Some people stop and pull to the side of the road to rescue stray puppies and kittens. Me? I stop for stray empty cans of Starbucks Double-Espresso energy drinks sitting on the side of the road. Or, at least that’s what I did today. (And yes, of course I would have stopped for a puppy or kitten. Ask my husband. I have done so before.)
I may have gone over the edge.
However, I have some interesting news. Okay, so maybe it’s not interesting to anyone else, and maybe you’ll read this and wonder, “Why am I wasting my time with this? And why is she?” But I am excited because this week, on Friday, I will have four recycle bins out at the Monrovia Family Festival. And these are approved bins, not like I threw out some renegade illegal recycling bins to steal all your cans. These are bins that have officially been allowed by the company that runs the festival. I don’t know why, besides the hopeful large masses of rescued bottles and cans, this makes me so happy. Except for one thing—I actually got off my butt and made a phone call. And it was easy. And all I had to say was, “I’m doing a recycling project. Can I put out some bins next Friday?” It’s not so hard to ask for help. It’s not so hard to get over that mountain of procrastination. It was just one phone call—or actually, a message left and a phone call received. But, all I have to do now is put out the bins and collect them on Friday. And that’s easy. And I’ll probably still be there fishing out cans from the trash bins. (I don’t know why people can’t walk the 10 feet to the recycling bin, but that’s just me complaining again.) But thank you in advance, Monrovia, for recycling and helping me save 5,000,000 cans.
Grand total: 2957
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Busy Bee Apology
Okay, so two things. One, my last article was a bit preachy. But it gets me angry when people just refuse to recycle. Very irksome. Even more so when they have an easy way to do it. It’s so easy! Really! (But I must stop myself before I get going again.)
And two, I have been absent for too long. Since my last rant, um, I mean message, I have recycled another 102 cans and have bags and bags sitting outside my back door. Also, I got a chance to attend Lilith Fair in Irvine. I never had the opportunity to visit the first Lilith Fairs in the ‘90s, so I really wanted to go to this one. While there, I saw the Reverb table. Reverb is a company that helps “green” music tours and festivals. I first heard of them when reading about the Barenaked Ladies Cruises. They did enough carbon offsets and recycling that the cruise didn’t actually have as much of an impact on the ecosystem. (Not sure how that works, exactly, but every little bit helps, right?)
But Reverb was asking people to make a pledge, so I made mine.
I actually made two – one, with my friends to “Reduce, Recycle and Reuse”
and the second, to “Work Towards a Sustainable Future.” I figured I was already doing these, so I might as well pledge it officially somewhere.
Other things I was able to do this week, I threw a baby shower for my best friend and since times are tight, instead of doing lots of flowers for the baby shower, I asked my neighbor if I could have some of the lemons off her tree. She says she had too many to use anyway, so we filled some old vases with lemons and tied them with pink streamer. How’s that for reusing? And we decorated with some old pics of the mom and dad to be as babies. More reusing—thanks for the old pics, grandparents to be.
And my husband found something else of interest—our trash service, Athens Services, offers an extra 90 gallon recycling bin free of charge! So, we asked them to deliver another one so I can recycle the shredded paper from my husband’s office and hopefully, whenever I get a job, I can recycle anything from there too (if they don’t recycle already). I also offer to recycle for anyone else who doesn’t have access. If you have Athens Services, call 888-336-6100 and they’ll bring you a free recycling bin. All you have to do is fill it with recyclable material!
I hope anyone reading can find a way to go even greener and keep on keepin’ on, as they say. Every day we get closer to our goal.
Grand can total: 2722.
Thank you to my brother, who is remembering to recycle and helping out his niece and nephew at the same time. (And thanks for the babysitting too, bro.)
And two, I have been absent for too long. Since my last rant, um, I mean message, I have recycled another 102 cans and have bags and bags sitting outside my back door. Also, I got a chance to attend Lilith Fair in Irvine. I never had the opportunity to visit the first Lilith Fairs in the ‘90s, so I really wanted to go to this one. While there, I saw the Reverb table. Reverb is a company that helps “green” music tours and festivals. I first heard of them when reading about the Barenaked Ladies Cruises. They did enough carbon offsets and recycling that the cruise didn’t actually have as much of an impact on the ecosystem. (Not sure how that works, exactly, but every little bit helps, right?)
But Reverb was asking people to make a pledge, so I made mine.
I actually made two – one, with my friends to “Reduce, Recycle and Reuse”
and the second, to “Work Towards a Sustainable Future.” I figured I was already doing these, so I might as well pledge it officially somewhere.
Other things I was able to do this week, I threw a baby shower for my best friend and since times are tight, instead of doing lots of flowers for the baby shower, I asked my neighbor if I could have some of the lemons off her tree. She says she had too many to use anyway, so we filled some old vases with lemons and tied them with pink streamer. How’s that for reusing? And we decorated with some old pics of the mom and dad to be as babies. More reusing—thanks for the old pics, grandparents to be.
And my husband found something else of interest—our trash service, Athens Services, offers an extra 90 gallon recycling bin free of charge! So, we asked them to deliver another one so I can recycle the shredded paper from my husband’s office and hopefully, whenever I get a job, I can recycle anything from there too (if they don’t recycle already). I also offer to recycle for anyone else who doesn’t have access. If you have Athens Services, call 888-336-6100 and they’ll bring you a free recycling bin. All you have to do is fill it with recyclable material!
I hope anyone reading can find a way to go even greener and keep on keepin’ on, as they say. Every day we get closer to our goal.
