Part 2
Plastic. Why do we make something that will last forever and then use it for things that will be thrown away? Most of the plastic is used one time.
There is a big blob of plastic trash stuff swirling around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is in an area where the currents come together. It consists of plastic bags, plastic bottles, tires, fishing nets, and other nondecomposable items. It is twice the size of Texas. The trash has been dumped from cruise ships and cargo ships. It is also made up of one bottle left on the beach. One can thrown out a car window. A plastic bag blown from a landfill. All of these items have found their way to the ocean and made their way through the currents to the Great Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean. The problem now is “Who is responsible for the clean up?”
California alone consumes 11 billion of those plastic grocery bags each year. Most of them will only be used one time and then they will go to the landfill only to sit for hundreds or thousands of years—unless, of course, they get caught by the wind and blown to the ocean where the currents will take them to the Great Garbage Patch.
At the grocery store last week, the checker asked me, “Paper or Plastic?” Having forgotten to bring in my cotton grocery bags with me, I replied, “Neither.” The problem was that ‘neither’ wasn’t one of the options. I was afraid that she was going to have to call the manager for an override or something. I did manage to make it out of the store without my paper or my plastic. I did have a couple of big reusable bags in the back of the car, so I packed my stuff from the cart, into the bags and into the back of the car. It only took an extra minute or two.
I don’t do everything right. Last week we went to lunch and we brought the leftovers home in a Styrofoam box. Ooops. And I do get a newspaper. Everyday. I could read the same stuff online, but I like to read the newspaper. One of these days I will cancel, but for now I just recycle it. And I am not known for my short showers. Baby steps….
Added: Mapleton does not have a city recycle program. However, the city does endorse a private recycling program. It is actually just a local family that does this for extra income. It is the Roger Merrill family. They come around on Wednesdays which is the early out day for school, giving them extra time to make the rounds. They pick up paper for $5 per month and drop it off directly at the local schools. So, basically I am paying them $5 a month to do the same exact thing that I could do for free. Except that my time and my gas are not exactly free. I am fine with the fact that they do it for me for $5. I don't have to figure out when to make time to deal with it. They pick it up every week--rain or shine.
Then I pay them another $5 a month to pick up everything else. When I first signed up with them I asked them if I needed to separate all of the plastics according to the number on the bottom of the carton located in the middle of the triangle. They kind of laughed at me and told me to just throw it all into the same container. They would sort through it later once they picked it all up and got it home. They said that if the public had to separate it at all, most of them would find it too much of an inconvenience and wouldn't bother to recycle. So, I am totally OK with sending them off each week with one big container of my "trash" for them to sort through later. I am also perfectly fine with the fact that once they sort through all of the "trash", they take it to various locations to recycle it and get cash back for it. The amount that I would get would (again) not be worth my time and effort individually. But it certainly is worth their effort to gather all of the recyclable things from this community and get cash for it. It is absolutely worth $5 each month for me to rinse out a few cans and containers, set out on the curb once a week, and rid my conscience of any worries as to how I am going to find time to save the Earth. I think these people are pretty dang cool for taking the initiative to get their hands dirty and provide this service to the community at the same time they are making money for the needs and wants of their family.
thanks for your comments.
It's true. My recycle bins are always overflowing each week. It really cramps my style when we forget to take out the recycle bins EACH week because by the second week there is a ton of stuff. However, I think we could go 2 weeks between our regular trash pick-ups and not even get close to filling out trash bins.
We are kind of nutty at our house about the recycling. On the news a few nights ago, we heard a story about the Salt Lake County Landfill. It is filling up quite rapidly. The report stated that the current landfill will run out of space in less than 50 years. That might not seem like a big deal, but when they do run out of space, the only option will be to haul the waste to another location which will likely be 100 ‘s of miles away. And it will be done by an outside company—not the city or the county. The costs for this service will be 10 times the cost for the current waste removal services. The sad part is: over 80% of the waste that is going to the Salt Lake County Landfill is recyclable.
I had a conversation not long ago with a fellow neighbor and recycler. She mentioned that she knew some people who were down right annoyed at the fact that if they were to recycle it would cost them an additional $5 to $10 a month for recycling services. However, these same people don’t flinch a bit about paying the extra $10 a month to have 2 garbage cans.
What’s the difference people???
The difference is that if you are responsible and take the extra few seconds to separate your trash from the items that can be recycled you are reducing the amount of garbage that goes to the landfill. You are being responsible with our resources. You are helping keep the world a more beautiful place.
We separate our recyclable items into 2 different containers:
Paper in one. Everything else in another container.
