Besides this challenge being informative, I enjoyed hearing suggestions from our Valley Team. Hopefully we can build on this and grow our environmental consciousness within the Valley.

Yesterday I started using my new plastic free cleaning products from Grove. They worked really well.

I bought a refillable water bottle. Had to be lightweight, able to hang from my backpack and be unnoticeable.

Traveling makes sustainability hard! But we have our water bottles and we are in a restaurant and the only trash was a napkin😊

Tomorrow is the last day of the challenge and we hope that you each learned something new during this process. As this challenge ends we hope you will continue to work on reducing plastic and living a plastic-free lifestyle. It isn't easy and it does take intentional planning and decision making but if we all commit to making changes it can only bring good into our community. At Valley, we are an earth care congregation and we have a task force that is continually looking at how we as a faith community can make changes as a larger body. Our earth care task force gives a
bi-monthly update to the congregation that can be found in our newsletter The Valley, the next article will be featured in the April issue. Until then we invite you to explore past earth care adult ed classes and resources on our website by clicking here or attend the next meeting of the Valley Sustainability group which will meet on March 19 to talk about the benefits of growing your own fresh veggies/herbs at home whether it is in a traditional garden, raised bed or patio container. Lastly, be sure to look around the church the ECO Buddies as they highlight different ways we are working to be better stewards of the earth in and around our building.

Ray and I like Tare Market in NE Mpls. Also the coop on Central inNE. Lots of bulk opportunities at both of them.

On February 19 I went to an event where individuals come with items that are no longer needed from their homes, and others can take what they can use. No money was exchanged and several families were able to obtain things that they could use.

We are lucky to have quite a few food co-ops in the Twin Cities. You don't need to be members to shop at them, and they make it easier to shop mindfully. They have many opportunities to buy in "bulk", using your own containers. We usually shop at The Wedge and Lakewinds. The Wedge even sells bulk baby spinach, and mixed greens for salad. That is the only place we have found that we can avoid the plastic containers for greens, bringing our own containers from home.👍

It's hard to find a store where you can refill containers.

I have long been concerned about plastic waste and the environment. This challenge is the perfect way to be more mindful and get new ideas.