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Bottled water is my nemesis. I avoid it unless I’m in a 3rd world country or camping without access to clean water. Thus I was discouraged to attend a recent non-profit dinner that only had bottled water. I decided to put water from the water fountain in the Styrofoam cup meant for coffee. I then complained to the person sitting next to me about the bottled water. My friend gently pointed out that Styrofoam is not recyclable at all while the plastic bottles were. She was right and I felt duly humbled but not satisfied.
I decided to talk with one of the organizers and offer to bring several pitchers for water the next week and fill them up at the site. As a bonus I brought recyclable cups. The effort this took was minimal since I already had the supplies at home. Mostly I had to remember to do it and put a towel around the pitchers so they wouldn’t break. SUCCESS! I then took the plastic cups home and washed them in the dishwasher. It’s a small thing and won’t make a big dent in global warming, but I hope that the consciousness raising will multiply my efforts. Now I just have to work on not being too proud or self-congratulatory. So, remember the lesson, but forget that it started with me. 😕
Ho Hum: The rest of the week was pretty boring as far as creating waste. I think we created a little less waste at home by looking at my red capped jar, but maybe I’m just getting better at arranging my waste. As I did the dirty, messy work of checking through our garbage to make sure Jim had not put anything in that could really be recycled or terracycled, I thought of you all. I thought of how I’m picking through garbage and measuring it so you don’t have to. If I wasn’t blogging on this and taking photos I would just put it in the outside trash can and forget about it. The result would be the same. Bottom line, this is mostly about raising my awareness and learning recycling habits for the future. So, learn from my experience.
Who is winning? As I look around our neighborhood and remember our days of active parenting my pride in reducing our waste is balanced by realizing that there’s only two of us. It would be a lot harder if we still had children at home. I did, however, notice that someone in our household had put several pieces of facial tissue in the garbage. It squishes down pretty small but still…I’ve switched to a handkerchief!
