I revolt against New Year’s Resolutions. They always seem punishing and something to do with making yourself “look” better but not truly feel better more like feeling guilty. In the end you might have lost some weight sweated alongside the other 1,000,000 people in the gym or on the bike path, but it doesn’t last. We’ll skip all the reasons why they don’t work.
When I started my blog ten years ago (yes, I started when I was 11, wink, wink), I decided to do New Green’s Determinations. So I thought, I’ll revisit those sage words and build upon that for 2018. Guess what? It’s amazing anyone read them, they are so awful! Hard to believe the blog got out of its first month much less 10 years of content.
However the idea of determinations did work. I picked simple goals like train myself to use cloth bags. Put a check mark next to that determination. I keep that one 90% of the time and I have most of my family doing it some of the time if not all the time. My sister and sister-in-law are the real success stories. Become recycling guru. Check again. I am so successful that I become a recycling truck when visiting my Mother because there is only aluminum recycling in her rural area.
2009 brought part II. I was too ambitious. I got three out of the five things I listed and then I stopped. Instead of talking about it, I just started adding/changing things to my daily routine. One thing got changed and I decided to do another. I have probably made a 100 changes. You can’t do it all at the same time but I can truly say a bunch of little things has added up to a major lifestyle change. It is never, ever perfect but I feel a lot better about my footprint on the planet and know I have influenced a lot of people.
For 2018, I’ve decided to pick two things. The first one is directly linked to my personal Christian journey. I need to love better. I need to tell all the people around me that I love them, not just my Mother who appreciates it greatly, but let’s face it for most of us, that shouldn’t count because that’s the default. So if I interact with you this year and I tell you I love you, rest assured I love you. Living abundantly in love just puts us in an intentional place and gives you so many brain rewards you won’t believe it, so practice. No one ever loses anything valuable by telling someone that you love them.
The second thing I am focusing on in 2018 is food waste. This is an easy one Moms can focus on. Because most Moms are thinking about food at least three time a day. Now some of you might be saying, “I thought this was the climate change website.” And yes, we at the Evangelical Environmental Network, are all about reducing the effects of climate change, but think about it, if I said this year make climate change your target, what would you do? Buy a Tesla? Research solar for your home and then decide the college tuition fund is more important? Maybe you would change all the CFLs to LEDs which is reasonable but then what?
The fact is there are really hundreds of things you can do mitigate climate change. Food waste is special it is the number three thing you can do according the Paul Hawken’s Drawdown to mitigate carbon and that’s why I chose food waste for this year. If all of us together worked to reduce food waste by 20% at home and then maybe went to our churches and schools and duplicated those efforts what would that look like?
Forty percent of our food is wasted in the United States. That should really wake us up on tackling food waste. I always tell people we don’t have a food problem to fight hunger. We have a transportation problem. We have a nutrition problem. We have a distribution problem. We have a waste problem. We do not have an abundance problem except that we are losing 40% of it.
In some ways 40% is interesting. It’s a biblical number. It rained 40 days and nights for Noah. Jesus roamed the wilderness for 40 days where he was tested by the devil. According to BibleStudy.org, the number 40 is mentioned 146 times in the Bible and usually signals a time of trial, probation or a testing period. So who do I think is the best group of people to really start to tackle 40% food waste? Yep, our super women of America, moms.
EEN Moms will be sharing ideas to reduce food waste all year long but this is a group effort. So please share your ideas. You can post in our private Facebook group, or you can write a blog which we will be happy to post and share, send us links, share the ideas with your friends. We live in such abundance why not share it? Welcome 2018!
