Are there others out there like myself that cringe when they see someone throwing a recyclable in the garbage?
We are recyclers. Luckily, our county even has mandatory business recycling. (I'm curious as the consequences because I there sure are a lot of businesses that still don't)
I have been known to pick up bottles and cans that I have found in parking lots, put them in my car, only to have them roll around the floor until I take them home and throw them in the recycle bin.
My grandparents don't have ANY recycle pick up at their home in rural Tennessee. I had to be talked out of my filling my suitcase with recyclables this summer and bringing them home with me.
But when I see people deliberately throw things away because of laziness it really irks me. I have a friend who refuses to separate her garbage because she thinks it is so much extra trouble. I get so bent out of shape. "The bins are right next to your garbage shoot, you don't even have to walk outside," I tell her.
My husband has a bad habit of assuming everything goes into the garbage. I take things out and put them in our recycle bin. We have an understanding at this point. If he throws away something that should have gone in the blue bin, I will pull it out of the garbage and give him the stink eye. He knows what that means. It means start running, because our understanding is that if he threw away a recyclable then I get to throw it at him. Plastic is not so bad, even diet coke cans, but if he throws a glass bottle in the garbage I will look up at him and he smiles the -uh-oh-I-did-something-bad smile and says"Oh Crap!" and he takes off running.
Showing posts with label Environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Environment. Show all posts
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
www.Repurposed4you.com April Newsletter
We, at http://www.repurposed4you.com/, encourage you to attend some of the events going on all around the country this month. Here are a few that we have found. Show your support and GO GREEN!
Try our organic teas, support our artists that work in recycled, reclaimed and repurposed materials. See our hundreds of eco chic pieces! There is always something new in store! Enjoy $10 off of any purchase $50 or more this month! Use code - EarthDay08
If you are going to be around the Kansas City area April 19, why not participate in the EarthWalk beginning at 9 am and the Earthfest from 10-2. Check out http://www.bridgingthegap.org/ to register or for more information.
April 19th is an exciting day in Harrison County, Kentucky! Cynthiana is hosting a group of young environmentalists and other enthusiastic individuals are coordinating an inaugural Earth Day celebration. http://www.cynthianaky.com/
April 19, if you are in the Holland, Michigan area, come to the Earth Day Community Picnic. Bring a picnic lunch, lawn chairs and all weather gear. Highlights include: free trees, live animals, Earth-friendly displays and info. http://www.outdoordiscoverycenter.org/
The California Earth Day Run and Walk, in Sacramento, California, on April 19, will be a great event for runners, walkers and kids. Help us raise money for environmental education, conservation, and restoration efforts in the Greater Sacramento area. Please also consider bringing a lunch and helping with the river clean-up. http://www.theearthfoundation.org/*
April 19th will have an EarthDay event in Jupiter, Florida like none before. Just North of Turtlefest on A1A something exciting will happen. 3 large beach tents, lots of banners and Kite*s flying high. Visit http://www.earthrehab.com/
In the San Diego area on April 20? Visit the Earthfair in Balboa Park from 10-5. With expected attendance to be around 60,000, this event includes a children*s parade, a clean car concourse, exhibitors, eARTh gallery and more. http://www.earthdayweb.org/
Cleveland*s Metroparks Zoo will be hosting their annual Earthfest on Sunday April 20. The event includes booths of eco friendly products, education and conservation. The festival will be held on Zoo grounds from 10 am * 5pm. Visit http://www.earthdaycoalition.org/ for event info.
