Aaron Plaisted

My biggest EcoChallenge this month was to cut out driving my car completely and replacing it with walking and using my bike. The past three weeks, I have only used my car to take mass amounts of groceries home that would not be capable to carry on a bike, but I did keep in mind to buy groceries that would keep me out of my car for 1-2 weeks at a time. I biked or walked to all my classes which I did not find challenging due to the fact that I live only a block off of campus. I enjoy that I live rather close to campus knowing that I am able to keep away from car usage as much as possible. A more important EcoChallenge for myself is that I have cut out red meat at the grocery store, due to the findings in class that it is about five times more costly on the environment than meats like chicken. As an athlete, I do need a good source of protein, but I did not find it as hard as I thought to cut out red meat like burgers and tacos to exchange for fish and chicken, which is fantastic! As a civilization that will need to cut out things like red meat due to the excessive amounts of resources such as water and fossil fuels along with cutting out gas without driving has taught me a valuable lesson that it is not as hard as most think to ensure choices more environmentally sound. Being conscious of these decisions made me realize that I can really be more in tune with the environment without changing my lifestyle drastically. Walking and biking will become less appealing as winter approaches, but I will continue to conserve our environment to the best of my ability, while encouraging others to do the same in times to come.