call her green for the children who've made her

each week, i have one real goal- to create less waste.

i've always been a bit of an environmentalist, but i never really had an actual perspective on waste until i moved out to my current home. you see, we unknowingly built our home less than five miles from a landfill which accepts more than 40 tons of garbage from canada every single day in addition to our own county's trash. five years ago, the landfill was scarcely visable above the treeline. today, it towers overhead resembling a mountain at a ski resort. though it is extrememly well-managed, there is nothing glamerous about this north face.

so five years ago, i decided that if we had to live near a landfill, in a community that does not offer curbside recycling, that we were going to have to do our part to ensure that not everything ends up in that landfill. we started recycling what we could- bottles, of course, but also papers are taken to a collection box that help raise funds for our public schools, we bought a composter and put everything that can go in, turned, and then put back into our soil and enrich our little postage stamp parcel of earth which was raised and groomed from nothing- brought back from the dead which now hosts a collection of kingdoms and phylums which would make any biologist smile.

and then theres still that issue of general garbage- what to do with it, and where to put it. i'd love to one day own a trash compactor, but this home & funds do not allow for such a novelty. instead i compact anything that can be compacted. water bottles (though fewer & fewer these days) and milk jugs are crushed and re-capped before they go in. loose items are put into other containers (peanut butter jars, etc) to try to save space. each week, my one goal is to only have to put out one can of trash for our family of four, and our two cats. it can't always be done, as the occasional project will leave us with a mountain of trash.

but more often than not, i put out our one can of trash.

and that makes me proud.

because it could easily be two cans. or more.

and because i know that my children will have one less bag of trash to deal with in their lifetime.

i'll leave you with a little jack johnson on this sunny friday. (because who doesn't love a little jack johnson on a sunny friday!)

Three it's a magic number
Yes it is, it's a magic number
Because two times three is six
And three times six is eighteen
And the eighteenth letter in the alphabet is R
We've got three R's we're going to talk about today
We've got to learn to
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
If you're going to the market to buy some juice
You've got to bring your own bags and you learn to reduce your waste
And if your brother or your sister's got some cool clothes
You could try them on before you buy some more of those
Reuse, we've got to learn to reuse
And if the first two R's don't work out
And if you've got to make some trash
Don't throw it out
Recycle, we've got to learn to recycle,
We've got to learn to
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle