My Journey to Living Eco-Friendly
Living Eco-Friendly, Lessons and Take Away's
Hello everyone! If you have been reading my blog post from the beginning then you all know I started this blog 8 weeks ago and with it I have strived to live as eco-friendly as possible. If you haven't been keeping up with my post and are new, then welcome! As this is my final post I am going to share my journey of going green and the bumps in the road along the way.
Reflecting on my time will allow me to keep moving forward with living an eco-friendly life and hopefully show you all that you can live eco-friendly too!!
As a reminder, when starting this process as mentioned in my blog post earlier I set goals to obtain throughout this blog series. My goals were:
1. Recycle ALL paper and plastic I use.
2. Use only reusable water bottles.
3. Take reusable bags with me when grocery shopping.
4.Purchase at least 50% of daily/weekly items needed that are made from recycled content.
Struggles
The task of going eco-friendly comes with it's challenges but the rewards are absolutely endless. When focusing on minimizing my waste I came across many challenges, mostly being that staying conscious of what I'm doing constantly is hard.
1. Using Recyclable Products
It is very easy to go through life and not think about the products you're using and the trash they are producing, so when forced to focus on it I realized many things in our everyday life are not recyclable. I had to change my lifestyle and the everyday products I used. I found this hard with many of my food products. Many times the packaging was not recyclable.
A list of what you can and can't recycle is linked below. Understanding what I can recycle helped me not buy products that are non recyclable.
2. Remembering to Stay Conscious of my Actions
Many times on this journey I had to remind myself to stay conscious of what I'm doing. Being that I'm the type of person to always go with the flow, remembering the important little things when going green was difficult. It's easy to not think about the effects of everything you do and stay where you are but when putting your mind to it the rewards for stepping outside your comfort zone are endless.
3. Staying True to My Goals
After a long day or stressful week sometimes the last thing I wanted to do was make sure I was being eco-friendly. Many times the extra energy it took to be eco-friendly was unappealing to me. However, forcing myself to stay on task and keep my focus pushed me to remain on my path towards living a green lifestyle.
Successes
With failures came success, the times that I achieved something kept me motivated for the times I was tired of trying. Understanding what I did successfully in this journey will allow me to compare it to my failures, so I can learn how to continue living eco-friendly as efficiently as possible.
1. Using Reusable Water Bottles
As a college athlete many times it can be a struggle to reuse recyclable water bottles when I'm very thirsty (after a practice or game) and just drinking from a plastic water bottle would be much more convenient. However, although always using a reusable bottle wasn't the easiest, I stayed true to my goal and achieved it. Although using a reusable water bottle always is just a small step to living eco-friendly, it is a start. I am more than pleased with myself that I never stopped pushing myself to stay on top of this aspect of my journey to going green.
2. Recycling ALL my Plastic and Paper
Something I am proud of during this test to live eco-friendly is I have recycled everything possible that is recyclable. Many times on campus there was more trash cans than recycle bins so I would be sure to hold on to any recyclable trash till I could find a recycle bin.
Reflecting on my success in recycling everything makes me feel proud and excited that although a small impact, I am helping the environment. If everyone starts taking small steps to save the environment then it can make a huge difference.
After asking my readers what is the hardest thing about recycling many people said on campus there is very few places to recycle. I believe that if Universities start jumping on the eco-friendly train then we can ensure green campuses and influence students to carry this lifestyle with them once they graduate.
3. Influenced Others Around Me
The biggest success I had in this whole process was the ability to influence others to make a change. I live in a house with 5 other girls and since I started this blog series we have decided as a house to recycle all our recyclable items. Where we live there is no recycle bins so we have to divide our own recyclable items then separate them by plastic and paper and drive to take it to a recycle dumpster near by. The extra work we put in, in order to do this is very rewarding.
Find a recycling center near you.
Also, I hope that through this blog series I have influenced some of you to start living eco-friendly. Even if you're not living eco-friendly, I hope you're at least conscious of your actions effecting the environment now.
Lessons
My biggest take away from these past weeks of writing this blog and going green is that along with learning things about our environment I learned just as much about myself. Staying eco-friendly with a busy schedule being a college student is no walk in the park. However, pushing myself to stay focused and remain on track towards an eco-friendly lifestyle has been worth it.
I have learned the value in saving our environment and the work it takes. If we all come together and start taking small steps at a time like I did, I truly believe we can make a difference. After this blog series is complete I am going to continue to strive for an eco-friendly lifestyle, as I hope so will you! Keep challenging yourself to make a difference and hopefully we will.
Please contact me and let me know how your endeavors on living eco-friendly have gone, I would love to hear. Go Green!!
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