Thursday, February 26, 2009

Recycling - Being Kind to Mother Earth

Over the Christmas holiday, I went "home" to visit my family. I am the black sheep and am the only one who lives outside the "hour drive circle" the rest of my family is in. They all have children and busy family lives; football practice, band, after school activities, things like that. Busy, busy, busy my family is. Me on the other hand, I was never blessed (or cursed :-) ) with children. My children are fuzzy.

But back to the topic. Recycling. It is a very conscious effort on one's part to help the Earth by recycling. My youngest sister, who has three kids, ages 14, 8 & 2, is my model for my recycling efforts. With all she has to do, she still finds the time to separate items into different containers. Watching her the week I spent with them got me to thinking why I couldn't implement the same routine in my own home. I use paper, cardboard, aluminum and steel cans; why not separate them and take them to the firehouse where the county recycle center is for our town?

Since the beginning of the year when I started my own recycling efforts at home, I have reduced the "trash" going out of the house by over half. I find myself looking at just about everything to see if it has a recycle number on it, separating glass and cans. I even bought reusable bags at the grocery store. I'm so proud of myself. But I should have been doing this a long time ago!! Our Earth has been in jeopardy for a long time now. I was reminded of that this weekend by a DVD I bought my boyfriend for his birthday.

I don't know who may remember the Saturday morning cartoons of "Schoolhouse Rock"? I loved those cartoons! So did my boyfriend. Well, I found them on DVD and we watched it this weekend. Remember the one with the Earth singing about recycling? That was almost 40 years ago. And the hippies of the 60's? They knew what they were talking about, but people just didn't want to listen because of their lifestyle. They recycled and organic gardened.

Now, Earth friendly just seems to be a new way for someone to make a buck. What I mean by that is, because it's popular and the trendy thing to do, you have to pay alot more for products. I'm am confused as to why that is. I saw a commercial on TV for "earth friendly" cleaning products from a major chemical corporation. You could order all three for just $18.99. By the time you add S&H, you would be paying over $8.00 a bottle for Earth friendly cleaning products. I don't know about the rest of the world, but here in my little corner, money is kind of tight. I'm not saying the Earth is not worth helping, I just disagree pockets should be lined to do it.

The same goes for organic vegetables. By reading up on definitions of organic gardening, basically it means growing without the means of artificial additives. Simple enough. so why it it so expensive to purchase organic food?? If you don't use all the extra additives, doesn't it mean the cost would be less to grow? Most certifications allow some chemicals and pesticides to be used, so they can't say the bugs are eating their crop.

Well, I digress. Point here is I am proud of myself for my effort in recycling in my little corner of the world. Should have been doing it sooner, but better late than never. And it has given me a feeling of accomplishment.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009


This is a photo I took the other day. The whole sky looked like this. I used the tree as a reference point.
I call it "NOT A CLOUD IN THE SKY - WINTER"