Mom Goes Green

Saturday is “America Recycles Day”… a day that ‘encourages more people to join the movement toward creating a better natural environment by recycling and buying recycled products’ and ‘promotes the social, environmental and economic benefits of recycling.’

A very worthwhile cause, I’d say!

As the Recycling/Environmental Programs Chair at our daughter’s school I’m promoting this great day by encouraging the kids to submit their best recycling tips and the favorite ways their families recycle.   I’m going to compile all of their great ideas and turn it into a recycling newsletter that will be sent home to each family.  Some will even win cool prizes, like a recycled pencil bag from Terracycle! The response has been overwhelming!  It’s so exciting to see their enthusiasm.  Kids rule!

So, to get back to the basics of this day… let’s remember WHY we recycle:

• to reduce pollution
• to save energy
• to help the environment
• to save natural resources
• to keep trash out of landfills

And here are some things to think about …

1. PLASTIC– it can take 20 years for a plastic bag to biodegrade and 250 years for a plastic cup!  And if every American household recycled just one of every 10 plastic bottles, it would keep 200 million pounds of plastic out of landfills each year!
2. PAPER – it accounts for HALF of what is sent to landfills… and it’s recyclable! Plus, recycling one ton of paper would save enough energy to power an average American home for five months!
3. ALUMINUM – recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a computer for 3 hours.  Last year cans that were NOT recycled and went to landfills were valued at $600 million! (let me go get my shovel and start digging!)
4. GLASS – a bottle in a landfill would take more than 4000 years to decompose, but glass never “wears out” and can be recycled forever!

Sadly, 75% of “trash” is recyclable, but only 25% actually gets recycled.

So get recycling, increase your recycling, start someone you know recycling… just get to it!… because “America Recycles” and that’s a club all of us should want to belong to!

I rarely (and I do mean rarely) ever take medications, pain relievers, antibiotics or anything FOR anything. That’s just me, but that’s not everyone.

I love my in-laws dearly, but they literally have a ‘lazy-susan’ of medications in a huge cupboard.  Some are undoubtedly necessary, but I guarantee that many are expired and of no use to anyone.  The problem with this is what many people typically do with their expired or unused medications.

Ahh, the flush-factor.  Bad habit.

Many people just dump them in the toilet and flush them.  While this may seem to be a likely option (over throwing them in the trash and having them found by animals or [shudder] children, or sending them to trash dumps and having them absorb into the ground) they’re creating another danger.  They’re being found in our tap water, in increasing amounts, because most water treatment plants are unable to filter them out.  Tests are turning up antibiotics, birth control hormones, anti-depressants and all kinds of nasty stuff.

Add to the problem - there aren’t a lot of options just yet.  I’ve heard about grinding them up, putting them in coffee grounds or kitty litter in a sealed container and putting them in the trash, but that just adds trash in non-biodegradable containers to landfills!

So, let me make a few recommendations:

• Contact your local pharmacy.  More and more of them are accepting old and unused medications and properly disposing of them. I’d like to see more of them step up too.
• Check Earth 911. Enter “unused medications” in their “Start recycling” search.
• Consider a donation of unused and unexpired meds to The Starfish Project.  They will go to help HIV-positive individuals in Nigeria.  They accept a variety of antibiotics, antivirals, and tons of non-ARV medications, and pay your shipping costs too.

I guess we just need to consider whatever we can do to keep them out of rivers, lakes and our water supply.  They’ll find their way “back to us”… in our foods, drinking water, etc.

I doubt Mr. Fish and Mrs. Duck need our old birth control… I know our kids don’t!

At the end of a “crazy, busy kid” weekend, we all settled in for some mindless TV viewing before bedtime.  America’s Funniest Videos was on (yes, we all love it… especially when people fall down… how mean of us!) so I paused it and we went to take baths and get jammies on.  Needless to say, when we returned, I accidentally hit the wrong button, changed the channel and POOF!  AFV was gone…

My kids were not amused.  So I searched around for another option and found the “Planet Earth” series re-running on The Discovery Channel.  I was suddenly happy I made that button mistake.

The kid’s were immediately ‘into it’, because we had seen parts of the series when they originally broadcast.  We were watching the one about the oceans and then it switched to caves, but our kids were silent and never protested even a second.  They sat wide-eyed and watched, in amazement, all the breathtaking views of this incredible world we live in.

