This Earth month challenge was a great experience for me. Now that the four weeks are complete, I can look back on my challenges and be proud of those cold showers and energy saved. I believe that I made a difference with the challenges that I made for myself without going to far from my daily life. The experience I had doing it was also very positive, and I have no complaints at all about what I needed to do.
I have definitely learned more ways to conserve energy easily. There are hundreds of things to be done in any given day that don’t affect my daily life, but do affect my carbon footprint. My challenges included only four of the many things that I chose to do in addition to my weekly tasks. Simple things such as choosing food more carefully (reducing the amount of red meat or meat in general that is eaten) are a great way to begin making positive changes in your life. I plan on continuing things such as this, and eventually introduce new challenges to my life. Some things however, I may go back to. I enjoy hot showers too much to remove them completely from my life. Instead, I will reduce my time in the shower while keeping the water warm.
I would very much like to take on a new challenge from a new category of conservation. I may try my hand at vegetarian weeks or days in the future, but I feel that this will be more difficult than the challenges that I completed this month. If not that, than maybe something involving the waste and toxicity category. I don’t really know what changes I could make in order to affect the Earth in that aspect. I would be up to take on someone else’s challenges from this month if they took mine in return. I am curious to see what other people have done in order to reduce their carbon emissions and their footprint.
My Earth month challenge was a positive experience, and I would happily do it again next year or even next month with a few changes. My major change would be the challenges I do, because I love to experience new things in my life -even if they are challenges. Next year I plan on doing this again to a greater degree to see how hard it would really be.