I was able to volunteer several hours this weekend for a nonprofit at different Christmas markets. It was nice being able to help out the community and see everyone come together for a good purpose during the holidays.

I just went grocery shopping and made an effort to buy only organic banana and apples

This last Tuesday I returned home from a trip to Italy where I visited my sister who is studying abroad. While there my family and I did a lot of walking and using public transportation instead of relying on a car. By doing this I was able to correlate the articles we had learned and talked about in class to real life examples. I was also able to share with my family the importance of having walk-able cities and the importance of looking at public transportation from a systems point of view.

This week a completed a one time challenge of ridding my bathroom of toxic health/beauty products. After I did this, I went on pinterest to see if I could make some of my own diy products. Of course, when I searched it I found so many different organic products I could make myself. This weekend I plan to try it out and if all goes well I think I will have just found all of my Christmas gifts!!

I've been driving much less lately and riding my bike! It has been a good alternative and has helped me to be outdoors much more often.

This week I decided to look into what gifts would be good to buy for family and friends for Christmas. Specifically, I was looking into fair trade and socially-minded companies to buy from. There definitely were a lot of options out there, but the issue was price. As we have talked about in class, there always seems to be a higher price tag on products and/or services that come from those types of companies. But I am determined to find the best things -- and maybe not actual "things" -- to give this Christmas, while remaining committed to ethical and sustainable companies. 

I reduced my meat intake this past week. I had to be creative and find other sources of protein, as our basketball team did a lot of working out this week. I definitely felt a difference in my energy and didn't feel as tired after our practices! I just love meat too much though, that's my problem. After my experiment this weak though I will for sure reduce my meat intake, as I found it very doable.  

Tonight I am going to the fair trade Christmas market on campus to try to find presents for friends and family that I can know are ethically sourced! 

I hosted a Bridal Shower for my sister recently and we used all reusable bowls, utensils, glasses and napkins for the brunch. I feel like it can be easy to create a lot of waste with big parties but it was awesome to see the trash can at the end with barely anything in it.We also got the right amount of food so it wasn't wasted and were able to spend all the time outside on a beautiful afternoon. One thing that I couldn't do anything about was all the wrapping paper from the presents; We recycled it all but it still felt unnecessary.  All in all, It was cool to see how easy it can be to throw a sustainable, minimal-waste party. 

I have really enjoyed doing this eco challenge. I have found that there were so many things that I was already doing which made the challenge easy at times but also allowed me to do new things that did challenge me. Those new things I was trying have started to become easy as well now and are just a part of my daily routine.