As October comes to an end, so does the fall EcoChallenge. In case you missed it, the EcoChallenge is hosted by the Northwest Earth Institute, and is a 21-day challenge encouraging participants to learn about sustainability topic areas that interest them, while taking measurable action, having fun and encouraging others. Individuals earn points, can win prizes, and get to see how these three weeks of learning and/or actions add up to make meaningful change – in our community and around the world.
We were especially excited this fall, as the category of health was added to go along with waste, food, transportation, energy, community, nature, water, simplicity, and you could create your own. As you hopefully know, health and sustainability are directly connected. Not only is having clean air, water and food integral to your health, doing things like eating more vegetables, using active transportation, and reducing waste are better for you and the environment. This is how sustainability helps us to meet our mission.
Participants selected a limited number of daily activities, including, but not limited to, exercising, refusing single-use plastics, eating meals without any form of technology or eating meatless meals. They also could select a number of one-time activities including getting an annual physical, watching informational videos on topics, telling others, or buying carbon credits.
This fall, the UNMC/Nebraska Medicine team decided to challenge the UNO team. I am happy to report that UNMC/Nebraska Medicine won! The med center team put up 15,332 points and placed 40th out of the 842 participating teams. UNO had 13,519 points and finished in 47th place. Had we combined teams, as we did in the spring, we would have been in 16th place!
Speaking of combined effect, our team had an impressive impact. In part, we saved 1,475 gallons of water, got an additional 855 minutes of sleep, spent 6,220 minutes exercising, ate 227 extra servings of fruits and vegetables, and prevented 223 plastic bottles, 157 straws and 183 disposable cups from going to the landfill. Great job team!
If you missed the EcoChallenge, there will be another one in the spring. In the meantime, you can have your own impact by picking a sustainability-related topic and then challenging yourself (or your friends/family) to make the specific change on a daily basis and/or learn more about the topic.
Thanks for organizing this, Melanie!