The Day After Earth Day

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day and much was said about it in the news. I deliberately watched part of Oprah, something that I don't normally do.

The sight of the Pacific Garbage Gyre was ghastly and disgusting. I have been recycling for years, sometimes grudgingly, I admit, because of the time that it takes to sort everything into separate bags and bins. Sometimes, I am tempted to just pitch it. Lately I have been more careful. The clutter that it makes in the house to have more sorting stations is one my annoyances with recycling. (Not that my house is pristine, in any case.) I think I will learn to live with the annoyance.

I have resisted reusing plastic bags until this year, figuring that it uses water and soap to wash them. I do re-use one bag for dry things over and over until the crumbs get too crumby or there is too much build-up of flour or almond meal or whatever I am putting in its "store" bag into my zippered bag. Switching to cloth bags would not work well, since the contents would not be visible. Switching to hard containers might help but they would be more awkward to handle.

This winter I have saved my plastic bags and now that the weather is warming a bit, I am washing and drying them. Trying to swish the soapy water from one to the next to conserve it is messy, but somehow satisfying. Turning the bag inside out to rinse the interior takes less water--and time--than filling and pouring, especially when I remember to turn the faucet off while I turn. So perhaps it doesn't waste too much water.

I started saving the bags because of the cost. Now I will think of the Garbage Gyres--all five of them, the one I knew about and the other four as I do so. I do think that the problem isn't just re-use and recycle, though. I think it is more fundamental than that.

We need to pick up after ourselves. Dispose of things properly instead of just casting them aside. (I suppose that is recycling, really.) Plastic bottles and bags didn't exist when I was a child. They can be re-used and then recycled to make other things.

That was part of Earth Day coverage too. The things made with plastic bottles. A boat named "Plastiki"; a school in Guatamala. Knitters have used strips of plastic bags for knitting sturdy totes for sometime, although that was not mentioned. I love the fleece fabrics made from recycled plastic bottles. Turning trash into treasure.

We also do need to use less. According to World News last night Americans are consuming less than we did forty years ago. About fifty percent less. But is that because of recycling or merely a result of the recession?

A few years ago, I was pretty cynical about Earth Day, "green solutions" because it seemed as though new companies were simply being started to make the same items that we probably need to use less only out of "green" materials and manufacturing processes.

What if we went back to using thermoses for our coffee and tea? Brought our sandwiches from home in wax paper or re-usable containers, ate in sit down restaurants with re-usable instead of disposable plates and utensils? Turning the clock back to the fifties, I guess, and that is not possible.

While I still refuse to subscribe to the pseudo-religious aspects of recycling, I will grumble less, organize a little more and think of that whale that was beached--dead with plastic items and a golf ball in it's stomach. Not a very good diet for any creature on our small planet.

I am grateful for ways to make my imprint on our planet lighter. Stewardship of the earth is, after all, a way to practice the virtue of humility and any practice of virtue is a good thing.

Tasks That Didn't Exist When I Was Young

Maybe I am just getting old and grumpy, or maybe it is just beginning to show a bit more. Yesterday, as I shredded paper and washed plastic bags I thought of tasks that didn't exist when I was growing up.

Recycling.

There wasn't so much packaging for starters. If you needed to buy a pencil, you went to the store and bought a pencil. (I still remember buying my artist's blue pencils for calligraphy layout as singles. Several sizes of leads, but one of each. Not packs. I still have the pencils.) If you needed screws or nuts or nails, you went to the hardware store and bought what you needed out of bins. There were no blister packs and the sacks that they came home in were made of paper, easily burnable in the coal furnace in the basement.

True, crayons came in sets in boxes, but the boxes had no other packaging, not even a sticker to keep them closed. Nobody would have swiped one crayon.

Plastic bags hadn't been invented yet. Our mothers made our sandwiches for us to take for lunch and slipped them into wax paper sandwich bags. Milk was delivered in glass bottles and the bottles, washed, were put back in the milk box on the back porch so the milk man could take them when he brought the new full ones.

