I was happy to see all of the Earth Day blog posts out there in bloglandia so I decided that I’d throw in one of my own as well - and publicly admit that I’m a ‘green freak’. Growing up in a rather crunchy granola sort of family I’ve always been interested in natural products & green living and I guess I really can’t imagine living any other way. My family recycled long before there was a curb side service, was part of a natural foods co-op, and shopped at the local health food store when it was ‘weird’ to do so… man that place had the best fried tofu samwiches! (I have no idea how to cook tofu.. but this stuff had a breaded crunchy outside just like fried chicken. It had sprouts & some sort of Italian style dressing on it.. yum.)
I get irritated when people bitch about doing simple things that will help to save the planet. How hard is it to wash a can? Please. Recycling here in the county I live in (and I’m in “metro-Atlanta”) is voluntary, which I think is a huge mistake. I also don’t the recycling services are up to par with the ones we had elsewhere because we can’t recycle paper of any kind. We’re one of the very few houses in our neighborhood who even puts out our recycling bins for collection- I just can’t imagine how much other houses are throwing away needlessly! I did notice however that I do throw away a lot of packaging during dinner.. so I’m going to work on buying more things in larger quantities so that there is less packing waste.
Our local supermarket is HORRIBLE about giving plastic bags for every single item, and double bagging to boot! I’m also rather irritated because they recently installed those ’self check out’ lines with the bagging stations that have built in scales so that they know you are putting your items into a bag. If I want to use my cloth bags at that store, I have to go through one of the TWO available ‘full service’ check out lines. Its nice when a company (who sells cloth bags with the store name on them) makes you choose the environment over convenience, isn’t it?