| Monday, October 15, 2007 |
Blog Action Day: Breakfast, Lunch and Yikes! My husband and I have been marveling at the volume of trash we see put out on neighborhood curbs on garbage day. We love that our new hometown, Cleveland Heights, has a nearly all-inclusive recycling program and its CURBSIDE. It seems sad to see how many of our neighbors have not yet jumped on the green bandwagon and aren't taking advantage of curbside pick-up of recyclables. Of course, they're not alone. Just look at the statistics. Yikes, Just Yikes In the United States alone:
When we lived in an apartment, the recycling bins were always full of mixed-trash because no one seemed to try or care about recycling. Now, as homeowners in this town, we delight in recycling all of our...well, recyclables. I grin at seeing my recycling bags outnumbering my garbage bags. Even as pleased as I am to be recycling all these plastic containers, cans, cardboard, paper, etc., I know that we could be doing better. I'm pretty good at re-using things, and our city's program helps us with the recycling. Now it's time to work on the reducing. By not buying or using so many "things" in the first place, we can further minimize our "footprint." Take My Morning Coffee...No Wait, Please Don't! Did you see how many disposable cups workers go through in a year?! It makes sense -- 5 days a week, assuming 50 work weeks a year and one to two coffees (tea, soda pop, etc.) a day...that would be 250 to 500 cups. That's not even counting the heat sleeves, lids and stirring sticks (or when you get two cups together because the beverage is too hot). Jinkies! That's a lot of waste. We do try to recycle the plastic cups our iced coffee beverages come in, but the paper ones get trashed -- every day. I decided to buy a Starbucks’ insulated "tumbler" for both my husband and for myself. Now we've reduced, nearly eliminated, our paper cup usage - just like that. I like these because, unlike some travel mugs, they have a screw top lid that just seems to work better for me. Plus, we know it is just the right size for our grande coffees. As an added bonus, Starbucks gives a 10-cent discount for using a travel mug. Of course, you don't need to this mug or even patronize this coffee merchant, but just image how much waste you could eliminate by using a re-usable container for your daily beverage of choice. Let's Do Lunch...Right  Packing your lunch can help your waistline as well as your wallet. Besides, when you're a vegetarian, it can be especially challenging to find fast, healthy and interesting foods close to work in a lunch hour. While my husband and I gladly carry back home to our recycling bin the plastic containers and cardboard boxes our food comes in, I decided that we could be doing even better if we cut back on packaged foods - particularly individual/single-serving sizes - and reduced the number of plastic baggies we used when packing lunches.In looking for new ways to pack even healthier and more interesting lunches and snacks, I gathered inspiration for interesting, healthful lunches and snacks from bloggers like Jennifer over at the Vegan Lunchbox and Biggie over at Lunch in a Box along with others who are embracing the Japanese "bento box" for making compact, fun lunches. From the Vegan Lunchbox site, I found a link to learn more about waste-free lunches, which furthered my education on the value of reducing lunch waste and the cost (to the planet and your wallet) for "disposable" lunches. While the site focuses on school/children's lunches, the information is easily extrapolated. Take a look for yourself and just imagine what those statistics mean in relation to the average adult and grown up mid-day meal away from home, which is needed 50-52 weeks a year, compared to the 36-week school year. Gradually I am changing my packing and our eating habits by selecting re-usable containers for entrees, sides and snacks rather than relying on plastic bags and individually packaged food products. I may not be able to do so 100 percent of the time, but every little bit helps. Another fringe benefit to containers over plastic bags is that chips, crackers and pretzels don't get as easily broken. I've even been having some fun using some of the Americanized bento-style lunch ideas. In addition to helping the environment, buying fewer bags as well as purchasing items in bulk to create your own "single-service" puddings, fruit cups, yogurts, etc., tends to be a lot cheaper - so they're good for our wallets too! Here are some of my favorite hints/tips for reducing, recycling or re-using related to carrying your lunch:
Recycling Works! Maybe you're asking yourself if it is worth it, and wondering weather recycling really works.The good news is that, yes, recycling does work:
Think about the statistics of how much one person wastes in a day, and then consider how easy and small some of these changes are for reducing, re-using and recycling. If each of us makes small changes, we can make a heck of difference just on our own. For more environmental blogging, check out the Blog Action Day. Labels: environment |
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