Episode 690: Environmental Impacts of Generative AI and How to Use it Ethically as Small Business Owners With Danielle Madden

EBT690 – Danielle Madden

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

[00:00:37]   

I think most of us use AI, generative AI on some levels, some more than others, some lightly, some heavily. I don’t know that many of us know how this impacts the environment.

I certainly did not know any of this. Danielle Madden, she’s the blogger at Project Meal Plan. She brought some enlightening news to the table inside of Interview that I was kind of shocked about and I think that it might be news to you as well. She talks about what generative AI is and how it works, but then also dives into how generative AI uses resources that are really important to our earth.

[00:01:24]   

She gives us some ethical ideas about ways to use the technology that don’t replete resources quite as much and how we can do some other things that reduce our environmental impacts as small business owners. This was a really great enlightening episode. I hope you love it. It is number 690.

[00:01:47]   

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[00:02:05]   

Danielle Madden founded Project Meal Plan in 2016 after spending too many lunch breaks searching for mediocre food while working her office job. Her educational background includes a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science and hands on training as a Seattle Urban Nature Guide. Danielle loves being prepared, especially with food and is usually the first one to arrive at a gathering with a homemade dish to share. At Project Me Plan, Danielle focuses on Make Ahead food and sharing tools to help others plan their own meals.

[00:02:35]   

Hello Danielle, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

[00:02:38]  Danielle Madden 

Pretty good. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:02:41]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, I’m excited. This is definitely not a topic that we have covered in this from this scope before, so I appreciate you bringing this to the table. Today we’re going to talk about the environmental impacts of generative AI and how to use it ethically as content creators and small business owners.

[00:03:00]  Danielle Madden 

So, yeah, it’s a big one.

[00:03:01]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. Super excited to learn from you. Before we get into it, though, Danielle, do you have a fun fact to share with us?

[00:03:08]  Danielle Madden 

I do. So I love garlic. I love garlic so much that I got a tattoo of a head of garlic with hearts around it. Look at that.

[00:03:19]  Megan Porta 

Oh, my gosh.

[00:03:21]  Danielle Madden 

I just love garlic. I love growing garlic. I love eating garlic. Garlic scapes. Measuring garlic with your heart pro. All of it.

[00:03:29]  Megan Porta 

Oh. So do you have garlic on hand all the time?

[00:03:32]  Danielle Madden 

I’m assuming when I grow it, I do. I’ll usually have garlic for, like, the next six months. Yeah, I did kind of a garden re bed redo, so I don’t have any right now, but usually.

[00:03:43]  Megan Porta 

Yes, Yes. I am a huge fan of garlic as well. Just the way it smells when it’s cooking and oh, gosh, it’s so delicious. I could put it.

[00:03:53]  Danielle Madden 

Everything about it.

[00:03:54]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, everything about it is delish. All right, well, awesome to learn that about you. I would love it if you would give us a little bit of a background on your website, Project Meal Plan. I’d love to learn more about that.

[00:04:07]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah. So I started Project Meal lpan in 2016. I was working in an office job that had nothing to do with my schooling, but it was a good job. I just had to find lunch every day, and that was like, my pain point. I had to leave the office, I’d get a half an hour, go find lunch, and then it was probably very expensive.

[00:04:29]   

When I did find it, I’d get back to the office, lunchtime’s over. It was just never a good time. Right. So with that being said, at that time, I was really into photography. I’ve always been into photography, and I had come across Pinch of Yum’s food photography book, which I think many of us around that time might have.

[00:04:49]   

And I just was like, yeah, I can do this. I’m doing it. So. So I was able to work part time for a while to transition, and I focus on meal prep and make ahead recipes. So I took my pain point from the office and I was like, yeah, people need easier options that they can make at home and take to work instead of going out to find an expensive lunch.

[00:05:13]   

Maybe it’s not even that great. And, yeah, I did go to school for environmental science, which is what kind of has sparked my interest in our topic today. I started as a mathematics major. I thought I liked numbers. Don’t like them that much. I quickly realized that wasn’t for me. But I found environmental science, and I was just really interested in it.

[00:05:37]  Megan Porta 

So interesting. I always love hearing how people’s businesses come together because there’s such a collection of different interests and passions and pain points and everything that you have experienced, it just has led to where you’re at today. Right. And having this website and meal plans and all of this knowledge about AI as well.