If you haven’t heard about it, the series was five years in the making (talk about dedication!).  For the first time, we get to take a look at all of the things you can’t see outside of your door and travel won’t even allow a glimpse of.  You can venture deep to the ocean floor, through underground rivers and the darkest caves and explore untamed jungles and forests.  You truly won’t believe what you’ll see.

It gave me a reminder of why we’re doing what we’re doing.  Why we are working so hard to preserve this AMAZING planet we live on.  Why we’re not the only “thing” to consider.  It really rejuvenated me to work harder and continue my journey to do all I can do to see that we aren’t part of the destruction of the planet, by giving us views of the beauty of it all.

If you haven’t seen it, please do.  I’m sure it will have the same effect on you and your family.  Read about the series at The Discovery Channel or buy your own copy, so you can be reminded again and again.

As I was tucking our daughter into bed she said “Mommy, it’s okay that you changed the channel.  I know it was an accident, but really… Planet Earth was way better anyhow.”  (* insert huge, proud smile here! *)

So, you may remember my frustration with “My neighbor – the tree hater!”  (She chopped down a dozen healthy, beautiful trees in her backyard!) Well, this weekend the saga continued.

I was snuggled up with our daughter (who had planted herself in the middle of our bed) in the early morning, enjoying “snooze-land”,  and my eyes nearly popped out of my head at the sound of blaring chainsaws.

I could not believe my ears.  First of all, it was way too early for chainsaws.  Secondly, I thought “how could she find more trees to kill…they’re all GONE!”

Lo and behold, it was my OTHER neighbor, on the other side!  Has everyone in my neighborhood lost their marbles?  They were taking down two trees and I truly can’t imagine why, except that they were squarely in the middle of a section of yard…and they probably had a selfish reason I don’t want to know about.

Our kids were mortified.  At first they wanted to go over there themselves and tell them to stop, “because cutting down trees is mean to the earth.”  When I told them they absolutely weren’t going over there, they demanded that I go!  When I tried to explain that it’s their yard and I can’t tell them what to do, they actually seemed disappointed in me!  As bothersome as that was, it actually made me proud of them for being so passionate.

If nothing else, it gave us the opportunity to discuss how important trees are – for providing oxygen and shade, improving air quality, conserving water, preserving soil and supporting wildlife (as both food and habitat) and so much more.

This additional ‘loss of nature’ has me wanting to plant trees!  Better yet, for our next gift-giving occasion, let’s all give someone a tree.  Seriously.  The National Arbor Day Foundation has made it very simple.  It’s their “Give-A-Tree” project and it helps to replant our national forests for a very small donation.  They even give you a nice little card, that explains the project, to give to the recipient.

Oh no.  I just realized I need to buy 14 of them…

Have you ever watched a movie that felt so real, it kind of left you feeling dizzy when it was all over?

Well, we just watched a movie that left me feeling like I was in a tornado… and the worst part?  — it was real.

The movie is called “The 11th Hour.”  It’s all about global warming, sustainability and the environment, and it spews out some serious, hardcore facts that come from scientists, environmentalists and all kinds of big-brained people.

Truth be told, it disturbed me because it really laid out how critical the climate crisis has become.  I almost didn’t want to watch because it felt so out-of-control and upsetting (because there’s only so much I can personally do to change things).

One of the things that really hit me was the realization that people rally around the fact that they want to “Save the Earth” when in reality, it’s not about saving the earth…it’s about saving ourselves.  The earth will survive…WE are the ones in jeopardy.  If we turn our planet into a place that’s uninhabitable, we’re simply risking our own existence.  Sheesh. That gave me chills all over again.

As one expert pointed out -  99.9999% of life that has existed on earth has become extinct.  It really IS a frightening prospect.  And pretty profound when you think about it that way.  I wish I could talk to everyone who thinks global warming is a hoax and beg them to open their minds.

The bright side is that they didn’t conclude without offering hope.  And we all need hope, or it would be pretty depressing.

I don’t have a witty conclusion for this post, but I think this film said it all… “the hope is you.”

(there are great resources for ideas and solutions at: 11thhouraction.com)

I’m back up and running.  We have power, phone, our safety and our home — something that many, in the wake of Hurricane Ike, cannot say.

Our utility company said we peaked at over a million customers without power and we’re now down to about a quarter of a million… and some, whose power will not be restored until sometime Sunday…eek.

