It is amazing what happens when you just commit to doing something. It is a lesson that I am learning time and again since starting Penny Experiment on the spur of the moment and without a lot of thought on how I would do it. When you commit to doing something, you stop thinking about how you might do it and start trying anything and everything to actually accomplish it. Being an introvert, this has been a double challenge for me forcing me to get out and do more things that I would normally do on my own. This is a good thing.
One of the goals I recently set for the next year was to find a way to get 250 eco friendly shopping bags for a local food bank that wants to ween the people that come and get food off of plastic bags and be more environmentally friendly. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to accomplish this and it was one of the goals I have had the most anxiety thinking about since I had no real plan on how I would be able to accomplish it. I took a huge step in the right direction this weekend while attending BlogHer Food 2010.
One of the vendors at the event was Nature’s Path Organic Foods. Anyone that followed my eating well on $1 a day for 100 day challenge knows that when it comes to peanut butter, I have a soft spot that will make me do things that I wouldn’t normally consider doing to get hold of it. As casually I possibly could (unfortunately, it was pretty damn obvious considering I was one of only a handful of men at the event), I stopped by their booth time and again to “sample” their Peanut Choco chewy granola bars (we won’t even go into how addicted I am to these now). In addition to all the food samples they were giving away, they also were handing out eco friendly shopping bags to attendees.
As the end of the conference approached, I got up the courage to explain about Penny Experiment and that one of my goals this year is to provide 250 eco friendly bags for a local food bank (since I now felt that we had become friends due to my many visits to their vendor table). Before I even finished explaining, Nature’s Path handed me 100 of their eco friendly bags without a hint of hesitation (and huge smiles on their faces wishing me luck with Penny Experiment)
The staff of BlogHer also rock (as a side note, if you are a female blogger — or male for that matter — this organization will provide you with so much help and support that I can’t recommend joining them enough). When I explained to them about my need for the eco bags, they happily donated all the unclaimed bags for the conference attendees as well. In the end, I was able to gather 121 eco friendly bags for Milpitas food bank which means I have already come close to half the goal I set.
I can’t thank both these organizations enough for their willingness to help. I still have 129 eco bags to find to reach my goal and although I have a few ideas, I would love to hear any ideas from readers on how they would go about securing more free eco bags.
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