[00:05:59]   

And just to comment on your lunch thing. Oh my gosh. Isn’t lunch a pain point for so many people? Yeah, it’s like what it’s overlooked because we think about breakfast starting the day, we think about dinner and lunch is just kind of a sideline.

[00:06:13]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah. Fit it in where you can or eat your snack or whatever. I think it’s been really awesome both personally and. But just to like share recipes that people can make and take and like save time, save money, save food waste, like that’s kind of what I focus on.

[00:06:30]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. Or people don’t eat lunch at all. They skip it because they’re like, well, I’m busy, I might as well just work through lunch. Which isn’t good either. Right?

[00:06:38]  Danielle Madden 

No.

[00:06:39]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. So great. And then you, have you mentioned environmental science is also something that you’ve dove into. Which did that interest lead to your interest in AI and everything we’re going to talk about today or what kind of led to the AI research?

[00:06:56]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah. So I feel like we in our industry are told to use AI for a lot, almost everything these days. But I started hearing that, you know, at conferences and I just think about the resources used, the water used, I, I, that’s just how my brain works and I can’t not think about that.Yeah. So I kind of noticed that nobody was really talking about that. But it does need to be talked about.

[00:07:22]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. All right, well, let’s talk about it.

[00:07:24]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah.

[00:07:26]  Megan Porta 

First of all, let’s define generative AI and kind of how it works. Can you go through that?

[00:07:31]  Danielle Madden 

Yes, certainly. So there’s two main types of AI. There’s traditional AI and that focuses on performing a specific set of tasks in a certain set of rules. It’s really good at identifying patterns in the information it already has. So that’s going to be like your voice assistants, Siri, bank fraud, bank fraud detection, Netflix recommendations.

[00:07:56]   

That’s my best example. So, like Netflix knows what you like. They know how many thumbs up you give things, they know what you watch, and then they make recommendations based on their pool of things you have to watch. But they’re not creating a new movie for you. Right. They’re, they have the set of information and then they make a prediction.

[00:08:16]   

So in contrast, generative AI, it’s a machine learning model that’s trained on new data. It takes the data you give it and the data it was trained on and creates something new for you. So that’s your ChatGPT, that’s Microsoft Copilot, Google, Gemini, there’s many different kinds of them, but the difference is it’s creating something new for you.

[00:08:39]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, that makes sense. And the last version that you talked about is more what has been emerging in the last couple of years that we’re really just getting used to. We’re like, how do we use this? Do we use this? When do we use this?

[00:08:51]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah, and that generative AI uses significantly more energy. And the numbers on how much energy is changing all the time. All of them are different. The technology is advancing, so it’s really hard to put a number on how much energy that uses or how much water that uses. And it’s not very transparent.

[00:09:11]   

So we don’t really know. But all of the computing for generative AI and regular AI and the Internet happens in data centers that contain high performance servers and specialized hardware. And that’s like I said, that’s how the Internet works. But with generative AI, there’s so much more demand, so much more energy being used.

[00:09:31]   

So that’s why I think it’s important to talk about. I mean, I’ve had both friends and strangers tell me they had absolutely no idea that it takes any more energy than like plugging in your computer. So I just think it’s something that needs to be talked about. Like that helped me realize that people don’t really know.

[00:09:48]   

And I do want to say I’m not trying to get anyone to eliminate using these tools. That’s not my goal at all. My goal is that they’re used more efficiently and maybe just with the knowledge of how they work and what might be going on.

[00:10:02]  Megan Porta 

Okay, so can you talk about how you mentioned that it does use a lot more resources than we think? So how, like what resources is it using?

[00:10:14]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah, so all of those calculations use resources both to train these AIs and to maintain them. So there’s the resources used like the actual hardware, the server itself, and those things are on all the time. They have to be updated with new technology. So that results in E waste, electronic waste. Then there’s the electricity usage, like that’s usually coming from fossil fuels that’s just used to power the servers.

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And then the third one, which is the big one, I think that’s talked about most, is the water that’s used, the servers are always on and they get warm, just like your laptop on your lap. But this is on a much larger scale, right? So they need to be cooled and that’s usually done using water.

