Stories of Kindness from Around the World

How A 21-Day Eco Challenged Changed Us


--by Tien, posted May 13, 2017
I am SO grateful for the 21 Day Eco challenge hosted by KindSpring. Taking care of our sweet Mother Earth has always been important to me and I have taken steps in my everyday life to recycle, reuse, think about ways to preserve, etc. but this challenge awakened me even more.

Our Scholars Together community has taken on more than we have before in terms of recycling, composting, using our own ceramic cups and metal water bottles when we go out, not buying things in plastic, composting more, and having green lunches more consistently, but the biggest change we made was making a goal of zero trash.

We set up more boxes and bins for paper that we could use again, recycled every sheet of used-on-both-sides paper, plastics, cans, etc. ate all of our food, instead of throwing some away and it has been great! We made it into a challenge. In two days with 9 people we had only one Hershey bar wrapper and several used Kleenexes (we talked about handkerchiefs) and a couple of small odds and end in our trash.

The rest was recycled, composted or taken home to be used again. Each day we are all seeing how little can be in our trash. I realized that I had been throwing paper away that could be used on the other side or could be recycled, and now I am looking everywhere for how things can be used more effectively until recycling time.

The videos have been so instructive and useful for us all. I don't want the eco challenge to end. We will continue to do our part and spread the news to our family and friends. Next week we are trying some experiments in our local sandwich and sub shops (favorites of the kids) to see if we can bring in our own containers, rather than having them wrapped up or put in bags. It is cool to see how the awareness spreads. Thank you KindSpring for providing the community with daily support and great researched videos and info.

 
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Readers Comments

Mish wrote: Thank you, Tien for all you do to Love Mother Earth! ❤️🌍❤️
smileswithhope wrote: Wow, what an inspired effort you and your community have undergone! :) Thank you for inspiring me to step-up my kindness to the earth. :)
kvpsummer wrote: AMAZING!!!!!
virginia wrote: You proved that with conscious thinking we all can make a difference and it doesn't take any effort or money. Congratulations. It is rewarding to start a recycling project at work - i did it at a company back in the 1980's and the money received for the recycled waste paid for an employee party in the summer and winter.

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