What Going Green Gets Me

Why won't the recycling station give me any more blue bags? I have been reduced to storing all my milk jugs, dirty tin cans and empty soda cans on my kitchen counter. My efforts may be doing something to clean up the environment, but they're doing nothing for the cleanliness of my own home.

Note #1: Not pictured is last Tuesday's sprint to the curb with my blue bag. I heard the truck pull up at 7am and dashed out in my jammies--and still they will not give me any more bags.
Note #2: The coffee press has nothing to do with this. Do not think for one second that I will be sending the Bodum away.

Our family is not what you'd call crunchy, but one of our goals for this year was to be a smidge more environmentally conscious: recycling or donating things we would normally throw away, changing over almost all of our lightbulbs to compact CFLs, using cloth napkins and towels instead of so many paper products. I even wrote a letter to my beloved Chick-fil-A asking them to reconsider their use of styrofoam cups (which they insist are more easily recycled and/or biodegraded than coated paper cups).

Trying to reduce the amount of trash we generate has also forced me to think about the amount of "trash" (ie, stuff that we don't really need and is destined for the garbage pile) we bring into our house. It amazes me that most of the products on the market today are meant to break down, wear out or become obsolete within just a few months or years. Our society is so used to consumption that we don't even stop to ask if we could do things differently. To read about one family's experiment in stopping the clutter and consumption, check out this blog.