We rarely drank soda, but when we did, it came home in glass bottles that had a deposit on them, so we took them back to the store. Sometimes, in the summer, kids collected bottles in the their red wagons to take back to the store to earn money for the ice cream man or some other small kid expense. The newspapers were tied up in bundles because sooner or later there would be a paper drive by the Boy Scouts to earn money for the troop. This was a vestige of paper drives during the war years when nothing was wasted.

Washing everything before it is recycled.

Obvious. There wasn't so much stuff; we threw out the trash and we didn't wash it first.

Sorting the recycling.

How many hours have I spent doing this in the last twenty years? I am so grateful to be able to read newspapers and magazines online now so that everything that I read doesn't have to be handled so many times before it clears the house.

Shredding paper

This one didn't exist a few decades ago either. The noise made from the shredder is about as pleasant as a leaf blower. One small good note of the recession is that at least there isn't as much junk mail this year as in the preceding years. I can at last catch up with all the paper shredding. Didn't even own a shredder until two years ago. After spending time sorting the recyclable parts (envelopes and such) from the shreddable parts of the junk mail, I find that I then spend about as much time cleaning the stuck paper bits out of the shredder so that I can feed it some more, as I do actually feeding paper through it. Definitely not time well spent.

Washing plastic bags to use them again.

This was one that I used to refuse to do. Yesterday, after cleaning three kitchen drawers, I found that I had the equivalent of a box full of zipper type plastic bags. All gently used since the really gunky ones had made it to the trash. So along with the dishes, I am washing the bags. (That will mean fewer boxes cluttering the pantry and fewer boxes to break up to recycle. Maybe there is more method to this than I thought.)

I have found that the easiest way to do this and to ensure that they will dry is to put soapy water in the bag, close the bag, shake and squish. Transfer the soapy water to the next bag or the dishpan to be used to wash the next thing and turn the bag inside out. Rinse it. When it has dried, turn it right side out again and dry the outside. Store open so that it will be easier to use the next time.

How much water, energy (to heat the water as well as our own energy) and dish soap does it take to reclaim the plastic bags and rinse out the recyclables? How much time do we spend doing these seemingly useless, less than productive tasks?

Still, I am grateful that I am getting things cleaned up. Even more grateful for the visit of my sister and brother-in-law that I am anticipating in two weeks. (The motivator for the clean-up.) Grateful too for the beautiful fall weather that we are having and the energy it gives me to do the clean-up.

Garbage Day

Garbage day is tomorrow, so today is the day that everything is sorted. Life was easier when I was a child. Packaging was simpler and didn't have to be sorted into recyclable categories. Now preparing the garbage is a major task. The paper is recycled. Do the egg cartons count? The milk cartons do not count because they have had food in them. What to do with the new kind of packing peanuts that are made out of cornstarch and supposedly dissolve in water? I really don't want to make a mess or clog the drain. I suppose I could try holding one in my hand under the faucet to see if it really does dissolve, but that seems like such a waste of water. So they will be saved to be reused in packages going out. The cardboard boxes can go with the the paper.

The upside of all this sorting is that the front hall will be neater, more like the entryway it was designed to be and less like my great storage area for things moving on. It was easier and neater when it could all just be thrown away. But I have developed the same conscious that everyone else has about recycling. Now if we could re-develop a national conscious about some other things as well!

It is trying to rain today and that is a gift for we need the water, but it is ten degrees colder than the average for this time of year, which means that we will not be conserving energy as much as usual. Instead of sunlight pouring ion my windows while I type, I am relying on the overhead lamp. True it is pulled low and turned on to its lowest setting--which also has a compact fluorescent in it. Nonetheless, it is using electricity. So, of course, is the lap-top. Solar powered computers anyone? Hey, that's not a bad idea--maybe for those of us who can't afford solar panels, we could have solar gadgets and appliances. We already have solar powered calculators, why not lights and computers and even clothes dryers? I long for solar panels, but they aren't in my budget.

Yesterday, my new nutrition software came. Now I will go install it and play and I hope that will be the focus of tomorrow's post.