Sunday April 20, Earth Fest will be held in Key Biscayne Florida. A large festival of bands, businesses and green products, Earthfest expects to draw thousand visitors in Crandon Park this year. Admission is free with $5 parking. http://www.earth-learning.org/
Earth Day and Arbor Day will be celebrated at Ben Brenman Park Sat, April 26 10am-2pm in Alexandria, Virginia. Earth Day has become an important educational experience for our city's youth involved in environmental programs. http://www.alexearthday.org/
April 26, in Salt Lake City, Utah, Party with Hogle Zoo and other zoo*s and aquariums around the nation as we celebrate the planet. Learn about what Hogle Zoo is doing to help the planet, from recyclable plates in our concessions to solar panel use, and what you can do at home too! http://www.hoglezoo.org/
On April 27, between 12-4, Learn about climate change and how to protect the environment at the South Shore Natural Science Center's Earthday celebration in Norwell , MA, there will be Green Fun for the whole family with kids' crafts and games, musical entertainment, nature walks, live animals, environmental exhibitors and demonstrations. http://www.ssnsc.org/
For more information about Earth Day events and what you can do to participate go to www.epa.gov/earthday/
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Christmas Gift Wrap Contest Winner
*****Christmas Gift Wrap Contest Winner*****
We posed a Question Last month...
What do you do with all of your left over Christmas wrapping paper?
Some ideas are..
* Mat a Xmas Picture on it
* Make a paper chain for your tree
* Make party hats
* Start a fire in your fireplace
* Cover your plants during a frost
* Make Paper Dolls
* Stuff in hats to keep their shape
* Shred and use to pack breakables
* Wrap around your ornaments for packing
* Shred & fill gift bags without tissue paper
and our favorite suggestion was submitted by Peggy Pierpoint of Big Sandy Tennessee. She wins for her Decopaged Glass Plates made with Recycled Wrapping Paper!
Here is how you make these decorative and festive Holiday Plates...
Cut out pictures from your paper. (Xmas cards also work) paint on Modge Podge or watered down Elmers to the picture part of your paper and adhere to the backside of a clear glass plate (think thrift stores or Goodwill for those) so that the pic showsthrough to the front. Ad another layer of adhesive to the back of the pic for reinforcement. Smooth all of the bubbles out. Let it dry. Now you can flip the plate upside down and spray paint the entire back of the plate to give extra support and a finished look. These plates are not dishwasher safe and you should only hand wash the top, but they make great cookie trays, hostess gifts or room decor. There are many variations on this Idea. We used silver spray paint, but any color will do. Use your Imagination. And Congrats Peggy!
Our runner up was one of our own artists, Fran, who took a piece of old barn siding, then took wrapping paper and cut out each image that she wanted 5 times. She then hot glued and stacked the images making a 3-D effect. She arranged them to make a 3-D Winter Scene. Very Rustic, very charming.
We posed a Question Last month...
What do you do with all of your left over Christmas wrapping paper?
Some ideas are..
* Mat a Xmas Picture on it
* Make a paper chain for your tree
* Make party hats
* Start a fire in your fireplace
* Cover your plants during a frost
* Make Paper Dolls
* Stuff in hats to keep their shape
* Shred and use to pack breakables
* Wrap around your ornaments for packing
* Shred & fill gift bags without tissue paper
and our favorite suggestion was submitted by Peggy Pierpoint of Big Sandy Tennessee. She wins for her Decopaged Glass Plates made with Recycled Wrapping Paper!
Here is how you make these decorative and festive Holiday Plates...
Cut out pictures from your paper. (Xmas cards also work) paint on Modge Podge or watered down Elmers to the picture part of your paper and adhere to the backside of a clear glass plate (think thrift stores or Goodwill for those) so that the pic showsthrough to the front. Ad another layer of adhesive to the back of the pic for reinforcement. Smooth all of the bubbles out. Let it dry. Now you can flip the plate upside down and spray paint the entire back of the plate to give extra support and a finished look. These plates are not dishwasher safe and you should only hand wash the top, but they make great cookie trays, hostess gifts or room decor. There are many variations on this Idea. We used silver spray paint, but any color will do. Use your Imagination. And Congrats Peggy!
