Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Happy Earth Day!

There was frost last night. Yipes! That’s very late for us. We usually don’t have much more than a light frost after mid-March. Now I’m not feeling so bad about being late with planting my garden! It’s lovely and sunny right now though with a gorgeous robin-egg blue sky.

What am I doing for Earth Day? The usual stuff: composting, gardening, walking, not buying anything, and trying to figure out what to do with all of the non-recyclable plastic that takes up 90% of my trash. Packaging. Over-packaging in most cases. I consistently use cloth shopping bags and my backpack and I still have heaps of plastic to throw out. It’s convenient and helps produce stay fresher and last longer but I wish there was something I could do to reduce the amount in my bin. I do use a lot of plastic containers in my fridge to keep food fresh and they last much longer than plastic bags. Years even. But how do I bring home produce without the bags to protect them or keep them together. And how do I convince manufacturers that they don’t need to put everything in that hard plastic clamshell stuff that slices you into ribbons when you try to open it. It should at least be recyclable in the city’s blue boxes. And what’s with the organic soups being in tetra packs that aren’t recyclable, at least locally? How about glass containers then? They cost more but they could be reused like I do with the pasta sauce jars. My milk comes from a local dairy who still uses glass bottles! In future I’m going to be avoiding over-packaged goods as much as possible. My eco-rant for the day.

I’m nearly finished the 8 Hearts swap project. I have the notes printed out and 2.5 hearts left to bead. Then I have to figure out how to package them up for mailing in the most economical way. They’re kind of puffy so it’s going to be fun putting them in an envelope! At least they aren’t fragile.

I’m possibly going to be babysitting the grandkids today (yay!) so this will be a quickie post.

No comments: