tiny footprints

It's Earth Day. I love it. How brilliant to set up a day to celebrate something we continuously take for granted. It's a great way to wake up!

Today is the perfect string of moments in which to try out those good ideas we seldom leave time for. Myself included. What follows is not an attack; it's a note to self, and to anyone else who cares to read it. Some simple suggestions for how to carry today into our permanent routines:

1) Stop using useless bags. Do we really need a bag to carry out that one greeting card bought at Walgreens? How about those two gallons of milk? They come with handles! How about the stuff you managed to hold in your hands through the grocery store- can you get it out to your car in the same way? And if you're ready to step it up a notch: bring your own. Reusable bags are easy to find nowadays. Or, shoot, just reuse the ones you got from the grocery store last week. Difficult to remember? Make yourself buy one every time you forget- they are usually $0.99. That's just a $1 more on your bill.

Think about how a white plastic bag looks trapped against a barbed wire fence or up in a tree- torn, nasty, around for a long time. Then think about how one Walmart turns out THOUSANDS of those an hour. Yes, we are just saving one bag when we bring our own, but that's how it starts and that's what makes a difference. And people around us see it and we can start a trend! There is one grocery store here in Boulder that won't even give you a bag anymore- plastic OR paper. You either bring your own or use a recycled box they keep near the register. I love that store.

2) Stop drinking bottled water. It's usually not better than tap water, at least in this country. It's not regulated; it's not tested. Many times it's just tap water in plastic bottles; sometimes it's worse. One source for three bottled water companies in the US: a well sunk in an industrial area near a SUPERFUND site. That's nasty.
http://www.allaboutwater.org/bottled-water.html

And the bottles are nasty too. Ever wonder why there's an expiration date on your water? It's water! It's been around since Earth has been around- why would it expire? Chemical leaching from the bottles. Remember that Nalgene scare a couple of years ago, people worried about the plastics leaching BPA into the water? The same thing applies to the cheap plastics our bottled water is sold in. Some even think the phytoestrogens from these bottles are part of the cause for rising obesity rates. And after you're done drinking it, that bottle ends up in a landfill somewhere, or requires lots of energy to recycle. Or, as is increasingly the case, it ends up floating out in the ocean somewhere in a huge island of trash. Yuck.

http://www.physorg.com/news112248742.html
(about an 10 million TON island of trash in the Pacific TWICE the size of Texas; made of, you guessed it, 80% plastic)

If we want to make sure our water is purified, we can do it ourselves- it's cheaper and guaranteed. Filters for the sink are ever more affordable and put out hundreds of gallons. Even Walmart promotes them as a way to cut down on plastic use; you can get one there and skip the bag on the way out the door!

3) Drive less. I know not everyone lives in a place where biking is feasible or even safe. But I do think everyone, again myself included, can think twice about moving the car across the parking lot to go to the next store. Just use it less, in any way you can. And, unless you own a hybrid like Prius, that includes idling. It makes a difference!

4) Use less electricity in your house. Those energy saving bulbs last over 5 years! And now they come in all sorts of brightness levels and colors, including the softer yellow we are more used to. Use your blankets instead of the heat at night. Open the windows instead of running the AC. (I know, in Texas that's not always a comfortable thing to do- but how about when you're not home?) It'll save you money too! And a lot, a LOT of electricity nationwide.

5) Pay attention to your product buying. It's hard. I know it's hard and I don't do it enough. So many angles, things to pay attention to: the amount of packing, type of packing, chemicals and dangerous toxins inside of the products (especially electronics). In many ways, we just aren't given the options to make better choices. But in some ways we are. If we tune in just a little more, do a little more research (yay internet!) and even start writing companies to tell them what we really want (recyclable packing and less of it, safer electronic technology), we could really start a change. Everything we buy goes somewhere after we are done with it and all too often, that is the backyards of the poor: China, Africa, or in the case of nuclear waste, Slavic countries. The more we pay attention, speak up and vote with our wallets, the better this will get.

Okay, I will stop my treatise here. There's a lot more we could do: composting in our kitchens and backyards, buying local, recycling even and especially if it's not available door-to-door in our area. I am sure you can think of a lot too. Let's make today like New Years, but for resolutions having to do with Mother Earth. Every day is the chance to begin again.

Ready... set... go!