Earth Day idea

Today is Earth Day. My sons have both been very excited about Earth Day for weeks... I have found that both fascinating and exciting. Fascinating because I am certain that when I was their age I had no clue that our earth needed saving. Exciting because I think it is really cool that they are so excited about saving the earth God created.

My son Owen came home from school on Monday and said

Owen: MOM! It is Earth Day this week!!! We get to save the planet!!

Me: that is so cool! What are you going to do to save the planet?

Owen: RECYCLE!

Now, my son said this with enthusiasm he usually reserves for playing or getting a new toy and I think his teachers have done an excellent job passing on the value of our earth to my kid. Well done!

We recycle at home but our town does not accept all recyclable things- such as glass. They won't take it. I don't know why. We could return alcohol bottles for a refund but since we barely ever have any of that around that doesn't help us much. We DO however use a lot of jarred pasta sauce which can't be recycled. There are also some rather strict rules about what plastic/packaging/etc. can be recycled.

Our goal for ourselves this year has been to reduce the number of plastic bags we use since we know for sure those can't be recycled. We have those cloth re-usable grocery bags that we are trying to use whenever we buy something. Sometimes we do great, other times we suck. But we are trying.

We are also using environmentally safe cleaning products whenever possible. I am glad more companies are coming out with GREEN alternatives.

I fully believe that God has given us this earth and we are to take care of it. But I do have a dilema... I review stuff. LOTS of stuff. It all comes in packages. Some of which is recyclable and some of which is not.

Here is a picture of some of the packaging I have gotten in the mail in the past week. Some.

The cardboard can all be easily recycled. I reuse as many envelopes as I can when I send stuff out to giveaway winners. My kids love playing with bubble wrap. But most of these containers held MORE packaging, most of which was not recyclable. That is a whole lotta junk going into the landfill people.

So I checked around YouTube and found this neat video about one guys suggestion to help with the "packaging" problem...


I think he has a great idea and I'm going to give it a try :)

Happy Earth Day!