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.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho. With a Trash Bag I Will Go

Yes, this is a happy song. It was trash pick up day for me as I jotted down these notes after I found about half the garbage I usually find along my normal route. I could have gone further but, frankly, it was later in the day than usual and I was ready to go home. There were hardly any beer cans in my bag–and no booze bottles–and there was less plastic garbage.

I haven’t seen anyone else cleaning the roadside. This new month will tell me if the trend is continuing…

(I imagine most folks are familiar with the term “senior moment”–it was a “senior week” for me. I thought I published this blog last week & just found out it wasn’t published.)

Roadkill, Rattlesnakes & Global Warming

I believe our planet is experiencing global warming caused by polluting the air. Since I’m writing this blog as an ordinary citizen and not a scientist, I’ll relate what I observed, not facts that support research pointing to global warming.

My observations:
I live in central Texas, where we’ve experienced a very warm winter this year. The temperature exceeded 90 degrees as I jotted down ideas for this blog; very warm for February. Due to no cold enough weather to either kill animals, or cause them to find places to hibernate until the weather improves, we have a substantial increase in the animal population this winter. More animals are reproducing. I’m seeing a lot more rabbits on my property and roadkill of skunks and snakes. We had an incident within 15 miles of my home where a rattlesnake was found in the bathroom of someone’s home, then over 20 more rattlesnakes were found on the property. I’ve also heard that farms have a bumper crop of rats this year. I’d rather nature–colder weather–kept down the population of snakes, rats and even skunks.

These incidents tell me that we have to become more vigilant in our efforts to combat the pollutants going into our atmosphere. We need to drive less and use fuels that pollute less.

If you disagree with me about global warming, I don’t mind hearing about why you think our temperatures are changing.

Don't Wake Me Up

I have a dream….That all able-bodied people I know will pick up an average of one piece of trash a day. If they keep their eyes open and don’t see one, hallelujah!

Buy American & Save Energy

I’m fully supportive of our new President Donald Trump’s promise to bring jobs back to America. I realize that computerization and robots have eliminated many of the factory jobs people worked at years ago but we need any jobs we can get. And, think of the fuel savings if goods sold in the U.S. traveled less miles to reach the consumer.

The fuel savings also applies to imports. We should import everything we can from nearby countries like Canada and Mexico. Why buy things from such remote areas as Japan and China when we could get comparable items from neighboring countries?

By the way, this also applies to food and drinks. We can normally find that almost everything we usually eat is grown or produced less than 100 miles from our hometown grocer. If we read labels, we can buy produce, milk and baked goods from farms and bakeries near our home. Farmer’s markets are good places to find locally grown veggies.

Buy local: it will also cut down on the pollution created by hauling items long distances. Don’t assume something is made in America just because it’s made by a company with headquarters in the U.S. My car, a Toyota, was manufactured in Kentucky even if the Toyota headquarters is in Japan. Look inside the driver’s door of the vehicle to see where it was manufactured.  

There are items–like shoes–where we have little choice if we don’t purchase those “made in China”. And, I don’t always succeed in finding things I want made in America. But I try, thinking it will keep people who live nearby employed.

My Brother's Keeper

I confess to having a dilemma. As long I’m healthy enough to pick up trash and can make time in my schedule, should I pick up garbage that animals have gotten into after a neighbor puts their can out for the weekly trash pick up? It’s on my roadside route that I’ve cleaned up once a month for years. And this neighbor has had an animal getting into his trash for the last few months. The overturned trash is picked up poorly by the owner and ignored by the nearest neighbors.

Am I the neighborhood cleanliness fanatic? To quote Popeye: “I am what I am, and that’s all that I am”. I will clean it up. I am my brother’s keeper.

This problem may be solved with a solution I’m trying.  I heard about someone who had animals in their trash putting black pepper in a garbage can and it stopped critters from coming back. (They get sick and remember to avoid that can in the future.) I thought about going by and putting pepper in early on trash pickup day. Luckily, I caught the neighbor with his garage door open. I approached him and, after we had talked for a few minutes, got to the topic of his overturned trash can. He knows a neighbor’s dog is getting into it but failed to get any help - despite talking to the neighbor then calling the Sheriff’s department after the dog kept getting in his trash. I suggested putting black pepper in his trash. He said he would try it!

Hopefully, the problem will be solved with pepper....I’ve found that nothing in life runs smoothly, even something as routine as picking up trash.

What Happens to the Stuff We Drop off at the Salvation Army and Goodwill Stores?

For years, I accumulated stuff, now I’m trying to own less. For each item brought into the house, I try to eliminate at least one similar thing.

