CSU Earth Month Eco-Challenge

Earth Month Ecochallenge: Drawdown is a solutions-oriented engagement program focused on individuals taking action to reduce greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. The actions in this Ecochallenge connect to global solutions highlighted by Project Drawdown, a research-based organization that is leading the efforts to map, measure, model, and describe existing, amazing solutions to climate change.

Earth Month Ecochallenge is an engagement opportunity for sustainability leaders across business and education institutions to create teams, assign custom actions for team members to take, engage with their team throughout the Ecochallenge, and lead their team to create substantial positive impact. Every team member, including the captain, can select actions, check off their completed actions, track and share their individual progress, earn points for taking action, and see the real-time impact of their actions in a robust online platform. The combination of collective action, camaraderie, and friendly competition makes change a little easier — and a lot more fun.

Earth Month Ecochallenge provides tools and inspiration to turn intention into action, and gives participants a fun and social way to think about and act on proven solutions to reverse climate change. Over 100 actions within eight challenge categories provide participants with diverse options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Project Drawdown is a broad coalition of researchers, scientists, graduate students, PhDs, post-docs, policy makers, business leaders, and activists who have come together to map, measure, and model the best available solutions that can cumulatively reverse global warming within the next 30 years. Click here to explore all the solutions. 

There are two ways to join the CSU Long Beach team: (1) By clicking on the direct referral link or (2) By following the instructions below. 

1. Go to  https://events.ecochallenge.org/users/join
2. Log into EcoChallenge account using your CSU email address (i.e. earthy@student.csulb.edu). If it's your first time visiting Eco Challenge, you will create your account here.  
3. Click on ”ENTER” for the EARTH MONTH ECOCHALLENGE: DRAWDOWN
4. Click on the “JOIN” tab in the top right corner.
5. Click on “JOIN AN EXISTING TEAM” to search for your team by name
6. Type “CSU Long Beach” into the search bar
7. Click "JOIN" and start earning points for your team!

Spread awareness to your friends and classmates by inviting them to join the CSU Long Beach team!

1. Click on the “people” tab in the right corner of the challenge home screen and then click on “participants.”
2. Scroll down until you see “Invite Teammates” on the left sidebar.
3. Now you can copy your referral link or use the direct messaging box.

There are many ways to earn points for your team throughout this challenge.

1. On your dashboard, click on “manage actions” on the left sidebar.
2. From here you can browse the categories you want to participate in. Each category has multiple actions you can take to earn points.
3. You can filter the options to adjust the difficulty and frequency by hitting "show/hide action filters".
4. To learn more about the action solution, select "learn more"
5. To select a daily or one-time action that you plan to do for the challenge click “select”. Then fill out the estimated amount you will contribute. For example, if you are completing the “reduce animal products’ action, fill in the estimated number of vegan, or meatless, meals you will eat each day of the challenge. 
6. If you have already completed an action or already do it daily, hit “I already did/do this." 
7. All of your selected and completed actions will show up on your dashboard. For one-time actions you only need to mark them as complete once, for daily actions you will need to come back to your dashboard to mark them as complete daily.
8. To gain bonus points, you can complete a reflection question about the action you completed by selecting "reflection question" at the bottom of the action card.

In short, no you do not have to “verify” or provide “evidence” of your action. Some selected actions will ask for a specific amount you are contributing. For example if you selected that you would drive less today, then it would ask for how many miles you are choosing not to drive. It is fine to give a rough estimate for this answer.

No they are not, but they do give you extra points if you complete them!

You can access your team's progress through a button on the left hand side bar. There you can see a section labeled “total team points”. Once clicked on the “total team points section”, there you will have access to all the teams progress.

Registration remains open until the end date of the challenge (April 30).

Yes, the maximum number of actions participants can select during Drawdown Ecochallenge is 20: 15 One-time Actions and 5 Daily Actions. Behavior change best practices show that focusing on a smaller number of behaviors during a challenge period increases that chances that these behaviors will stick in the long term.

Make sure you plan ahead to be prepared to meet your goals. Setting realistic goals (i.e., selecting a realistic number of actions), and sharing your experience with others through the social feed are great ways to stay engaged and motivated. Also, be sure to check out the team and event impact pages to see how your efforts are contributing to significant collective impact. Finally, it's okay if you do not meet your own expectations – there’s no such thing as a “perfect” score in the event. Ecochallenge is provided to help you learn about and change behaviors you’re interested in – not to judge the quality of your efforts. Have fun!

If you’ve successfully registered for the event, and are having trouble, first make sure you’re using the correct email address to log in. If you’re using the correct email address and are unable to gain access, next try resetting your password. If after following those steps you’re still unable to login, please contact Ecochallenge Support.