I’ve been seeing the aftermath and hearing chainsaws all day but, again, we have our safety and our home to be grateful for.

…sending all the best to those who can’t say the same…. wish I could hug you…

I suppose I should have been saying this Sunday afternoon BEFORE the remnants of Hurricane Ike decided to take his hike through Northeastern Ohio, mix with a cold front entering from the west and stir up 70 mph winds that toppled trees, ripped down powerlines and left us WITHOUT power or phone.  Yippee!  Thanks, Ike!

It’s not fun around here.  They say it will likely be FRIDAY before everything is restored.  FABULOUS!  But at least we’re not in Galveston… 

That’s where many of our power crews have gone to assist in restoring their power first.

Right now, I am away from home, on borrowed power, with a borrowed connection and I am, unfortunately, on hiatus until everything is restored.

It’s the power and force of Mother Nature.  Don’t suppose it has anything to do with global warming, do you?  Hmmmm…..

If you knew my father-in-law you might think this is a comment he is making about my mother-in-law, but alas, it is not! (And after 49 years, I suppose he doesn’t mind the hot air all that much!)

But I’m having the strangest little obsession with public restrooms and the unimaginable amount of paper towel waste that gets generated in a single day.  Don’t get me wrong…I’m not lying awake at night thinking about it, but for the longest time I’ve felt that while I’m recycling my tiny cream cheese box, all around the country there are public restrooms that essentially “allow” people to use four feet of paper to dry their hands.

One of the greatest things I’ve seen recently is an EXTREMELY high powered hand dryer that dries your hands in about 7-10 seconds flat…poof, you’re done… then it shuts off immediately. (Warning: they also nearly blow the flesh off of your hands and it almost shot our son across the room, but they’re great!) Problem is, you don’t see them often and far too many public restrooms haven’t even moved away from paper towels.

The thing I struggle with is the germ-factor.  When you walk away with damp hands, it’s a place for even minimal germs to hang around.  Paper towels help you dry better, right?  Plus, that door handle-factor…even our kids will occasionally yell out, “I got it, Mommy!” and use the paper towel to pull the door open.  Then I prop my foot by the door and they run back to throw it in the trash.

When I was thinking about alternatives, I discovered that in many Asian countries, you aren’t provided either choice.  You carry a small towel or handkerchief for hand drying!  I think that’s pretty cool, but how neurotic would I look doing THAT around here?

Given the choice, I wish more public restrooms would use hand dryers.  They are the far better choice for the environment…just a lot of hot air!  And despite the energy usage, that doesn’t compare to the extreme paper waste of dispensers.

On second thought, the back of my kids’ shirts will do…never mind.

Today, like so many of you, I had an errand to run.  It was a 5 minute trip into the drugstore for a couple items and (perish the thought!) I DIDN’T take my reusable bags in with me.

Before you start booing me, it was simply because I was buying a few small items and I knew I could just carry them out by hand.  Simple as that, right?  Well, not so quickly.

As the cashier started scanning my items, I got distracted by my ringing cell phone and didn’t get to tell her “no bag, please.”  When I came back to earth, I realized that she had put everything in a plastic bag that she placed on the counter top.  When I said “oh, I’m sorry.  A bag isn’t necessary.  I can carry them out”  she took them out of the bag, handed them to me and (deep breath)…threw the bag in the trash.  I…was…amazed.

I quickly told her that she didn’t need to throw it away and her rebuttal was that it was already “used” and too hard to put back on the rack.  In an instant my whole purpose was defeated.  The bag I chose NOT to take was sitting in the trash can.

So, I asked her for the bag. She looked at me blankly, handed me the bag and, I’m fairly certain, she thought I was insane.

At least I knew I could take the bag to be recycled.  But what a waste.  It all goes back to my frustration with lack of store policy and training that teaches cashiers to be responsible. And for the love of Mother Earth, I nearly pass out when I see someone double- or tripled-bagging with plastic!

No matter how many glares and stares I get from cashiers, I won’t be responsible for helping to create plastic bag trash.  Just look at what it creates.  These are sad visuals I hope no one forgets the next time they have that choice.

As we celebrate Labor Day (by doing little to no labor, hopefully!) I’m asking Mother Nature to go easy on New Orleans and all of the gulf coast regions in the path of Hurricane Gustav.

And please send Tropical Storm Hanna out to sea.  They’ve had enough.

Stay safe, everyone…please, stay safe.