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Emily Parnell
on May 25 2013 - 06:00 AM
Do you want something great to happen? You better start doing something.
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Christi Diggs
on May 23 2013 - 06:00 AM
A drop of spin, a cup of deception and tsp. politics=Apathy
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Lindsay Metcalf
on May 22 2013 - 06:00 AM
When that tornado siren sounds, I'm in the basement
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mara williams
on May 21 2013 - 06:00 AM
Summer break has this mom on a house upkeep war path.
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I have a book here at home, 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth, by The EarthWorks Group. When I was a teacher, I would copy the pages each week on the back of the weekly newsletter. In light of a recent thread I started about global warming, I felt there was a need to dig this book back out again. One person checkmarked the choice on my poll saying that they believed in global warming but didn't know what to do about it. This blog is for that one person, and for everyone else! Show these tips to your kids, your friends, and your kids' friends! It's not that difficult to make a difference, but these little things make a huge impact in reversing damage we've already done!
#1: Recycle Glass
Light bulbs, windows, TVs, mirrors... What do they all have in common? Glass.
Look around. See how much glass we use. Now here's an amazing thought: We throw most of our glass away. Every month, we toss out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper.
You probably think this doesn't make much sense, since we're just making more garbage, and wasting the Earth's treasures besides. And you're right. This is especially true because we can reuse all those bottles and jars--we can recycle them!
Did You Know:
*Glass is recyrcled at factories where they break bottles and jars into little bits, then melt them down and mix them with new glass.
*People have been making glass for over 3,000 years. So when Nero was fiddling in ancient Rome, he probably had a bottle of something to drink right next to him.
*For a long time, glass was considered precious. Then people got so good at making it that we started thinking of it as garbage.
*Now we throw out 28 billion bottles and jars every year!
*Recycling glass saves energy for making new glass. The energy saved from recycling one glass botle will light a 100-watt light bulb for four hours.
What You Can Do
*Find a place you can keep a box or two for collecting glass.
*If you have enough room, keep a different box for each difrerent color of glass--brown, green, clear. Otherwise, you might have to sort the glass later.
*Take the caps, corks, or rings off the bottles and jars. It's okay to leave the paper labels on, but rinse the glass out before you put it in the box.
*Once you've got a place to put the glass, it only takes about 15 minutes a week to keep up the recycling.
*Ask an adult to find out where the nearest recycling center is. Your neighborhood may even have curbside recycling.
*Every week or two, gather the boxes and take them to the recycling center or put them on the curb for pickup.
*Don't forget to pick up bottles wherever you find them, and take them home to recycle.
-Source: John Javna, 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth, Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City, 1990.
I wish we had curbside recycling. It's hard for us to find a place to hold our recycleables, we just don't have room for everything. We do recycle cans faithfully, we try to do paper goods because DS's Caravans collects paper for a fundraiser. I'd like to do more though. Thanks for the encouragement KittyKat.Thanks for the wonderful suggestions. We have bins in our garage for paper, plastic, cans, and glass. I just ordered a book from Chinaberry (fabulous independent book seller in San Diego) called Squeaky Clean (by Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry) which discusses how to detox and create a more green environment.Ok since this is about glass, I noticed that some companies are going back to making glass baby bottles! I saw an ad for them the other day!! It was kind of cool, wish they had them in stores just 2 years ago and I would have got those for DD instead!We thought it would be a lot of extra work, sorting, and we didn't have a lot of room either. Started with paper sacks set inside of small cardboard boxes we had junking up the garage. It's grown to the taller plastic trash cans (still use paper bags on the inside) and we throw vegetable and fruit garbage into a compost pile of leaves and tree/bush trimmings. It took just a little more time to set up, but now it's routine. Trash bag is hardly ever full.
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