[00:11:00]   

There’s so many ways that this happens, and I’m just talking about one of them. But with AI, usually this is done through evaporative cooling, which is the same way that our bodies release heat, right? When we sweat, then the sweat evaporates, that helps us cool down. So it’s a similar system, but just on a totally different scale.

[00:11:20]   

So basically evaporative cooling, it’s using water to transfer the heat away. So the data centers, the server rooms get really warm. The warm air transfers into water in the. And I don’t know, I’m a food blogger, right? I don’t, I haven’t actually seen this with my own eyes, but I’ve read about it.

[00:11:40]   

The warm water is pumped away from the servers to usually large cooling towers. And we might have all seen a picture of like a cooling tower with like billows of steam on top. But basically the warm water is pumped through, it’s exposed to very fast moving air. There’s usually like really big fans involved, right?

[00:11:59]   

And then the cooling towers give off warm wet air in the form of steam and that’s how the heat is released. So that’s the biggest thing. And when we talk about like data centers, drink water, quote unquote, drink, they’re not drinking it, but that’s usually what we’re talking about, is water lost to evaporation.

[00:12:19]   

And not only that, but when water evaporates, it leaves things behind, whatever was in the water, right? So that might be minerals, salt, total dissolved solids that were left in the water then has to be diluted. So you have to add more water. So we’re losing water, we have to get more water.

[00:12:36]   

That’s how, that’s basically a quick way to describe how we’re using water. The other thing besides regulating temperature is humidity. Humidity is the amount of water vapor in the air. If these data centers, if it’s too humid, if the humidity is too high, that results in condensation. Not good for electronics, right? If the humidity is too low, you have conditions for static electricity.

[00:13:03]   

I’ve heard that’s bad for electronics too. So it’s a very controlled environment. And all of this just uses a lot of water. And usually the water is taken from a drinkable source and moved to a non drinkable source. So it’s not like disappearing, but it’s being moved from an accessible place to a non accessible place.

[00:13:24]   

And so kind of that’s what we mean when we’re drinking water or when we lose the water from a data center. Wow.

[00:13:32]  Megan Porta 

I had no idea about any of that. That’s so interesting. But putting it all together, it makes sense that there’s a lot going on in the background that we just.

[00:13:42]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah. And even more than I’m talking about, this is very simplified.

[00:13:45]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. So just surface level, what beyond water is going on that is kind of depleting resources or impacting the environment?

[00:13:54]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah, well, like I said, using a lot of the data centers are located in very warm dry climates. So evaporative cooling works really well in these climates and it’s the most efficient. But a lot of times these are the places that need their water the most most in these like warm, dry places.

[00:14:13]   

So that’s why water usage is I think one of the biggest things to think about. It’s hard to put a number on, but I did find a number. I think a lot of people I’ve heard it talked about. There was a 2023 study yet the University of California and the University of Texas and they found that ChatGPT drinks, quote unquote, drinks roughly 500 milliliters of fresh water per 20 to 50 questions that go through ChatGPT.

[00:14:41]   

So something that’s not very much something that it is a lot. I tend to think it’s a lot. I think it just depends on the person. But so water I think is the main concern.

[00:14:52]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So how do we go about addressing this or just ethically using the technology? Do we cut back? Do we stop? What are your thoughts?

[00:15:06]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah, all great questions. I think it comes to like a lot of it’s not transparent, so we don’t know like which models are, are better for the environment. There’s no number on that that we can see. I know that I did just read about. So there are places that are doing this really well.

[00:15:23]   

So I think there’s so much technology that we’re still learning. And I did just read about there’s a data center in Pennsylvania and they built it 200ft underground in an abandoned or old limestone quarry. And so it’s naturally cool down there and there’s an underground lake and they’re able to keep it like a closed system.

[00:15:45]   

They don’t have to add more water. So there’s really cool things happening. And that stuff really excites me. But as far as like, what does ethical use of this technology mean? I think it comes down to maybe just doing the right thing when nobody is looking. And this also brings to mind AI image generators.

[00:16:04]   

So I don’t personally use any kind of AI image generator. I think, you know, they’re trained on real art. So it kind of comes down to like, is that stealing? Is it not? Is it fine because the computer is doing it? I don’t know, but I just, I don’t use generative AI for my photos.