Grand can total: 2722.
Thank you to my brother, who is remembering to recycle and helping out his niece and nephew at the same time. (And thanks for the babysitting too, bro.)
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Recycling is a Pain in the Butt
But everyone should still do it. To not recycle in this day and age is plain lazy, especially in a metropolis area like Los Angeles. Now, I hate to be preachy (too late) but one of my friends “back home” had to drive out her every day trash to the dump herself. Luckily, most of us have trash pick-up. Many of us even have curbside recycling. I use both, although we try to make it a priority to make sure the recycling bin has more in it than the garbage bin. Now, you don’t have to make the extra step to return your recycling for cash. As my brother says, it hardly seems worth it. And in other states, you may not get anything.
That being said, not being wasteful is a duty for us all. A duty. Now, I don’t care if you have enough money to buy a million cans and toss ‘em with out a second thought. I don’t care if you don’t have enough money to have a recycling pick-up at your building. There is always a way to recycle, and it probably isn’t that difficult. Someone said to me the other day, “Well, we don’t get many cans and bottles.” One quick glance into their trash can, and I saw two Gatorade bottles. I don’t know what I would have found if I had peeked into their other cans, maybe nothing, maybe a half dozen water bottles. But I feel that it’s a shame for anyone to toss a can into a landfill. Yeah, what’s one bottle? What’s one can? Well, so far, one bottle or can at a time, I have now collected 2620 cans, worth $131.00. And I don’t go out of my way to spend all day looking for bottles. I don’t stop the car on the freeway to clean up cans on the side of the road. I accept my friends’ cans, some from my family, and pick up after 4th of July or concerts that I attend. One bottle at a time, I’ll pay for my kids’ college. And other people are throwing it away.
Please, teach your family and kids to not be wasteful. Teach ‘em to recycle.
That being said, not being wasteful is a duty for us all. A duty. Now, I don’t care if you have enough money to buy a million cans and toss ‘em with out a second thought. I don’t care if you don’t have enough money to have a recycling pick-up at your building. There is always a way to recycle, and it probably isn’t that difficult. Someone said to me the other day, “Well, we don’t get many cans and bottles.” One quick glance into their trash can, and I saw two Gatorade bottles. I don’t know what I would have found if I had peeked into their other cans, maybe nothing, maybe a half dozen water bottles. But I feel that it’s a shame for anyone to toss a can into a landfill. Yeah, what’s one bottle? What’s one can? Well, so far, one bottle or can at a time, I have now collected 2620 cans, worth $131.00. And I don’t go out of my way to spend all day looking for bottles. I don’t stop the car on the freeway to clean up cans on the side of the road. I accept my friends’ cans, some from my family, and pick up after 4th of July or concerts that I attend. One bottle at a time, I’ll pay for my kids’ college. And other people are throwing it away.
Please, teach your family and kids to not be wasteful. Teach ‘em to recycle.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Happy IndeCANdance Day!
Happy IndeCANdance Day!
You know, I don’t want to say that my journey is anything like the huge journey that our forefathers took in getting to this country, leaving their homeland and defeating their former king, but I will honor those women and men who took that journey in saying this:
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Those people had to make the decision to start. They had to make the decision to pack up and get on the boat. They probably never imagined that 243 years later, not only would they have been successful in making their own country, but that that country would be one of the leading global superpowers (even if we’re in a bit of turmoil now.)
So, I made the decision to get five million cans. Now I need to stick with it until it’s a success. It’s as simple as that. This is a big journey for me because I have to teach myself that it’s okay to ask others for help. It’s okay to persuade others to start something beneficial to themselves, the Earth and, well, me. That’s going to be the biggest obstacle for me, because the rest is just getting cans and recycling them.
Hope everyone had a great 4th of July. I honor my relative, (Great x 9 Grandfather or Uncle), Captain John Stacey, who fought in the Revolutionary War. I gotta say, we have it good compared to them and thanks to them.
I want to thank all those who donated cans and bottles—Study Circle Preschool, my Grandma Joy-- and to remind the people who left cans and bottles in the trash cans around Library Park this past Sunday that nothing disappears. There are things we remember forever and there are other more physical things that never disappear.
This week:198 cans and bottles for a total of $9.90
Grand total: 2462 and $123.10
You know, I don’t want to say that my journey is anything like the huge journey that our forefathers took in getting to this country, leaving their homeland and defeating their former king, but I will honor those women and men who took that journey in saying this:
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Those people had to make the decision to start. They had to make the decision to pack up and get on the boat. They probably never imagined that 243 years later, not only would they have been successful in making their own country, but that that country would be one of the leading global superpowers (even if we’re in a bit of turmoil now.)
So, I made the decision to get five million cans. Now I need to stick with it until it’s a success. It’s as simple as that. This is a big journey for me because I have to teach myself that it’s okay to ask others for help. It’s okay to persuade others to start something beneficial to themselves, the Earth and, well, me. That’s going to be the biggest obstacle for me, because the rest is just getting cans and recycling them.
Hope everyone had a great 4th of July. I honor my relative, (Great x 9 Grandfather or Uncle), Captain John Stacey, who fought in the Revolutionary War. I gotta say, we have it good compared to them and thanks to them.
I want to thank all those who donated cans and bottles—Study Circle Preschool, my Grandma Joy-- and to remind the people who left cans and bottles in the trash cans around Library Park this past Sunday that nothing disappears. There are things we remember forever and there are other more physical things that never disappear.
This week:198 cans and bottles for a total of $9.90
Grand total: 2462 and $123.10
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