Garbage and our Dirty Earth

A friend pointed out this blog The Zero Waste Home To give you an idea of what she means by "Zero Waste" here's a list of what was in her garbage the week of December 18th to the 26th. A plastic cork, bones her dog couldn't eat, meat wrapper, lego packaging, cough drop wrappers, wax paper. She had a reason why all of these shouldn't be there. This was over Christmas. I'm amazed! She uses glass jars to store food, and brings them shopping with her to pick up her meat, cheese, bulk liquids, and she uses cloth bags for other bulk items. They literally have NO WASTE, it's insane. Her little ditty is "Refuse, reduce, reuse, then recycle as a last resort." She really puts things into perspective by pointing out that one plastic bag given to you seems harmless until you think about all the other people going through that store that day also given a plastic bag. That would be hundreds or thousands of bags a day depending on the size of the store. And then they are given out the next day too. And then the same people come back next week and get another bag. That starts adding up really quickly. IF those bags end up getting recycled they will only be recycled once, and it takes a lot of energy to get it made into something else.

Last week I was feeling pretty good about myself when I didn't have to put the garbage out, now I'm swallowing that pride. We put a regular size garbage bag on the curb every two weeks. We recycle a regular garbage size bag every two weeks too. So now that my eyes have been opened I will make a few changes. I have an old sheet that I'm going to sew into produce and bread bags. I'm never going to buy ziplocs again. Instead of using plastic wrap I'm leaving leftovers covered with a plate, which looks messy and horrible, and takes up extra room, but we have two fridges, lucky I know. I'm going to start composting again, I feel super wasteful not doing it in the winter, and it's really not any harder to do it in the winter, just need to take a little walk in the snow once a week. I feel like we've already made a lot of changes, but there is always more. I don't use paper towels or cleaning stuff, just Norwex cloths. We use cloth diapers 95% of the time (some lame "green" ones the other 5% of the time) I'm going to make cloth bags for wrapping gifts. I didn't send Christmas cards this year (because I'm a procrastinator not because I was thinking about the paper and transportation, I'm really reaching now)
Ok, so when I read stuff like this girls blog I can't just leave it at that. It's gets me thinking and I have to do more research. I had heard a rumor about a huge garbage dump in the middle of the ocean. I googeled it. It's true. Some say it's twice the size of Texas, others say it's twice the size of the States!

I saw a picture of a pelican skeleton that was FULL of plastic bottle caps and such. It was disturbing. But why does this all matter? Can't we just continue shopping at our grocery stores and throwing away our junk? I think the problem is because, YES, we CAN keep doing that! "We" have known about this dump and other HUGE environmental concerns for decades and have done little about it. We are so comfortable and don't feel the effects of all this horrible stuff going on. Right now it's only up to personal choice. We still have (what we think) is clean water, healthy food, we don't see our garbage. The only reason I think other wise is because I've read a lot about it. I'm not going to get into the food aspect of this right now, but it's coming in another post. I believe it ties into all this. My kids need lunch, gotta go. I just wanted to get this out there and maybe start people thinking, or at least let you know what I'm thinking about. What if you had to do something with all the garbage you take out to the curb? What if that option wasn't there? Would you bury it in your back yard? How long would you be able to do that? I bet you would have a lot less garbage to dispose of if you had to do it on your own. That's what I'll be thinking about tomorrow when I roll my convenient HUGE garbage can down the driveway. Until later then.