During the month of December, I took part in Green December, an initiative organised by the global movement NOW!, which tackles many challenges of our time, and the month of December was dedicated to climate and the fight against climate change.
During the month of December, all the participants received one e-mail per week, containing daily actions to take in order to tackle climate change, resolve the environmental crisis and be, overall, more mindful of our impact on the planet. For each day, the tips came with a small explanation about why that specific action was useful and important, so I also learned many things just by reading the e-mails.
Even though I have pretty much always been aware of climate change and global warming, I can’t say I have always actively taken action against it. This is something that I recently decided to change, and I have slowly made my way towards a more conscious lifestyle, choosing more sustainable and environmentally-friendly options. Of course, I still have a lot to work on, but it’s a process!
I loved taking part in this challenge precisely because it would challenge me to do more and find new ways to take action. Each day, I would check the weekly email to read about the daily tip and implement it. There were days where I couldn’t do the action because of external factors that I couldn’t really control, so I just did it the next day, for instance.
What I loved was the fact that the actions were easy to do, yet effective. They didn’t require you to completely change your routine or habits but were still very meaningful! I was glad to see that I already regularly did some of them, like not eating meat on certain days, avoiding single-use plastic or unplugging my devices, but I also learnt many new ones!
The trickier part for me was that the movement relied a lot on social media and “spreading the word” and awareness. It is of course essential to raise our voices on these issues, but it is also something I struggle with a bit more, given that I am not very active on social media. Hopefully, though, this blog post will inspire you to take action and to implement some of these changes in your daily lives, like I did.
The best way to do so it to make a pledge and find some climate-related resolutions for the year, which were two of the last actions to take during Green December. In my intentions and yearly theme, I wrote that I wanted to be more mindful and care more about the environment, so the pledge and resolutions were perfect for that.
In fact, it is easy to say that you will care more about the environment, but harder to put it into practice, and that goes for every resolution. The key, to me, is to actually define actions that go towards a bigger goal.
After some thinking about my way of living, I decided that I would try to only eat meat once or twice a month. This requires some adjustments to my habits, because even though I am not a big meat-eater, I do enjoy the occasional steak if I order food or go to the restaurant. My pledge is to limit these occurrences as much as possible, and possibly to once a month!
To accompany this, I took 5 resolutions to have a more sustainable lifestyle:
- Clear my inbox weekly
- Buy more things in bulk, especially food like rice or nuts
- Limit as much as possible single-use plastic
- Buy clothes from ethical brands/second hand
- Shop more at farmers’ markets for local products
I will talk more in depth in another post about the different actions and tips that were given during this challenge and other things you can do at your level to care for the environment and the climate, so if you have any tips or actions share them in the comments!
Did you take part in Green December? Do you have climate-related resolutions for the New Year?
Sunny Days with Juliette 
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