As I looked into the way the Salvation Army and Goodwill deal with control of bedbugs, I came upon information about how they sell or dispose of the clothing and other items they receive. Both have detailed methods for selling and what happens to items that don’t sell. I ran into some criticism of how the Salvation Army deals with merchandize they don’t sell in their stores and how both organizations end up sending too many items to the dump. I thought this criticism was harsh and undeserved but it’s worth reading for anyone interested in pursuing the topic.

I continue to bring most of my give-aways to the Salvation Army. I’m familiar with the organization since I volunteered at the local business several times in the last years. They provide what I’ve heard referred to as “3 hots and a cot” for individuals who would be homeless without this help. (The hots are warm meals.) More importantly, they have drug counseling for people who need–and are ready for–this service.

Goodwill provides job training programs among other needed services to the community.

The sincere, good people retiring from either the Salvation Army or Goodwill deserve a smile when they get to heaven’s doors.

I got information on how the two businesses handle donations they don't sell by looking under: the salvation army and goodwill stores, what happens to donated clothing they don't sell?
Here is one web address where I found interesting information:
https://www.one.org/.../what-really-happens-to-your-donated-clothing

Buying Recycled Clothing & Avoiding Bedbugs

I bought clothing from garage sales when my children were babies. These children have been grown-ups for years. Even before they left home, I started doing most of my recycled clothing shopping at Salvation Army and Goodwill stores. In the last ten years, I  shopped more at private resale stores. That is, until I had a friend who thought she might have bedbugs in her home. She and her husband paid an exterminator–with a good reputation for getting rid of bedbugs–to check their home. The exterminator agreed that they did have them in their mattress. The couple had likely taken home the bedbugs from the upscale motel they stayed in during their vacation. They just returned from the trip a few days earlier. Right after they got home, they noticed the itching and bug bites. From listening to my friend, I learned that you have to clean and treat the whole house to eliminate the bugs (as well as getting rid of your mattress and your comfortable easy chairs)! It's an exhausting cleaning job followed by an expensive exterminator fee.

Thinking about what my friend said about how they carried them home, I concluded that they could have got the bugs in their pajamas they slept in while at the motel. And, that led me to think about the possibility of getting bedbugs through buying clothes from places like the Salvation Army or the resale store where I shop.  I have to admit, I haven’t bought a piece of clothing at a resale store since hearing about how easy it is to get this problem in the home and how hard it is to get rid of the pests. I have plenty of clothing; I suffered no hardship from not shopping. But I did computer research and found that both the Salvation Army and Goodwill work hard to eliminate the possibility of spreading bedbugs through merchandise they sell. Both organizations sell the best of the donated items they receive at their stores.

Knowing this, I will still check over any clothing I get from the Salvation Army or Goodwill. I also plan to ask the owner of the private resale store  where I shop about how they minimize the risk of passing on bedbugs with their recycled clothes. And, after reading about how to eliminate bedbugs from clothes, I plan to wash any purchases right after I bring them home and dry them on as high of a temperature as the fabric allows for thirty minutes. This was recommended for eliminating bugs–put them in the dryer for 3o minutes at over 120 degrees.

Washing clothes and drying them at a high temperature when they’re supposed to be clean already seems to go against saving energy. The energy savings is in recycling. Sometimes different methods of conserving energy use other forms of energy. In this case, recycling clothing led to using water plus electricity through both washer and dryer use. If I had to take my mattress and my living room chairs to the dump to eliminate bugs, this would be more wasteful of resources. Even if I bought clothing from department stores, I would wash and dry the clothing. The new clothing is tried on by a number of people and could have the same problems as recycled clothes since bedbugs are a concern again.

Moving on to a subject other than bedbugs, I hope 2017 will be a year when more people think about how they waste energy. I’ll keep my eyes open for new ways to conserve energy and strive to be an good example of a concerned-about-my-planet citizen.

Grateful To Be Healthy Enough To Pick Up Trash

Yes…I do think it’s important to be thankful for health. When I get sick, I sure notice the difference in my life. Motivation to do the usual is really lacking when I’m sick.

Speaking of motivation, a couple of days after I wrote the blog about being grateful, I decided my monthly neighborhood trash pickup needed to be done. The weather was cold, dinner would be a little later than usual if I started right away…I had a number of excuses for why I couldn’t do the work. But, I ignored my excuses and forced myself out the door with my gloves and trash bag in hand.

Less than an hour later, after finishing my job, I went through my trash searching for recyclable items. It took me that long to move from the “have to do it” way of thinking to an attitude of satisfaction with my accomplishment. My surroundings looked better for my effort. I did something easy to do and made my planet just a little better.