Students willing to spend a month seriously considering the environmental consciousness of their daily lives are being rewarded both tangibly and intangibly through Project Green Challenge.

Sponsored by Teens Turning Green, the challenge takes place during the month of October and invites high school and college students in 30 countries to participate in daily challenges.

Julia Whitten, a sophomore majoring in environmental science and Spanish, was one of the challenge’s finalists when she was a senior in high school and is now involved with Teens Turning Green.

“I did every single challenge; I put all of my energy into it and didn’t sleep during the month of October,” Whitten said. “It was worth it.”

Whitten was able to go to California with other finalists, but daily challenges, which are divided into three levels of difficulty, bring their own rewards.

“The prize packages you can get are top-quality stuff. I got furniture,” she said. “I never have to buy paper again because they gave me all this recycled paper. It was a really good incentive.”

While the prizes are a big draw, Whitten said the challenges have practical, long-lasting impact.

“Some of the challenges were more convicting of my personal lifestyle. I set a goal that I wouldn’t ever use single-use water bottles again, and in the past two years, I’ve used one,” she said. “I also learned about all the initiatives that are going on around the world and people coming together to create change that I didn’t even know about it.”

She said she is still involved with people she met through the challenge, but instead of competing, they’re now collaborating.

“Everyone has the same goal. … You still have the mindset of wanting to affect change and learn about the environment and learn about what we can do to protect it,” she said. “Most of it is focused on how we can change and how we can use our collaborative effort and collaborative consumption to actually push forward and make positive progress.”

As a freshman, Whitten became the campus representative for Project Green Challenge and convinced two girls in her dorm to try the challenge. Morgan Olive, a sophomore majoring in secondary education, joined Whitten’s team and reached the semifinals. This year, Olive and her roommate Hannah Wright, a sophomore majoring in geology, are doing the challenge. Wright, who lived with Olive last year and briefly participated as an individual, said the challenges have already started to connect to her daily life.

“I think one of my favorite challenges was talking about food labeling and a lot of green-washing, where things are made to seem really natural and healthy but they’re not,” Wright said. “My challenge was focused around the Lakeside market, so I was able to use a lot of things around campus that I buy every day.”

She has already won prize packages, which included granola bars and carcinogen-free makeup.

“It’s definitely surprising to see how many bad things are in our food and [how many] carcinogens [were] in my makeup,” Wright said. “I definitely think a lot of [the challenges] are targeted towards things you use in your everyday life.”

Wright said the prize packages motivated her to participate in the competition, but since then, she has enjoyed the creativity of the challenges. She said participants could put as much or little time into them as they want.

Olive said she had never considered the environmental friendliness of her lifestyle before the challenge, and it has made her more optimistic about the feasibility of a healthy lifestyle.

“It does help you learn more about yourself and learn about alternatives to everyday things that are good for you and good for your planet. … It’s not just a change you make for a month,” she said. “There were only a couple of us here, and we made a huge impact.”

As part of their challenge, Olive said the team worked with The University of Alabama to make changes that ranged from replacing plastic shakers with fans to starting an organic section at the Ferguson Center to putting recycling bins in residence halls.

“It was crazy to see the fruits of our labor,” she said of the recycling bins now in Ridgecrest residence halls. “When I saw [the fans in the lower bowl at the Homecoming game], I freaked out.”

Closer to home, Olive said she has seen the impact of things as simple as water bottles.

“I come from a family of six, so we get bulk everything,” she said. “Every day in the trash can there’d be six water bottles.”

During last year’s fall break, Olive convinced her family to switch to reusable water bottles.

She is still using the prizes she won last year, and some of the lifestyle changes that developed from the challenge dealt with simple steps like eating healthier and staying hydrated.

“I still eat pizza, [and] Zaxby’s is still my happy place,” she said. “It just helps you live a healthier lifestyle on your own.”