Not Winning the War Against Earth-Abuse

 As I travel down the road I recently cleaned of trash, I’m upset to see that it’s been trashed up just a few days later. It reminds me of how little my trash pick-up, recycling and energy saving efforts really affect the world.

 So…sometimes I think, why even try to keep the earth clean or save energy? But my final thoughts on the subject always agree with the old saying, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” And, my game strategy is to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say, “I did something to slow down earth-trashing today.”

Spring Time; Trash Time

I took a walk along my regular trash clean up area yesterday. The trash droppers have been busy in the recent beautiful springtime weather. How sad…

I picked up a plastic Borden Milk bottle and a Keystone Beer can on my way home. Sometimes I wonder how many folks see our littered streets and feel the temporary sadness that I feel.

Conservation of Resources & Reproduction

As pointed out earlier in my blog, I’m not a scientist writing about conservation of resources, just an ordinary citizen who doesn’t want to destroy our planet by her actions. If you’ve read my previous blogs, you know how I save energy and that I derive satisfaction by living this way.

My views as a Christian dominate every decision I make. As a married person, 0ne hard question in protecting our environment is: “How many offspring do we produce?” People use resources and our population is already past a point where we can feed everyone already living on earth. My college biology professor pointed this out when I was still a student and the population has kept growing in the last decades.

I don’t think God will condemn me for using contraception–many years ago–to limit my family to two children. Two people producing the same number of children across our country would cut back substantially on our population growth. If a small percentage of our population had three children, it would make up for the adults who have only one or no children.

Some people would say, even if zero population growth is achieved in the USA, other countries would still be increasing the number of people on earth.  They’re correct; but I believe we need to start making positive changes at home, then around our community and expand from there, if possible. Will my earth-friendly deeds have a positive effect on the whole planet? Probably not. When I’m near the end of my life, a better question would be: “Did my life have a negative effect on this planet?” That’s the question that I want to answer, “No, it didn’t”.

Dealing With Those Who Think the Environment Is Someone Else’s Problem

After being away from this blog for weeks, an appropriate topic for me is: how to deal with those around me who seem to do nothing to conserve energy or even pick up a piece of trash they leisurely walk by.

I have acquaintances, and even family members, who have no concern about saving energy or keeping our streets clean. Despite being exposed to information about “How to save our planet” they keep their homes at a comfortable temperature–like seventy-four degrees–all year round and aren’t going to change their auto driving routines in order to save gasoline. They’ve seen me (and others) picking up trash but feel it’s someone else’s job to take care of the roadside.

Do you have folks like this in your life? I’d be surprised if anyone doesn’t know people like this. So…how do we deal with the environmentally unconcerned? My conclusion: don’t try to change them. It won’t work anyhow. One of my ways of dealing with these frustrating people is to think about the bloggers who write about creating zero trash in their household. Compared to that person, I’m a walking trash machine. But, I think we can affect the environment by recycling what we can and picking up the trash in our neighborhoods. The person who lives a very ordinary life, like I do, can do things like adjusting the temperature in their home to save energy and take steps to cut back on water consumption in the house too.

Any concern about conserving resources and keeping our environment clean is better than none. Just keep being the concerned person that you are and be ready to share energy saving tips with anyone who is ready to change their lifestyle.

Just an Ordinary Person Trying To Reduce Trash

Have you read some of the blogs on how to live a life in today’s society and produce no trash? They’re writing about a style of life that I don’t have or even long to have. Three blogs that I looked at were: mindbodygreen.com, zerowastehome.com and trashisfortossers.com. As I read about the travels of the lady who wrote the zero waste blog, I wondered how she eats as she travels long distance to discuss her style of life. Airline food comes in containers and I know of no restaurant that doesn’t make trash; does she consider this their trash rather than her garbage? She does say “home”. Perhaps garbage created while elsewhere isn’t a concern. And, do the other bloggers that make zero trash stay at home rather than eating out in order to not make trash? These aren’t questions meant to criticize the person who strives to put next to nothing in our city dumps, they’re my thoughts about how one would do normal things like traveling and maintain such a strict goal. I admire anyone who strives to live a lifestyle that creates very little waste.

As for me, I live in an area with food stores that stock little, or nothing, in the way of bulk items.  I’m not even going to look into the possibility of getting everything I would substitute for items in plastic containers sent to me from online purchases. And, how would they send items to me without a plastic or box container? My choice: I’ve decided to do the best I can with picking up roadside trash and cutting back on items like the amount of paper and plastic products I use. Until we meet again in my next blog, I’ll resolve to make less paper and plastic waste.

Before and After Trash Time

These are before and after pictures of my last roadside trash pick up.


I took along my phone to get a picture of the trashed roadside.

This was from a different angle but it's the same area after the trash was picked up.  Some people will never understand this, but the clean roadside, even if it's only for a short while, is why I continue as "trash lady" once a month.



And, here's the bag of trash after I finished my job. The area was a little cleaner than usual. The second month in a row!

Being a Good Citizen Takes Time

I just finished doing some painting in my garage. While checking out what paint to buy, I got a surprise. The previous painter of my garage used oil-based paint for the job! The bucket of very watery paint in my garage was oil-based but I didn’t know that until the paint store manager pointed this out to me. I don’t like oil-based but he told me that if I wanted to use water-based paint on the walls I would have to sand them and apply a primer coat on first.

Rather than going through all the extra work, it’s now painted with a second coat of oil-based paint.

Warning to anyone considering this option…use water-based. It will take less time in the long run. Cleaning up the brushes and drips off the floor and myself took at least twice as much time. And now I’m looking for some local business that will take the mineral spirits/paint mixture and dispose of it in a safe manner. Life isn’t simple when we become concerned about our environment and don’t do things like pouring mineral spirits in a sink and rinsing out the sink or putting it in a container in the trash. (It is a poisonous substance that shouldn’t get in our ground water.)

What happens to poisonous stuff like the paint brush cleaner I plan to dispose of after I leave it at hazardous waste recycling center? That’s on my list of things to learn about. The mixture is in a sealed container in my garage. When I recycle it, I hope to find a worker at the center who can answer my question.