More Environmental Musings

If you read my blog (why else would you be here) you know that I often set out to do grand things in the form of making my life more sustainable. While some changes end up being more successful than others I like to think that on the whole at least I make changes. This link to The Story of Stuff has always intrigued me. It's a little bit long but if you haven't watched it you might find it thought provoking even if a little overdone.

I want to be separate from my things. I don't think I could go so far as living in a tumbleweed house but I do try to get rid of things. Of course, I've found that freecycle is a much better way of getting rid of things than throwing them away.

I guess this post ended up being shorter than I thought it would be... oh well.

I also realized today that sort of like Cory I generally have two types of posts... except instead of cat videos and theology I post Pearls comics and environmentalism.

Summer Restoration

On Friday I walked across a large cement block with a piece of paper in my hand letting me know that I participated in a commencement ceremony. Grades have only been posted for two of my classes though I assume I passed them all and will receive a real diploma in the mail at some point in the future. I have never really cared about walking across that or any stage that represented a milestone in my educational career. However, I am now able to say that I am finished. While I am most likely going to enter into the credential program next spring I really don't have to. If I wanted, I could avoid that classroom for the rest of my life. But for now all that really matters is that I don't have to worry about getting into the classes that I need or setting aside money for books.

So, this summer I plan on a long time overdue restoration. At the beginning of each summer I make a blog post about what I plan to do (like this one from last year) and rarely actually get much accomplished. Last year I did more than usual. This year I plan on doing a lot more than usual. I have already started a garden in the Heim's backyard with the help of the Girl's Group from Trinity. The past week I have been cleaning out the rose beds and finally was able to put the new mulch in today. I rearranged my bedroom and added a desk and computer so that I can avoid the laptop-television syndrome that runs rampant in our house. I also have grand plans for the garage. I have way to much free time on my hands and need to find a consistent place outside of the house that I can apply myself, but for now, I am getting more accomplished in a few days than I felt like I have been able to over the last several months.

I find it interesting that without looking or thinking I titled this post the same as I did last year. I think that my soul desperately yearns for simplicity and a connection to the earth. Purging and manual labor seem to be my inevitable calling.

Maybe this is where my environmentalism comes from:

I said I wanna touch the earth
I wanna break it in my hands
I wanna grow something wild and unruly
I wanna sleep on the hard ground in the comfort of your arms
On a pillow of blue bonnets in a blanket made of stars

Oh it sounds good to me, I said

Cowboy take me away
Fly this girl as high as you can into the wild blue
Set me free oh I pray closer to heaven above and closer to you
Closer to you

I wanna walk and not run
I wanna skip and not fall
I wanna look at the horizon and not see a building standing tall
I wanna be the only one, for miles and miles
Except for maybe, and your simple smile


(Dixie Chicks)

Pure Awesome

One less thing for the landfill

In my quest to eliminate the amount of waste I produce I have always been troubled by the toothbrush/toothpaste dilemma. I am not a person willing to forgo some clean teeth, well, at least not permanently. Should a person merely use the toothbrush longer than the three months recommended by the American Dentists Association in order to decrease the number of toothbrushes used over time? Well, I already do that (coupled with boiling water to kill germs) but it just doesn't seem like enough.

I like the sound and look of these toothbrushes. Unfortunately shipping them from Australia isn't exactly going to be helping my initial problem of waste.

http://environmentaltoothbrush.com.au/

So, I found and settled with this one. I don't actually need it yet so it will sit in my drawer for a while (sorry, no review). 2.99 isn't a bad price and finding it at target (less than a mile from my house) is a plus for convenience and transportation cost/impact. It's packaging doubles as a postage paid envelope to be sent back at the end of it's life for recycling. No landfill for this one!

http://www.preserveproducts.com/products/personalcare/toothbrush-mail-back-pack.html

Another Step in Recycling

I dread throwing the tops off of bottles and abhor throwing out whole empty plastic tubes like the one formerly filled with velocity face wash I just finally finished. So, my depressing empty tube of velocity spurred me into a frenzy of internet searches until I found these two websites:

AVEDA cap recycling
Origins tube recycling

So, sometime this week (possibly today if I make it) I will take a daring trip to that scary place some refer to as "The Mall"--bag of recycling in hand--and ask the ladies at the counter if they would be so kind to recycle an empty velocity bottle for me.