Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Happy Day, Earth!

It's Earth Day today! In honor of the day, I am motivated to make an environmentally-friendly change in my life. I already recycle and use a happy canvas bag for my lunch everyday, and I use the squiggly happy lights for my light bulbs ... so I'm looking for something else.
•I can supposedly help stop junk mail (which takes up probably 50% of the stuff I recycle, by the way) by writing to some place in New York, so I'll definitely be doing that.
•I have a crazy amount of plastic bags at home, and there are places to recycle them at work, so I'll bring them in.
•I wonder if I can covertly start a compost pile at my condo.... Probably not. But that would be fun! And I bet others would be interested. Or I'd just be the crazy lady who brings it up at all of the meetings.
Any other ideas for Earth Day fun?

4 comments:

  1. Hey ... check this out:

    http://naturemill.com/

    You can compost right in your kitchen!

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  2. Two things: yes, you can compost in your kitchen but composting creates methane gas and that has to escape at some point and it will need to go outside at a certain stage of decomposition. I.E. you would still have to have an outside compost. My suggestion for you is that you have your parents start an outdoor one for your dad's garden and you (and your sister if she chose) could get kitchen top compost pails and periodically add to your parents composting. That would significantly increase the amount of compost you are creating as a family. Also, your parents will love that it is a family project.

    Secondly, I heard a story today about the pro's and con's of stopping junk mail. You can still recycle junk mail instead of tossing it away and that would allow the poor postal workers to keep their jobs. And the poor graphic designers and printers and paper plants ... see where I am going with this? Our economy has enough problems. Don't try to take down the print industry any faster than it already is dying. Just recycle your junk mail.

    I lied. Three things. Fresh idea: You can put your electrical outlets on timers or power strips and turn them off when you leave during the day (except like, your fridge). I read something that said that appliances that are off, but still plugged in can use something like 30-40% of the energy they use when they are actually on. So, that would be good to eliminate and would help your electric bill!

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  3. So today I go to our trash compactor in my apartment complex and their is a SMALL mail bin that says and I quote "Happy Earth Day! Place all recyclables here." UM....So we only recycle the week of Earth Day?! WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR SOCIETY?! Also a SMALL mail bin will not do the trick.

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  4. That's a good idea - I bet my dad will be all weirded out by the compost idea until he sees what it does for his garden. Jennie - maybe they're trying to start recycling. Fill that sucker up, and they'll see there's a need!

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