So this month in my One Year Sustainable Challenge (1YSC) I decided that I would find ways to drive less. Driving is expensive but also if everyone can find a way to do fewer trips and find ways to reduce the distance, that would be less fuel and less carbon!
So first I started to try to group drives. This means logging number of trips and number of tasks done per trip. I tried to log miles too, but that never got off the ground.
Second action was to fix my bike. Area where I live really sucks for biking so I’m sad to say that while I fixed the bike and pumped up the tires, I never actually went anywhere with it.
So after two weeks I was doing an average of 1.5 trips a day and about 2.6 tasks per trip.
After four weeks my two week average dropped to ,9 trips a day and I was now actually doing 2.1 tasks per trip!
This is interesting because I was going to fewer places but I wasn’t combining more things on those trips as I would expect. Somehow in an effort to drive less I was doin same with less stress.
That’s not bad. If everyone just tried this, and people reduced in one month their travel by forty percent and their tasks by 20 percent, how great would that be!?
If I kept track of the distance, I am sure that I would have also travelled less distance. I would look at things like the store where I purchase things and so instead of doing what I was used to: traveling fifteen minutes to a grocery store, I would now go five minutes as that store now allowed pick up. I would go to a coffee shop nearby, look up more restaurants closer to me. In a way, trying to drive less made me more local on weekdays but this also made me enjoy things further away on weekends. We would go to the beach and enjoy our friends further away. Less driving in the week is less stress and less stress is more energy for when there is more fun!
To be honest, before I did this write up, I was a little disappointed with this challenge. I didn’t think I did much and I did’t think I learned much. I was focused on my lack of biking and felt like because I drove, I was a failure, but now I see that I did save time, money and made some different habits.
I will try to keep this going, to keep my trips low, my tasks per trip high and make more effort on public transport and riding a bike (I did not do that).
I’m also currently trying to get my condo association to add outlets outside to the carports to encourage electric cars, that is slow and coming but I’m not giving up!
So what’s for next month? PLASTIC!!!
Check out this video by Holderness Family, this might be the toughest challenge yet!
not-rushin 