[00:16:24]   

And I hope most of us who bloggers are are not doing AI photos. But that’s a, that’s one, I think it’s easy. I mean, people like to see your, your creativity in your photos. So I don’t know, I don’t, I’m very kind of against AI photos, but doing the right thing when nobody’s looking and using this technology in a way that aligns with your values, sustainability, integrity, transparency.

[00:16:50]   

And this can mean trying to avoid biases that come with the information ChatGPT gives you. I mean, it’s trained on real world things, so there’s a chance that real world biases can come through. And maybe not in recipe ideas or something, but you know, if you’re writing an email or something.

[00:17:11]  Sponsor

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[00:17:30]  Danielle Madden 

Also ensuring privacy of your readers. Like not pasting in any information and I have an example that I’ll mention later, but not ever pasting in any identifying information about people and then maybe thinking about how to mitigate the environmental impacts and we don’t know exactly what those environmental impacts are and, but we can do our best.

[00:17:52]  Megan Porta 

Right, and how do you think we can mitigate that a little bit?

[00:17:56]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah, really good question. So like I said, if it was easy, we would be, we would just pick the least harmful one and use that one and maybe there would be a rating system on all the different, you know, chatbots or something. And we’d know like, oh, this one uses this much resources and this one uses less, which some use more than others.

[00:18:15]   

So that’s totally legitimate. But it’s not that easy, unfortunately. And so I don’t know. I think I do want to make sure we’re shifting blame away from individuals. Like, I’m not, I’m not ever going to hold it against anyone for using AI for their business. I think they just maybe didn’t know. Right.

[00:18:35]   

And so thinking about it on a larger scale. And just like in my head I’m thinking, like, is it ethical for a data center to use like a fifth of a town’s water supply when that state is in a drought condition? I mean, maybe that’s a question for a different podcast, but like, those are the things going on in my head.Right. But so when it comes down to, like, concrete things we can do, I do have a couple of ideas. Yeah. So the first would be just discerning appropriate context for using it. I think if you really need to use ChatGPT, is AI the most effective way for me to approach this task?

[00:19:12]   

Does this already exist on the Internet somewhere? Do I need to reinvent the wheel? Can this be a Google search? So I found that a ChatGPT prompt has an estimated 10 times higher carbon footprint than just a Google search. And now I don’t know if that’s taking into account the new like AI section at the top.

[00:19:32]   

I’m not sure, but I think kind of the summary is that a Google search uses less resources. And so if, if that’s possible, then yes. If it’s not, then that’s fine too. But I think just taking five seconds to think about it and not just running to ChatGPT for every single task. Right.

[00:19:51]   

And just an example of like, do I need this for my notes for the podcast today, I was using a Google Doc, and then at the top, it’s like, Google Gemini can transform this page into a beautiful formatted document with images and charts. And I was like, I did not need that. Right.

[00:20:11]   

Like, sometimes you just don’t need it. But then I think even better one is to think critically about your prompts and write better prompts. So being specific and clear in what you want from ChatGPT can give you much better answers. So including relevant context clues, what your role is, who your audience is, or just anything.

[00:20:34]   

Not anything, because you don’t want to add too much. But, like, what you think would be important for the ChatGPT to know about your question. Tell it the length of the response that you want. Tell it what you don’t want. Like, if you want bullet point answers, say that. Right. And you can say that in your first prompt.

[00:20:53]   

It doesn’t have to be additional. So my example is instead of saying, give me 20 food related email subject ideas. Instead of that, you would say, I’m a food blogger who focuses on meal prep and make ahead recipes. My readers are individuals who know how to cook, but they need make ahead food ideas for lunch options for the week.

[00:21:17]   

Give me 20 food related email subject ideas to send to my readers that just taking an extra 30 seconds to give it the extra clues there is going to give you such a better answer. And maybe you could be done right there. Like maybe you don’t need to give it more do more prompts or anything like that.

[00:21:36]   

So that’s kind of my example. I do think that writing ChatGPT prompts is a skill you can get better at. I have so much to learn in this area because I think I’m. I use ChatGPT probably less than some people in our industry, but it’s because I’m trying to figure out when is a good time, when is not.

