My Sustainable Living Challenge
One Month In
For most of you reading this, it will be the first time hearing about Better Me Green. So to give a brief introduction, this is a self-set challenge over 33 weeks to educate and train myself into more environmentally friendly habits. To make more conscious decisions, so as to do less harm and encourage more good for our fantastic, yet fragile planet.
This experiment has been brewing in me for some time, but it was my recent travels that gave a final kicked-start to take a proactive approach to adopting a more sustainable lifestyle. My trip took me through magnificent, and wildly different, landscapes and cultures. With my love for nature, some visits to dream destinations were realised. Borneo was the place I was most excited to see. It was an amazing experience, however offered one of the starkest slaps around the face for becoming aware of the damaging extent of consumerism and globalisation. The picture of the primary rainforest being carved into and replaced by regimented rows of palm-oil plantations, is one that will be burned into my mind forever. The title image of this post is exactly that.
Life long learning for a brighter future
I have always been a curious and motivated person, and despite being a very run-of-the-mill, distracted school student, I now definitely subscribe to the life-long learning crew. One of my core beliefs is that from every interaction and experience, whether positive or negative, we can learn and therefore improve ourselves. This is essentially what Better Me Green is all about, and with this I join the ‘progression, not perfection‘ clan. This means a realistic, step-by-step approach.
What Better Me Green has taught me so far:
- There are already endless answers and solutions on how to become more environmentally friendly. Seriously, one person could never be able to make a dent on all the articles and information out there. That fills me with a load of hope and motivation for a better future, in an otherwise sceptical world.
- The caring-community thrives, and we are all welcome to join – the more the merrier. For all the naysayers out there, we can find countless others going about life with a positive can do attitude towards creating their sustainable lifestyle.
- People have so much to say on the subject – join the conversations. Within only a few weeks of proactively reaching out to people to discuss sustainable living & working, I have been truly blown away by the resonance that the topic holds for so many people. The ideas and encouragement that get passed around are mind bogglingly awesome and captivating.
- A surprising lesson about myself – To the friends and family who know me well, I have a reputation as being an extrovert, having confidence and for talking A. LOT! Turns out I am surprisingly shy when it comes to sharing my thoughts on sustainability to a wider audience, despite it being something I have always been passionate about. So with this post, I am taking the plunge of actively telling more people about what I am doing….eeeekk!
Your support with this would mean the world to me
So if you want to stay informed, or even better, offer any tips or tales surrounding sustainable living, you can do so via Facebook or Twitter. Alternatively you can leave comments on particular posts at the bottom of each article.
The choice of how to behave and what to buy is ours. The action, however small the steps, we take on self-improvement to sustainable living, is something we can all feel proud of, so what are we waiting for!
Thanks for reading
Your Better Me Greener
Charlotte
