By Elena Zevallos & Deirdre Brannigan:
In honor of Earth Day, Sustainable Future has partnered with EcoChallenge, a worldwide online community platform based in Portland, Oregon. This month-long challenge, beginning April 1st, aims to motivate and support individuals to take part in improving the health of our environment. The Earth-month EcoChallenge provides easy access to measure our daily environmental impact, and helps us live more sustainably. These goals include health habits, food waste reduction, limiting single-use plastic, water conservation, eating lower on the food chain, transportation alternatives, litter management and health safety - all the habits that aim to promote a favorable lifestyle that benefits us and the planet. Please don’t hesitate to sign up and join here, and take part in a worldwide effort to reduce our human impact!
Given that nearly all Earth Day activities have been cancelled, this is an opportunity to stay digitally connected to our environmental goals. Cities across the globe will be competing in this effort, and Santa Barbara will be one of them! Many of us are now sheltering-in-place and/or drastically changing our habits--one of the ways we can stay connected is to share our actions digitally, and collectively empower each other to make a difference!
EcoChallenge provides a daily dose of motivation and encourages small changes we can commit to. Without a nudging incentive, it can be difficult to live by our values of taking care of ourselves and the environment. While we may feel a deep compassion for our planet, we may also fall into discouragement - prompted by pervasive media images. This is a normal reaction, but it can be a huge demotivator. We care so much about our planet, and we’d love to be able to protect it, but how can we do so when it seems like only the worst is happening right now, and our individual efforts seem futile? It’s important to remember that our efforts are not futile. Even the smallest actions can contribute to a necessary global movement.
Earth Day EcoChallenge is a way for us to commit to daily actions in order to make them habits. Through conscious care and collective effort, individuals can help improve the health of themselves, and the environment, by changing the smallest of things in their own lifestyle decisions. This challenge may be only one-month long, but we can use it to shift our lifestyle habits for the sake of the planet we depend on and love! Please join us here today!