Throughout the month of February I made the decision to try and reduce carbon gas emissions and have more sustainable behaviours to reduce pollution. I did this by taking two actions of not driving my car to school and either walk. I also was using reusable and eco friendly water bottles and tapper wear containers, no plastic bags or containers.

The first action of not driving to school and choosing to walk instead. It is quite straight forward but it became difficult at times, especially when it was raining or morning time. It took about 20 minutes instead of the 3 minute car ride but it was a refreshing experience. It made my day feel more fulfilled and accomplished, it felt like the same feeling after doing exercise. The hardest time to accomplish this was during a 8:30 am class because I had to wakeup so much earlier to walk compared to driving a vehicle, it was also colder in the morning times. I would walk down mt Seymour parkway and then take the trail at the bottom if Lilloet road into Capilano University which I never knew about before. This made it interesting at first but it felt hard to keep justifying myself to keep walking when I have a vehicle. I do not know if I could keep doing it long term unless I got rid of my car which can be a good idea since it is not necessary in my lifestyle, this would also keep me from contributing to pollution long term. Overall this was successful and I do not regret doing it because it felt good getting the extra exercise and helping reduce carbon gas emissions.

The second action was to not use plastic containers and only use reusable containers and bottles. I bought a water bottle and used it for the month, I was used to occasionally buying a plastic water bottle at school or a drink but this challenge prevented me from doing so. This meant I could not forget my water bottle but it became a habit to bring it everywhere which I think is a habit I will continue doing in the future. I also had to bring food from home as I could not buy single use non reusable containers. I was used to buying coffees, chicken wraps and salads which were stored in plastic containers so this meant I had to make lunch most days. I used my reusable plastic containers and saved my dinners from the night before or made sandwiches, which is something I also want to continue doing because it saves money. On the weekend it was tough to be successful with this because of take out containers from food ordering, If this was long term it would be tough to continue doing because I would have to invest time and research which restaurants use eco friendly materials and reusable containers not just paper and plastic. This experiment was mostly successful but it started to become very tedious because of the above reason of the takeout issue.

In conclusion, I think this experiment was a success, as it gave me a better idea of how much I rely on certain things without realizing them. I think as a whole we could all quite easily cut out our consumption of non reusable containers and start using eco friendly products. Cutting down on driving would be very difficult to do as a society but the solution to this would be electric vehicles. Hopefully towards the future we see the switch to electric and can cut out the carbon gas emission problem.

However, the hardest part of doing these challenges was seeing everybody drive by me and using their non reusable products without any sort of concern for their environment it made me feel a little hopeless doing it since it seems like nobody else in my community was making the same effort. Like I said, some days where better than others and I am glad I did these experiments.