Our runner up was one of our own artists, Fran, who took a piece of old barn siding, then took wrapping paper and cut out each image that she wanted 5 times. She then hot glued and stacked the images making a 3-D effect. She arranged them to make a 3-D Winter Scene. Very Rustic, very charming.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
How the Depression Taught Grandma to be Green
This past fall, an anniversary has come and gone that I have heard little fanfare about. Black Thursday. Not the famed best shopping day of the year, where retailers open at 4 am and sale catalogs weigh 5 pounds a piece. But the infamous anniversary of that fateful day that took us into the Great Depression.
I am not a political analyst touting the cautions and comparisons to our times and those that lead up to that dark day. I really pay no mind to the issues that flood the internet linking the Depression to present day concerns. However, there is one thing that caught my attention as I sat down to write my “Green Christmas Tips “article for the www.repurposed4you.com newsletter. I couldn’t get this thought out of my head. Did Grandma start going green in the 1930’s and no one noticed?
The Great Depression was a terrible time in our history, full of homelessness, joblessness and poverty. To my amazing discovery, it was also a time of being frugal, being thrifty and going green. The environment wasn’t the issue. Al Gore wasn’t standing on his 100% post-consumer recycled soap box warning of doom and gloom. It wasn’t an option to reuse items. There weren’t green stores, green art and green articles teaching us how to be more green. There wasn’t this type of save the earth mentality that made people change their ways. But instead the Great Depression was a time of conservation based out of necessity.
"Repair, reuse, make do, and don't throw anything away" was a motto during the Great Depression. Look how far we have come. Look how gone to the other extreme. Is it only the” tree huggers” and the “environmentalists” that see the usefulness in that phrase today. That slogan could easily be on any Eco Friendly Website and no one would know that it was regularly tossed around in homes 70 plus years ago.
Their green behavior is clear; their environmentally sound practices are shown through their resourcefulness. These lessons that they taught their kids have since gotten lost in an age of waste. Grandma became the nutty one for reusing cloth ribbon on her packages and neatly folding her gift wrap and saving it for the following holiday. And we became so superior for showing her how we can mindlessly discard anything that isn’t shiny and new any longer. Remember, Grandma was the one who wore dresses and sometimes even undergarments made out of feed bags and flour sacks because her mom wouldn’t toss out the colorful cotton. Our grandparents were taught that once socks could not be patched any longer they could be tied to the end of a long handle to become a mop. Glass jelly jars became everyday drinking glasses, geese would have their bellies plucked for the family to have a softer bed and oh, those beautiful handmade quilts and rugs made from worn out clothing. Everything outdoors became the kid’s entertainment. The garden was their grocery store. There was no thought to how much pesticide was on the produce or how much fuel it took to ship it across the country to your local neighborhood market. The electricity was limited to illumining the house at night, if that, and not for mindless hours of television, video games and lighting rooms we aren’t even in. They composted. They recycled. They did the things everyday that we pat ourselves on the back for; Repurposing, Reusing and Recycling. They were the first environmentalists, without even knowing it.
Every “Going Green” Holiday article you will read this season will tell you to start folding your paper to save it for next year like it is a new concept. Remember, Grandma still does this now. This is not a new concept. Grandma may have had this one right. And you never know she might just be right about her bee hive making a come back too.
I am not a political analyst touting the cautions and comparisons to our times and those that lead up to that dark day. I really pay no mind to the issues that flood the internet linking the Depression to present day concerns. However, there is one thing that caught my attention as I sat down to write my “Green Christmas Tips “article for the www.repurposed4you.com newsletter. I couldn’t get this thought out of my head. Did Grandma start going green in the 1930’s and no one noticed?
The Great Depression was a terrible time in our history, full of homelessness, joblessness and poverty. To my amazing discovery, it was also a time of being frugal, being thrifty and going green. The environment wasn’t the issue. Al Gore wasn’t standing on his 100% post-consumer recycled soap box warning of doom and gloom. It wasn’t an option to reuse items. There weren’t green stores, green art and green articles teaching us how to be more green. There wasn’t this type of save the earth mentality that made people change their ways. But instead the Great Depression was a time of conservation based out of necessity.
