I thought it went well! I'm usually quite busy and have little to no time during my day to go out of my way to do anything ecologically sound. However, it was nice being able to choose from a variety of activities that can easily be done throughout the day that affect my footprint on the Earth. Little things really do go a long way!

I learned that eating vegan really isn't that difficult if you just apply yourself. I still have difficulty when I'm not at home but I'm going to continue my vegan journey and hopefully I will get better at it as time goes on. This was a wonderful challenge and I'm proud of everyone that contributed!

My Eco-challenge went well, but I would say actually figuring out the structure of the challenge/website was more difficult than I anticipated. I thought I understood the concept, but it wasn't until half way through the challenge that I finally realized I was supposed to be doing my actions daily. I was under the impression these were all one time activities. Regardless, I do feel as though the challenge opened my eyes a bit to my habits that are engrained into my routine and our culture. It was inspiring to see all the different categories and explore them for ways to improve my life and help our environment. There was such a vast multitude of options it was incredible and provoked a deeper understanding of what it means to live a sustainable life. I lacked in my posts in the feed, but like I mentioned before I didn't realize that was a function until later. I was ambitious and chose 6 daily goals and achieved them all, and I attempted to constantly change my goals (because I thought that was the idea). Overall I feel good about the change I have created in my daily life to try and incorporate more sustainable practices. 

     I learned a lot from participating in the Eco-Challenge.  I chose to pick 6 goals and I only achieved all six once.  On average I reached about half of my daily goals.  I learned that it is very hard to achieve all my goals each day.  Living a life where I am aware of the damage the decisions I make to the environment is beneficial.  To make a change, I must be aware of the repercussions of my choices.  The Eco-Challenge provided me with tools to understand what exactly I could do to make a difference.  Along with the challenge and the daily reflections I feel like I did a descent job but there is always room for improvement.  I wrote a total of 10 blogs during the duration of the challenge.  I learned that the way that the average person decides to live there lives has consequences that we don't realize at the time we make the choice but it will affect the environment greatly if we do not change the ways we eat, shop, dispose of garbage, and many other things that contribute to a healthy/unhealthy planet.
      Deciding to not use straws was a great idea.  The more research that I did, the more I found out exactly how destructive straws are.  Sea creatures and their environments are being destroyed due to plastic waste.  The number of straws that we use in America daily is disturbing and there is a simple solution: don't use them or buy a reusable straw.  The reusable straw can be disposed of and most of it can be recycled if and when it no longer functions.  I can say that I am guilty of using utensils that I shouldn't be using and after learning all the different alternative methods to try, I would like to implement even more of them into my daily life. 
     I wish that environmental classes such as the one we are currently attending were available to myself as well as others when I was a child.  The more you know at a younger age, the more you can make a difference.  It is never too late though and I am glad that I am taking the Sociology class and participated in the challenge.  I would like to participate again in the next challenge and learn how to invite others that are not in our class to be part of the challenge.  The challenge is a good tool to help the participant become aware of the dangers of the products, lifestyles, and choices we make that harm Earth.  This is the only planet that we have and unless there is a change and policy changes to where people get educated at an earlier age, laws are enforced, and renewable resources are implemented into our day to day lives rather than fossil fuels and products that have a short lifespan, we will have a major problem on our hands.  I think that there is still time to somewhat reverse what we have already done but a huge change must happen soon or some of the effects may be irreversible.  Overall, the Eco-Challenge was enlightening and I was glad to be a part of it.  I hope that everyone that participated learned something and can begin to make a shift in the positive direction.

I learned numerous things from participating in this challenge. The first one is that starting small with your goals is okay. I mistakenly made 6 goals for my challenge when I only successfully completed 3 of them. Even though I didn't accomplish every challenge, I still learned so much about how I can lessen my footprint. I was mad at myself at first for being overly ambitious but trying to do something about how you live is much better than doing nothing at all. There are more people in the world that are just trying to live their lives and survive, and do not have the luxury of trying to live a greener lifestyle (poor infrastructure, poverty, food deserts, lack of education/information, etc.); I am very privileged to be able to find out ways that I can live better and, further, go out and do those things.
Another thing I learned is how hard our system makes it for us to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle; it's like they do not want us to be healthy and like there is not choice but to consume in a wasteful way. Conscious consumption is also difficult because of green washing. As part of my challenge, I adopted a needs vs. wants mentality for when I shop (I shop a lot so I figured this would be a great thing for me to at least try) and when I would go to the store to buy a natural product (example- buying apple cider vinegar to clean over conventional cleaner like Clorox), they always came in smaller portions and were much more expensive. A 32 ounce glass jar of Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar from Walmart is around $5, while a gallon plastic container of Clorox Bleach is $3. Another thing is that companies try to sell people on buying "natural" products by using certain key words, images, or colors on their packaging, in order to suggest that the buyer would be spending money on an environmentally friendly product from an environmentally friendly company. Even companies like Clorox do this now; I saw green bottles, words like "natural", "safe" and "non-toxic" and images of flowers, trees, and smiling faces. I already knew that capitalism was problematic and fake, but this was a brutal reminder of that fact. I am lucky to have knowledge of how companies try to cut corners with price in order to hook buyers (make money), and how that degrades our environment (additions to production process: waste, waste, waste). Having this information is key in order to make educated buying decisions.
The final thing I learned from this challenge is that I already do many things to lower my impact already. A couple examples of this are: I try to buy everything secondhand; I buy most of my food in bulk (to avoid plastic packaging); I do not use toxic chemicals in my home for cleaning, laundry, hygiene, pets, cooking, etc.; I buy most of my products from local companies and try to support companies with solid ethics and sustainable practices; I recycle everything I can and only buy things I need; and I do not drive somewhere unless I have to. However, in spite of doing these things (among other things as well), there are always ways that I can be better. I still fall back on old wasteful habits (like using single use plastic, using plastic bags at the grocery store, buying brand new clothes, using toxic cleaners, etc.) but doing this challenge has helped me figure out solutions to change these habits. For example, instead of using plastic bags at the store, I learned to keep my reusable bags in the cupboards and also in the car so I never forget them when I go out. When you go the store a lot, even doing something this small makes a huge difference.

I started on my CBL today, I interviewed a woman who worked in a sweat shop in Nepal as a child laborer. Her story was intense, amazing and eye opening. It was energetically draining to hear her story. I realized that from the moment I first heard her story, at a woman's empowerment event in September that I have not bought a single garment of fast fashion. I am pledging to make sustainable choices around clothing moving forward.
This has been an interesting eco challenge. I kind of wish that I had better moderated my choices to make more lasting differences but I still learned a lot. My biggest challenge was around food choices. I started off committing to two vegetarian meals a day and now I'm close to entirely vegetarian. Feels great!

I went to a Halloween party that was themed "Murder Mystery," and spent a few hours roleplaying a character instead of staring at my phone and hanging out with friends. I was the murderer!

I meal prepped for the next day and a half by cutting up all vegetables in the house that I was dog sitting in, and I roasted a variety of peppers and onions.