I'm glad I finally took the time to watch 13th on Netflix. As a history student I was pretty informed of the history of oppression in this country; it was actually the time period from Reagan/Bush/Clinton presidencies (that I actually lived through but was too young to really remember or understand) where I learned the most. I was surprised to learn that some of our harshest laws (3 strikes, minimum sentencing) were enacted under Clinton, a democrat. Sustainability is, unfortunately, a privilege - by keeping POC in cycles of poverty through oppression (voter suppression, mass incarceration, etc.) we're hurting them as humans and our planet as a whole.

Reduce single use plastics. This issue sticks with me as single use plastics impact both local and global systems. As part of the eco challenge, I signed my household up for a program that collects plastics (films, bags, wrap), used clothing, light bulbs, and batteries and either recycles or sells those items back to manufacturers. As a result, we have reduced the amount of trash we create and we are reducing the size of our curbside trash bin. 

Like a good night sleep, daily walks are not only giving me an appreciation for my community; they are impacting other "eco" areas as well. When I take daily walks, I have more energy to do things around the house (for example, wash dishes by hand) which saves water and energy. 

Shifting my sleep patterns necessitates turning off electronics and getting in bed earlier (for me). I find that when I am well-rested, it impacts other "eco" areas as well (for example, I drink less coffee which means I am creating less waste and using less water). 

I can ask my utility company (in my case, Puget Sound Energy) to tell me about the average energy usage in Renton, WA. I can then compare that to my month-over-month usage. I also signed my household up for a program that invests monthly into clean energy programs.

My top 5 values are self-respect, determination, security, knowledge, and involvement/belonging. I tried several of the activities from the resources and many of the things I found myself picking fell into these buckets. For example, for me, having self-respect means being able to sleep at night knowing I made good choices for myself and others. So when I chose other values like kindness, fairness, community, citizenship, honesty, I realized that by valuing self-respect I was really valuing all of those things.

I've been doing paperless billing for as long as I can remember but I do get a lot of unwanted catalogs so I used the resource here to try to stop those. I used to subscribe to a ton of women's magazines too and I have cancelled/not renewed all of those subscriptions. I hate the clutter of seeing magazines and catalogs and mail piling up in my small space and it felt very freeing to get rid of that!

The biggest thing I noticed with less screen time was that I was getting less frequent headaches. I mostly spent time listening to podcasts instead of watching TV or YouTube. Saturday I needed to do some car maintenance so afterward I went for a long drive out to the mountains and enjoyed the sun, the beautiful fall colors, and some good music in the car.