"Repair, reuse, make do, and don't throw anything away" was a motto during the Great Depression. Look how far we have come. Look how gone to the other extreme. Is it only the” tree huggers” and the “environmentalists” that see the usefulness in that phrase today. That slogan could easily be on any Eco Friendly Website and no one would know that it was regularly tossed around in homes 70 plus years ago.
Their green behavior is clear; their environmentally sound practices are shown through their resourcefulness. These lessons that they taught their kids have since gotten lost in an age of waste. Grandma became the nutty one for reusing cloth ribbon on her packages and neatly folding her gift wrap and saving it for the following holiday. And we became so superior for showing her how we can mindlessly discard anything that isn’t shiny and new any longer. Remember, Grandma was the one who wore dresses and sometimes even undergarments made out of feed bags and flour sacks because her mom wouldn’t toss out the colorful cotton. Our grandparents were taught that once socks could not be patched any longer they could be tied to the end of a long handle to become a mop. Glass jelly jars became everyday drinking glasses, geese would have their bellies plucked for the family to have a softer bed and oh, those beautiful handmade quilts and rugs made from worn out clothing. Everything outdoors became the kid’s entertainment. The garden was their grocery store. There was no thought to how much pesticide was on the produce or how much fuel it took to ship it across the country to your local neighborhood market. The electricity was limited to illumining the house at night, if that, and not for mindless hours of television, video games and lighting rooms we aren’t even in. They composted. They recycled. They did the things everyday that we pat ourselves on the back for; Repurposing, Reusing and Recycling. They were the first environmentalists, without even knowing it.
Every “Going Green” Holiday article you will read this season will tell you to start folding your paper to save it for next year like it is a new concept. Remember, Grandma still does this now. This is not a new concept. Grandma may have had this one right. And you never know she might just be right about her bee hive making a come back too.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Repurposed4you.com Saves And Salvages One Keyboard At A Time
Repurposed4you.com is saving old junked up keyboards and turning them into magnificent magnets. Why do they do this you ask? Did your grandparents ever tell you the story of KeyLand? Well it's a magical story and you blog readers are going to hear it if you read on(which you should).
In KeyLand all the little keys live a happy life. Their day starts out by going to typing lessons. They go to chorus and learn about key notes. Then they go to Study Hall and dream about going out with the mouse next door. Then comes reading. The "A" key gets an A+. They grow up they go and hang out with the wrong doers like "F" and "D". And that's when everything goes to crap in KeyLand.
All they do is grow up to be plugged into a computer and get pressed on everyday. The Keyberts are discarded when the new styles arrive. There is no more use for them. The relationship of the keyboard and laptop gets oblitereated and for the laptop, the plug is pulled. The poor keys get wound up in the trecherous Waste Stream.
Repurposed4you.com feels bad for those keys and the keys get repurposed. The Keyberts get Extreme Makeover Keybert Edition. They get to become magnets and instead going out with the mouse, they are sticking to the refridgerator. So that is the story of the Keyberts and KeyLand. And Remember when you think of keyboards think of repurposed4you.com.
In KeyLand all the little keys live a happy life. Their day starts out by going to typing lessons. They go to chorus and learn about key notes. Then they go to Study Hall and dream about going out with the mouse next door. Then comes reading. The "A" key gets an A+. They grow up they go and hang out with the wrong doers like "F" and "D". And that's when everything goes to crap in KeyLand.
All they do is grow up to be plugged into a computer and get pressed on everyday. The Keyberts are discarded when the new styles arrive. There is no more use for them. The relationship of the keyboard and laptop gets oblitereated and for the laptop, the plug is pulled. The poor keys get wound up in the trecherous Waste Stream.
Repurposed4you.com feels bad for those keys and the keys get repurposed. The Keyberts get Extreme Makeover Keybert Edition. They get to become magnets and instead going out with the mouse, they are sticking to the refridgerator. So that is the story of the Keyberts and KeyLand. And Remember when you think of keyboards think of repurposed4you.com.
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