Earth Day!

I think I have always been an enviromentalist at heart. This is a picture of me about 12 years old - I made the poster collage behind me. I had joined an eco-club and since we lived in Germany at the time, our family was really big into recycling (german law).


Since yesterday was earth day, and wednesdays are our family home evening days, we taught Thomas about how Heavenly Father and Jesus made this beautiful world for us.


I just wanted to blog about the things that I do to be earth friendly:
*we recycle - I have to haul it to a recycle bin in the center of town, but that doesn't bother me at all. We have one bin for cardboard, one for papers (magazines, junk mail, newspapers, etc.) and then we can also recycle plastic. I am amazed at how much packaging we can send to be recycled instead of it ending up in the landfill.
*we use rechargable batteries whenever possible
*and we have a bin that we toss dead batteries into, so they don't end up in the trash - and then we take that to radio shack where they send them off to be disposed of properly

*I use lots of containers again - like the picture above - I like to alter things scrapbooky style, to make them into gifts and stuff. And when we were going thru a huge container of yogurt a week, I used those plastic containers to sort Thomas's toys, and crayons, etc.
*we are switching our lightbulbs to the new cfl bulbs
*we started using cloth napkins instead of paper towels or napkins - at first Tyson and I were a little bit skeptical (I got the tip from mommysavers.com - so it was more about being frugal than about saving trees or whatever) - but we love it.

and I have to add that I was impressed a few months ago when I went to the store to pick up some laundry detergent, and at first I thought they didn't have the size I wanted, but when I looked more closely, I was stunned to see that the smaller container had enough to wash the same loads (32).



someone shared this info on a message board - I thought it was interesting and informative, so I wanted to share it here too:
If you are interested in how long it takes the items we toss into our landfills to decompose, I found the following illuminating. Read on:

Paper ………………. 2 to 5 months

Orange peels ………… 6 months

Milk cartons ………… 5 years

Filter-tip cigarettes … 10 to 12 years

Plastic bags ………… 10 to 20 years

Leather shoes ……….. 24 to 40 years

Plastic containers …… 50 to 80 years

Disposable diapers …… 75 years

Tin cans ……………. 100 years

Aluminum cans ……….. 200 to 500 years

Styrofoam …………… Never


next year will be the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day
http://www.earthday.net/earthday2010
Goals for next year:
I am thinking about composting, the house we will be building will have all energy star appliances, and we plan to plant a garden. And I am also thinking about getting those reusable grocery bags. since I recycle bags, i can't decide if it's worth it or not yet.