[00:21:54]   

But I do want to. I did want to share. There’s An SEM Rush article 23 chat GPT prompts and how to write your own. It’s a really good article. There’s so many examples and just it’s not only more efficient for you but for the environment. I think so.

[00:22:12]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:22:13]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah.

[00:22:14]  Megan Porta 

That’s all very informative. Do you have a platform or a. Like is ChatGPT? I don’t even Claude. AI, I believe is another one. Is there one that uses fewer resources than another?

[00:22:26]  Danielle Madden 

Oh, that’s a good question that I do not know the answer to. Yes. But I don’t know which ones because they don’t, they don’t really say.

[00:22:34]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, right. I’m sure they probably don’t write articles about that.

[00:22:38]  Danielle Madden 

And like the newer ones, I mean they’re getting more efficient but at the same time the demand is growing. So I really don’t know.

[00:22:46]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. And do you think that the usage of AI for business purposes is only going to increase or do you think that it’ll come to a point where people are kind of not tired of it, but just like the honeymoon’s over kind of thing and go down?

[00:23:04]  Danielle Madden 

I do think that people are getting some like AI fatigue. Like we’re seeing it everywhere even. I just was at a little blogger meetup. People are kind of getting tired of it. I mean it’s everywhere. It’s in apps and you’re like, I don’t need AI to. Yeah. I think that it, it has so many uses that I don’t even know.

[00:23:24]   

But in our, our industry I think, I think people are gonna figure out what works to use it for and what doesn’t. Maybe kind of level out a little bit. But I think it’s important to just remember to stay creative and use it as a beginning point, maybe a tool and not as your end place.

[00:23:40]  Megan Porta 

And I think people are becoming more streamlined and efficient with it too. Like, I know there are projects you can open in ChatGPT and kind of prep it.

[00:23:51]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah.

[00:23:51]  Megan Porta 

So you can include instructions and documents so that you’re not having to explain everything time and time again, which I think makes it so much more efficient probably for us and for the servers and the environment. Right. So utilize those hacks.

[00:24:08]  Danielle Madden 

The paid version, I believe, has, Yeah. A really long memory. So I think that. Yeah, yeah, if you use it a lot, that’s a great option. And one more thing that I do as I think about how much time this will actually save me to use use ChatGPT. And a lot of times that can be a lot of time saved.

[00:24:26]   

Right. So an example, I did my reader survey earlier this year. Shout out to Molly at Tastemaker. Had a really good session on that. But I did my reader survey and I used ChatGPT to summarize the results. So I had. And I’m like, pretty medium sized. I had like 70 responses with six questions.

[00:24:46]   

And that would take so much time to review, especially like a short answer question like, what’s your pain point? I was able to just plug in and say, I asked this specific question, here’s every answer I got. And you can paste all of them in and say, please summarize and give me three bullet points with the top three most common answers.

[00:25:07]   

And that probably saved me like three hours, more hours than I know. Yeah. So there are definitely times to use it. It’s just kind of thinking about it.

[00:25:15]  Megan Porta 

Data, I think when you’re trying to collect and analyze data, I’ve used it for that just from like website data. And also I downloaded some YouTube data. I don’t have the time or bandwidth to go over that sort of thing and my brain does not work like that anyway, so just putting it in and just saying exactly what you said, like, please review this and let me know.

[00:25:36]   

XYZ. Oh my gosh. Spits it out in like 20 seconds. Yeah. Very, very handy. I know.

[00:25:44]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah.

[00:25:44]  Megan Porta 

Is there anything else we should know or anything we can keep at the top of our minds? Just to help with this issue, I guess.

[00:25:53]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah. My last comment about more ethical use is just to make sure you’re fact checking, thoroughly reviewing everything that it gives you. I mean, this brings to mind maybe a year ago when this was really first gaining popularity and someone asked, I don’t know if it was ChatGPT, but someone asked AI how to thicken sauce and it said to add glue.

[00:26:16]   

I don’t know if you remember that.

[00:26:18]  Megan Porta 

Oh, gosh.

[00:26:19]  Danielle Madden 

Right. So that’s something that’s like, that’s an easy catch, but maybe it won’t be so easy sometimes. So it’s just important, I think, to review. But again, I’m not trying to tell anyone to stop using it. It’s just more about knowing and being aware and maybe just not using it to like, tell you jokes or something.I don’t know.

