Green Challenges – Revisited

Happy April 1st! The first of the month as you may know is also Green Challenge day! Today I’m going to do a little something different. I’m going to revisit all the green challenges I’ve done so far and report my progress with them.

Challenge #1 – For one year, only purchase only wine or beer from whatever state I am in. This one has been going VERY well! I think I only strayed from this challenge once, when Chris and I went out to dinner for Valentines day at Athos, the Greek Restaurant, where we ordered Greek wine. This is also my favorite challenge because I really love supporting local breweries and local wineries. We changed the concept of this a little bit too to expand the radius to 200 miles instead of state-wide, so we could buy beer brewed in Vermont, which is actually closer than beer brewed in say, Buffalo.

Challenge #2 – Reduce Plastic Waste. Since beginning this challenge, I haven’t ordered any take out! I actually haven’t even used any plastic or styrofoam for leftovers. On the plastic bag front: I rarely have had to use any bags beside my resuables. I have on ocassion forgotten them and had to use plasic ones-but only about 4 or 5 times since beginning the challenge.

Challenge #3 – Water Conservation. For one year, conserve water by taking “military-style” showers. I have to be honest, when I first started this challenge I despised it–so much that I rarely take military showers now. Its so cold in my house and I want to shower in hot water without turning it off. I know, I really failed at this challenge. But I’m going to start taking military showers as soon as the weather warms up. You can hold me to that!

Challenge #4 – Eat a Vegan Meal Once a Week. This is another one of my favorites. I actually follow this challenge because almost every day during the week I eat a vegan breakfast! At first, Chris and I conciously cooked vegan dinners once a week, but lately we haven’t been planning our meals out. I ate a vegan meal at an amazing restaurant in Philly and it was one of the best meals I’ve ever had! I need to start making more creative vegan dinners and not take the easy way out by eating oats and almond milk for breakfast and calling it my vegan meal for the week.

Challenge #5 – Reduce, Reuse & Recycle. Challenge #5 hasn’t been too difficult. I’ve been extremely concious of what I throw away and what I put in my recycling bin. At home, I wasn’t good at recycling my food boxes and cardboard, I would just throw it in the trash. Now I make an effort to recycle these things!

Challenge #6 – No Television for One Week Per Month. Month 1 was a success! I mangaged to go one week without television in March. And the best part was: it wasn’t even that hard. The only strange thing is, instead of wanting to watch mindless TV, I found myself wanting to turn on the weather and the news! Weird, huh? Nothing weather.com couldn’t solve.

That’s it folks–my re-cap of the six months I’ve been doing Green Challenge. I can’t believe its been six months already. So, I don’t have a challenge for April. But you are more than welcome to come up with your own challenge for the month and post a comment telling me what you want to do to make your world a little bit Greener.