Reducing our Impact with the Plastic Free Ecochallenge

portrait of a woman, Angie Martin
Angie Martin Administrative/Project Assistant
Snapshot of LHB’s Team Impact – Icons taken from the EcoChallenge website.

Imagine what it would take to go plastic free for 24 hours. Now imagine a full month. LHB recently participated in the Plastic Free EcoChallenge throughout the month of July. The objective of this challenge was to inspire people to make small, personal changes to reduce single-use plastics and to see how these adjustments (which hopefully become habits!) add up to much larger changes collectively. The LHB team consisted of 38 employees and came in 49th place out of 776 teams based on points awarded for challenges completed. Here are some of our experiences and take-aways from the challenge.

Small Adjustments
Some of the modification’s participants made to their daily routine included the following:

Overcoming Roadblocks
Several people noted that it was difficult to avoid plastic packaging in these instances:

The big take away here was to plan ahead – participants recommended buying snacks in advance of a trip so you aren’t buying plastic wrapped items from convenience stores along the way, bringing reusable water bottles, keeping a stock of reusable bags in your car so they’re always at the ready, and making homemade decorations for parties instead of buying store bought plastic ones.

Forming New Habits
Participants said they were inspired to continue participating in the following ways:

As Jody put it, “This challenge made me re-think my use of plastics and has introduced me to several alternatives, which I intend to make habits!” She also provided this link with some great tips on going plastic free: https://myplasticfreelife.com/plasticfreeguide/

Small Changes Personally = Big Impact Collectively
When you start to look at all the plastic surrounding us in our daily lives, it can feel overwhelming. Challenges like this remind us of the power of even the smallest, incremental change. If you need inspiration, take a look at the following image of the collective impact from this challenge. That’s the effect 15,236 people had in one month and the amount of plastic they kept out of the environment, just by making a few small changes to their daily routine. These tiny changes add up to a big, cumulative impact when we work collectively. Or as Lydia put it, “Even if you don’t have perfect habits, every instance of making a different choice counts!”

Above is an image of the collective impact of all participants in the Plastic Free EcoChallenge from across the world. For original image and material and additional information about the collective impact click here.

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