University of Regina

It's the last day of the challenge! I'm very grateful to have had this opportunity to engage deliberately in this sort of sustainability initiative. 

I was just at the synagogue today, and I was thinking about how religion and religious celebrations can contribute to sustainability and connection to the environment (particularly, for me, with the holidays of Sukkot or Tisha B'av). 

For me, foraging is a source for food and a way to build community - if I find food growing wild and forage, I'll often have more of it than I need, which means that I can share and trade it with my friends and loved ones. I did that all summer this year, because there were so many blackberries growing wild along my route to work. I would stop...

On this election day, I am thinking (with some amount of fear, though I hope I'm wrong to be afraid) about what is going to happen to the environment as a result of the outcome tonight. How many more delays and half-fulfilled promises?

I notice that it's easier to do these sustainability challenges while the weather is good - it's nice to walk and bike, and it's easier to do repairs in these conditions as well. I wonder how well I am going to be able to keep up these good habits in the winter.

It's amazing to me, sometimes, how much these sustainability initiatives can revolve around just doing the routine boring maintenance tasks that it would otherwise be so easy to put off. 

I'm at a craft and trade fair today, so I'm thinking a lot about how promises of economic stability can work directly against sustainability (environmental and otherwise). There are so many multi-level marketing schemes here, and it's so easy to see how people can be taken in by what they promise, even though they can't possibly deliver. 

Caring for my health lets me be more involved in my community and care for the people around me. It's the classic principle of "putting on your own oxygen mask first."

I just got my bike fixed today, so I am all set to keep getting around the city by pedal-power!

Here's a reason I think it's so hard to guide people towards living more sustainable lives - so many of us are in such precarious positions that any measure of stability we manage to eke out can disappear at any minute, for any reason. Living sustainably, especially at first, can be more expensive, and it's hard to justify narrowing margins...