crisis
I’ve been contemplating this challenge for a long time. I’ve been in love with this green Earth since I first learned about recycling in 8th grade. I had NO IDEA.
My family never recycled. I knew not to litter, but I had no idea I was littering a landfill everyday of my life.
My whole perspective changed when Mr. Feeley taught me what actually happens to trash. The destruction. The pollution. The huge negative effects that are STILL happening.
I became eco friendly from then on forcing my family into recycling, creating pamphlets about energy vampires to pass around to everyone and of course diving deep into green blogs and books.
One book I came across at 16 was Sleeping Naked is Green by Vanessa Farquharson. She made a green change every day for an entire leap year. I then devoured her blog that chronicled every day. (I love this blog so much that I now own the domain name when she let it expire.)
I have always been inspired by her and other year-long challenges. And knew one day I would do one.
How is this challenge different than Vanessa’s? For one, being eco-friendly is quite different than being zero-waste. Being zero-waste IS eco-friendly, but being eco-friendly is not necessarily zero waste. Buying recycled paper to then recycle again is being eco-friendly. But zero waste is trying to limited as much waste as possible. Even reducing the amount that goes to recycling.
Our world is facing a crisis. We can’t JUST be eco friendly, we need to strive to be zero waste.
And that’s why I’m doing this challenge. To whip my green lifestyle back into shape (I’ve gotten a bit lax over the years) and to further change my lifestyle to lower my carbon footprint. I also hope to help inspire others to do the same.
What is this challenge?
This Zero Waste Challenge is me making a green change every day to aim for a zero waste life. Once I make a change, I will stick with the change for the rest of the year. So I will practice the first change for 366 days. The second change will be in place for 365 days. And so on.
You may think that towards the end of the year it will get easier since, on Day 365, I will only have to commit to a change for 2 days. But I will be juggling over 360 changes on that day.
This is a CHALLENGE.
What can you expect?
Every day this year, I will be making a green change to my life that will help me get closer to my zero waste goal.
I will be posting a blog post every day. I will be posting an Instagram picture on @greenasathistle. And once a week I will be sharing an update video on YouTube.
How can you help?
If you’re interested in this challenge and being zero waste and want to help, I have some favors to ask 🙂
- Please give me ideas! Give me your best zero waste ideas. I need 366 changes. And so far, my list is short.
- JOIN ME! Make the changes with me. Do your own challenge. Just continue to becoming zero waste and eco-friendly as much as you can!
- Spread the word. Not just of this challenge (although that would be nice (; ), but spread the word about the environmental crisis. Share the Facebook posts, make the Instagram stories, retweets the news stories. Keep the environment at the forefront of people’s mind. Because this is serious.
I hope you join me on my adventure! I can’t wait to share how I’m changing my and my family’s life!