First Container: Paper. Newspaper. Junk Mail. Catalogs. Magazines. All of those extra copies from the computer printer. Cereal boxes. Macaroni & cheese boxes. Cake mix boxes. Cardboard boxes.
Second Container: Everything else: aluminum cans (pop). Steel cans (vegetables, fruit, soup). Plastic (milk jugs, yogurt containers, cottage cheese containers, bread bags, grocery bags). Anything with one of those triangle arrow things.
The only thing that is not recycled is glass. I wish I would find a place that would recycle glass.
Other things that do not recycle: pizza boxes that have touched food, plastic bags (like sandwich bags) and food (but that’s OK because it can go to the compost bin!!—just not rice and meat)
It makes me think of living in Michigan. When you would buy bottles or cans of pop, you would pay a deposit. So a 12 pack of Diet Coke would cost an extra $1.20. However, the streets, roadways, trails, and parks were never littered with drink cans and bottles. I knew of a little family that would go to a local recreation area to gather pop cans for FHE. They would walk around until they found enough cans to take in to recycle and then use the money they got back to buy a treat. They always looked forward to those days when they would gather cans to see how much money they could get back. So, next time you are in Michigan, notice how free the roadways are of cans and bottles. Way to go Michigan!!
About a year ago this summer I had my second foot surgery.
I went in to the doctor last fall for my follow up appointment. The dr. said that my foot was not perfect, but it was as good as it was going to get. So, I asked him if I could do physical activities again. He said yes. I asked if running counted and he said, “yes. The more you do the better. Run. Jump. Skip. Ski. Whatever you want to do, do it. The more the better. It will strengthen your muscles and tendons in your foot and keep them strong.”
I was happy about the good news. I went home and told Rick that I was now cleared to run so I thought I should look for a local 5k and sign up and begin training. Rick’s response was, “why would you do that? You’ve already done a 5k. Do something bigger, something you haven’t done before. You should do a half marathon.”
I thought he was crazy.
But I started running. The first time I ran, I made it to the end of the driveway. Each day that I ran I would make it a little further. One day I mentioned that crazy idea of running a half marathon to one of my friends. She said, “great, let’s both sign up.”
I now had 3 people telling me that I could do something that I had never done. I didn’t think I would ever be able to do it considering I had spent half of the previous 6 months in a cast/using crutches. I didn’t actually run with my friend. More importantly, she was there to check on me and make sure I ran. She would email me or call. It was her concern for me that encouraged me to stick with my training schedule and therefore finish a half marathon.
This was similar to the experience that I had at Girls Camp. We got up on a Tuesday morning to hike to Lower Calf Creek Falls. It’s a 5 ½ mile round trip hike from the campground to the falls and back. On the day we hiked, it was clear, sunny, and HOT. We had about 45 people hiking together. Some in our group were athletic and conditioned to hike. Others were a little less adept at hiking through sand and rocks and were lacking in the thrill of hiking in the dry Southern Utah desert. Ages ranged from 12 to 60 something. So, needless to say we had quite a range of abilities and desires. Some didn’t do well with the heat and got dehydrated. Others had a hard time with their shoes filling with sand and the way the toes had to bend to get through the thick sand (that would be me!)
I came to the same conclusion regarding both of these experiences:
In order to do difficult things, we must surround ourselves with people who have the same goal in mind whether that goal is training for and running a marathon or hiking 5 ½ miles to a waterfall or living a Christlike life. It seems that if we surround ourselves with people who are trying to do the same things that we are, then we will be more successful than if we attempt to do hard things without any support.
I think about all of those girls who were hiking in that hot summer sun. I really doubt that many of us would have completed the hike if we had set out on our own. I’m pretty sure that I would have turned around and gone back to the shade and called it a day. But every girl that said that the hike was hard was later happy that she endured and continued and did hard things. Relaxing in the shade and refreshing ourselves in the waterfall was such a reward and made the hike back down less difficult as well.
I think of our journey in life. It is important to surround ourselves with those who also have similar goals in mind. Sometimes I wonder why it is necessary to go to Church each week and to all of the other various meetings and commitments. But, I think that it is necessary to be close to other people in order to “bear one another’s burdens”. We need to be close to others in a physical and spiritual sense. Life is hard. ”Thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 31:16). But in the meantime, we need to be surround ourselves with those who share our same ideals. They will encourage us and we will in turn encourage them.
One of my favorite quotes is: “what is this life for if not to make life less difficult for one another.”
So,
Run,
Hike,
Endure to the end.
And help someone else along the way.
