A Day Late

I missed doing my environmental blog last night. Nora came to spend the night, and she stayed awake all through her Cinderella DVD. After laying in bed with her, I was ready for sleep, too.

Nora usually has a comment about "they love each other" when the prince and Cinderella are dancing. Once (how sweet is this?) she said, "they love each other like you love me."

Now, about the environment. If we're going to make this better, we all have to help. We can't wait for the illusive Someone to do it for us, but sometimes it's hard to find the individual beginning place, that toe hold on the mountain.

We can all start by being aware of where our food comes from and going for the local sources when we can. If you're at the grocery store, there may be a sticker on that apple you've picked up. If it says, for example, Argentina, think about that. Think about how far away that is and picture how it must have been transported to you. Think about the fuel that took. You may still choose that one apple, but hopefully you chose something that didn't come as far. If you're very lucky you can go to the farmer's market and choose apples that were grown locally. Not only will there be less environmental cost in bringing the apple to you, but it will probably actually taste like an APPLE because it was grown for taste, not for shipping well.

When you leave the store, pay attention to what's going in your bags. You don't need a bag for your milk or your newspaper or your bottle of detergent. Tell the bagger that. Better yet, take your own bag or, after your next trip, save the bags and take them with you next time. The person behind you will take note.

Just one more thing for today - those water bottles.

Most of us are blessed by safe water coming out of our taps, but the bottled water manufactures do a good job of telling us that theirs tastes better and is safer. We're buying bottles and bottles of water. Balance is everything, and I'm not asking you to never buy bottled water. I'm just asking you to think about it when you're home or at the office and choosing bottled water over tap water.

Think about the energy used to manufacture the bottle and the energy used in the bottling process. Look at the label and see where the water was bottled and think about how it got to you. Think about our landfills. In this country we use an average of 166 water bottles per person per year, and only 1 in 7 is recycled. It takes 700 years, friends, for a water bottle to break down in the landfille. Think about that.

If you decide you want that bottle of water, refill it once or twice when you're finished. Don't keep refilling the same bottle more than a day or two because there are some problems with that, too. Think about getting a Nalgene bottle and looking cool and saving money. Get your friends one for Christmas and they can look cool and help out too.

I could go one and on - can you tell this was once part of my job? Step, step. That's the sound of me getting off my soapbox for today.