Amanda Green

Wow, EcoChallenge went by so fast this year! I can't believe it was the last day. I met the bulk of my goals most days, although I did succumb to the temptation of wing week on Wednesday :-(, so wound up eating meet twice during my challenge, which is pretty consistent with my normal meat intake - oh well. I've been biking a bunch more and I feel great from it. I only used my car three times during the two weeks of EcoChallenge, and two of those were taking my in-laws to and from the airport. I have successfully not purchased anything other than  food, and did really good on keeping my waste down. One thing I eat a lot of that creates trash is granola bras. I'd like to learn how to make my own and was hoping to do that during EcoChallenge but ran out of time, so  I hope to work on that over the next couple of weeks. I feel like I've learned a lot this year, as always. Maybe next year I'll try to do 3 minute showers, my sustainability Achilles heal for sure is what I call my "therapy showers."

Feeling great about biking this week! I should do this all week every week. My mood is just so much better. Also, UGH, after feeling how "easy" it was to not eat meat I fell off the wagon yesterday. My in-laws are in town and brought home to giant meaty Mississippi Pizzas for dinner (which was awesome) and I couldn't help but indulge, and also didn't want to be rude. It did give me an opportunity to talk to them about EcoChallenge though, so that was a plus. One week down - one to go! 

10/18/16 - So, I'm giving myself and "I Did it" today even thought I met some of my actions but not all of my actions. I didn't bike today mostly because I had a super long day would have had to bike from my house in North Portland, to my office n Northeast and then to PSU to teach my class and then back home, which would have been almost 25 miles of biking, plus I would have had to lug around all of my class materials and laptop and I just didn't have that in me. The challenge has been going well so far on many fronts. I have no problem not eating meat, that's easy. I haven't purchased any tangible goods (I did buy an afternoon latte today to power up for my class, but I used my own mug  - yay), and I'm doing good on the limiting my trash front. My main challenge has been biking, when I didn't have a car I HAD to bike so there was no question in it, but on these super rainy days its really hard for me to put on all my gear and bike in the rain, when I can so easily jump into my car.