[00:26:37]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. And the photo thing is really good to bring up too, because most of the time when people are using it to alter photos or create photos, it’s kind of like playtime. Like, ooh, let’s see what this can do. My son was creating a project for school and he had to come up with a marketing plan for this.

[00:26:56]   

This fake duck that, you know, took out the garbage and ate your. Mowed your lawn and I don’t know, did all this stuff and so he created these duck photos. I’m like, that probably was not a great use of AI, but. Yeah, stuff like that.

[00:27:10]  Danielle Madden 

But you didn’t know. I mean, yeah, you only know what you know, so.

[00:27:14]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, exactly. It is good to know all of this.

[00:27:16]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah.

[00:27:17]  Megan Porta 

And I’m guessing most people don’t have this on their radar. Have you found that when you talk about it with other creators that they’re like, oh my gosh, I had no idea.

[00:27:26]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah. Then that happened at Tastemaker for sure.

[00:27:30]  Megan Porta 

I bet.

[00:27:31]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah. But I think that, like I said, it’s. We, we’re gonna use it and something we can do is maybe try to mitigate our impacts in other ways. And so as small business owners, something that comes to my mind is creating a sustainability policy, which is something I need to do too. So I recently put, I’m redoing my About Me page, so maybe when this podcast comes out, it’ll be great.

[00:27:55]   

But right now, so at the bottom of my About Me page, I just have like a little I don’t use AI for photos or recipes disclaimer. And just saying this is my commitment. But as far as a sustainability policy, that’s just something that you can declare and say that you’re constantly working to have a commitment to mitigate these impacts and like acknowledging that we’re not perfect, but also acknowledging that it is a problem that your business is aware of.

[00:28:24]   

Not a one time solution, but just a commitment to keep learning and getting better.

[00:28:29]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, I like that. That’s a good place to start, right?

[00:28:33]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah.

[00:28:33]  Megan Porta 

Is there anything else we should talk about before we start saying goodbye? Danielle?

[00:28:38]  Danielle Madden 

I think I have my little kind of final note to share with everyone, but I’ll save that. I do think that mitigating your impact can be as small as composting. Or maybe when you’re doing recipe tests, do a half batch or freezing leftovers, or maybe the products that you’re recommending to your readers are maybe more sustainable.

[00:29:00]   

Or there’s a lot of little things, and I do think that they all matter, so. And there’s bigger things, too. Like if you are moving your business to a commercial space, maybe you’re looking at like a certified green building or maybe powering with renewable energy, if you can. I live in Seattle, so, like, on every block there’s a house that has solar panels.

[00:29:22]   

So, yeah, people, it’s.

[00:29:24]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, all that stuff adds up, right? I mean, it all matters in the end. It all. Yeah, it adds up and it matters. Thank you so much for all of this, Danielle, for bringing this to our attention. And I think this will be a really enlightening episode for many, including myself. Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with?

[00:29:44]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah, so my words of inspiration, that kind of ties everything that we’ve been talking about together. But I just want to say that I really think the small actions do add up and they do have a ripple effect, whether you see it or not. So maybe your child sees it, maybe your readers see that you’re trying to be more sustainable, or maybe someone hears you talking at Tastemaker and then you end up on a POD podcast talking about it.

[00:30:10]   

So I just was having, like, little conversations that rippled to me being here. So I think all of the small things we do really can have an impact, even if we don’t see it.

[00:30:22]  Megan Porta 

Oh, absolutely. Love that. What a great way to end. Thank you so much, Danielle. We will put together a show notes page for you with everything we’ve talked about today. If you want to go see those, you can head to eatblogtalk.com/projectmealplan. Where can people find you and where can people get a hold of you, of you if they want to?

[00:30:43]  Danielle Madden 

Yeah, I’m on Instagram mostly. That’s where I’m most active. Project Meal Plan. Projectmealplan.com is my website. I’m not on TikTok, so don’t look there, but Instagram is probably the best place. Project Meal Plan.

[00:30:56]  Megan Porta 

All right, well, thank you again, Danielle, and thank you for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

[00:31:05]  Outro

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. If you enjoyed this episode. I’d be so grateful if you posted it to your social media feed and stories. I will see you next time.