The Earth month challenge is quickly coming to an end. This past week, I have been participating in each of my prior goals to reduce my carbon footprint, plus that week’s goal. The shorter, colder showers were basically what I expected them to be -not too fun, but not awful. It helps that I also reduced the time of the showers, because I don’t really enjoy standing in cold water. Ultimately I am happy with how it turned out, because I was almost used to it by the end of the week. This is very fortunate, because I have to continue doing it for another week. While the week progressed, I learned that every challenge I have done so far is not nearly as difficult s many people would expect them to be. Also, I expect that the amount of power I have saved is a lot larger than many people would expect. Water takes a lot of energy to heat up, and a long shower used a huge amount of energy is you are using hot water. I think that this will be the biggest energy reduction that I have done.
Next week, I will o longer be using the elevator to get from the lobby to my room. I am not excited for this, but I expect to get used to it like all the other challenges I have done so far. I don’t have to change anything about my days to participate in this challenge, which is nice. There is no lifestyle change, just a few extra minutes a week spent walking. I think that this is a good trade-off for the energy I am saving.