What are eco-friendly challenges?
Eco-friendly challenges are a collective effort to raise awareness about environmental issues and to make a positive impact through individual change. Challenges can be run by official organizations, municipalities, or sustainable-living bloggers. However, for this article I’m just going to focus on the eco-friendly organizations.
Eco-friendly challenges often provide practical advice and a manageable timeframe for your goals. They can also be great information hubs about environmental issues. I highly recommend eco-friendly challenges because I find them to be very empowering. After all, they’re what inspired me to start my own sustainability journey. I’m someone who needs a bit of structure and accountability to achieve personal goals. So having a set event/goal from these organizations really helps me to stay focused.
What to expect from a challenge event –
The eco-friendly events that I know of will usually have a set timeframe for participants to achieve a sustainability goal or activity. Activities can be anything from riding a bike instead of driving, swapping out a single-use plastic item for a reusable one, to going without a convenience item for awhile. You can decide the specifics of your goal challenge. Once you’ve decided, you’ll go to the organization’s website and fill out a form to register your activity. Having trouble coming up with ideas? Check out the organization’s website, there will be lots of resources for challenge ideas and tips for success.
When the event starts, you’ll do your activity making your positive impact on the environment. At the end of the challenge (if the organization is recording the overall activities) you’ll report your results to the organization so it can be compiled with everyone else’s impact. That’s it, no long term commitments and no massive lifestyle overhauls, just one change or activity for a brief period and letting the organization know what you did. The fun part is seeing how your small changes can add up when they’re part of a group effort.
Some of my favorite sustainable challenge organizations:
Plastic Free July – Occurs during the month of July with a focus on reducing single use plastic waste.
Bike to Work Day – In Colorado this occurs the last week of June but this might vary by state/region. The focus of this event is on improving air quality.
Meatless Monday – Occurs every Monday with a focus on eating more healthy plant based proteins.
Earth Hour – Also known as the “Lights Out Event”. Occurs in late March with a focus on environmental awareness and giving back to the planet.
Zero Waste Day – One of the newer events started in 2023. Occurs in late March with a focus on practices to reduce waste.
I’ve included links to all of these organizations’ home page so you can learn more about them. As previously mentioned, these organizations are GREAT hubs of information, not just for their challenges but for the environmental issues they represent. These are just a few of the eco-friendly challenges that I love but feel free to mention any you are fond of in the comments section below!
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