I like to think of myself as a little bit of an Eco warrior. I own a reusable water bottle and coffee cup, have weekly meat free days, volunteer at the yearly company tree planting day, give to the Earthwatch Institute each month and used to cry when my school mates snapped live tree branches despite the obvious grade 7 social consequences. I once actively broke up with a boyfriend for spitting a piece of chewing gum on the ground for <insert the deity of your choice – lets stop blaming Pete, he doesn’t deserve it> sake!

So this all sounds great right? Now let me add that I also sometimes put my glass wine bottles in the general garbage bin when hungover (after drinking the entire said bottle of wine accidentally during ill advised TV binges), only remember to use my reusable coffee cup once a week, purchase vending machine chocolate most days and allowed someone I saw flick a cigarette butt get to third base.

When I read these paragraphs side by side I definitely start to see some holes in my green tinted environmental champion view of myself  …. and my choices in one night stands. This is the point that I try to console myself with things like ‘I’ve just been really busy lately’, ‘being green is expensive, when I’ve earned my inevitable millions I’ll do more’, ‘I live in a rental, what can I really do’ and ‘he had the most amazing blue eyes’. Sound familiar? Excuses aside we’ve probably all looked at our lifestyles and realised that on close inspection we aren’t doing a lot to help out the round ball of fun we live on.

So how hard is it to live more environmentally consciously really? For the next 30 weeks each Monday to Sunday I’m going to put the lettuce where my mouth is and try out a different common environmental lifestyle change. I’ll report back at the end of each challenge to see how achievable, affordable, beneficial, healthy and enjoyable each weeks environmental change really was and the best ways I found to easily integrate the whole or part of this eco change into your adventurous lifestyle. Let the Eco games begin!

In no actual order –

1. Reusable bottles, cups, takeaway containers, cutlery and straws.
2. Support the peeps doing the right thing – buying and gifting consciously
3. Food shopping minus the plastic
4. Get local (or organic) with it
5. Eco friendly cleaning products
6. Let’s go all the way (and by that I mean vegan)
7. Electricity get low, get low
8. Donate to the good guys (charities, not electronic stores)
9. Alternative transport
10. Recycle baby
11. Vintage is fresh
12. Knowledge is power – be in the know
13. Paper is so last week
14. Eco-friendly beauty – natural make-up is more than a style
15. Eco travel – leave only footprints
16. Eco-spiration
17. Waste not want not
18. Taking on the moon cup
19. The raw food craze
20. To the window to the wall!
21. Fixer Upper
22. Beg, Borrow … probably don’t steal
23. Laundry day
24. Upgrade your phone
25. Somethings fishy here
26. My plant is named Steve
27. Is none of your beeswax … candle
28. Water saving not boarding
29. Eco-friendly food choices – the bad, the good and the inedible
30. Share the knowledge