lifecycle impacts of our food choices and how reducing food waste and eating a plant-based diet combine to offer the biggest impact on climate change that we can make at an individual level and on a daily basis. 

Industrial agriculture and the expectation that meat should be cheap, at every meal, and in large quantities. 

I have heard about silvopasture before (college of forestry grad). I think there are a ton of advantages and struggle to say one is the biggest. Thinking big picture, I'd say a big advantage is how sivopasture brings people back in sync with the landscape and other living things that also depend on the land to survive. So much of our modern lives in developed countries, especially the US, continue to sever our connection to the natural world and therefore makes it easier for us to classify it as "other" and discount our dependence on it and responsibility to it. 

Even in Portland (OR), a city generally viewed as bike and ped friendly, we still largely design and build our infrastructure for cars. One of my biggest concerns during my daily walks is safety--it only takes one driver distracted for one moment to significantly alter (or end) a pedestrian or bicyclist's life (I've experienced this firsthand when a driver didn't look in the far bike lane where I was riding before he drove across the 3-lane road and hit me). We need to design for people more than we design for machines.

Not only does using smaller plates reduce food waste, it helps limit portion sizes to healthier levels and prevent overeating. Win-win for environment and our bodies! I make my own ceramics and enjoy creating my own smaller dishes (especially bowls) to use at meal time, like the one shown in the photo below.