My focus area for the Earth Month Challenge was waste and toxicity. I wanted to find new ways to be environmentally friendly in my daily life by attempting to be less wasteful and to contribute less to harmful substances. I found this challenge to be rather difficult but I achieved exactly what I had hoped by doing it. In order to accomplish my challenge, I had to do quite a bit of research in order to find reliable products without toxic chemicals or pesticides. This research led me to find new types of certifications that are on some of my new, favorite products such as the Rainforest Alliance Certification, which guarantees the product is organic, sustainably sourced, and even comes from humane farms that benefits the farmers and their communities. I also found new types of products that I like that are packaged in either recycled materials or just lack packaging in general.
I found this challenge to be particularly difficult. Minimizing waste on campus proved to be more difficult than I had expected because all of the food comes in plastic packaging unless I ate every meal at a dining hall. In order to avoid wasting plastic, I ate at dining halls as much as I could, which altered my routine quite a bit but it was doable. I also would forget my coffee thermos quite a bit so I would go without coffee instead of buying it for a while. However, I finally started to remember it everyday and I would just get drip coffee, black, everyday. Now I enjoy it black much more than I used to and it saves me a lot of money as well as reducing a huge amount of my waste. As a result, I will continue this part of my challenge in my daily life. I also found it difficult gauging how much I would eat in a meal in order to avoid wasting food at the end of a meal. However, I now know it’s much better to only get a little bit and get up for seconds than to overload my plate, another habit I will continue.
I plan to repeat this challenge over the summer since living on campus was such a huge factor in my challenge and made it much more difficult than I had expected. I expect being at home to make the challenge much different and possibly even easier. My challenge really opened my eyes about how so many of the resources on campus are not sustainable. I hope doing this challenge at home as well will help me find more products I like that are sustainable.