Going "light" green

Anyone who knows me would not consider me to be 

"green".....not because I don't

care about the environment, but I am 

a product of living in the South.  Sad to say,

recycling is not in anyone's vocabulary in this area.

Truly, it amazes me when I visit northern cities or 

other households outside of our area.  In our city,

 you will not ever see a public

 garbage can that separates cans, paper

and plastic.  I can't think of any person

or friend living here that even separates garbage in 

their house.  We all drive SUVs and other gas guzzling

vehicles,  water conservation is not a thought

on the horizon (living at or below sea level, we 

have a never ending supply of water),  and 

no one shops with their "own" shopping bags.

This is the sad reality of the South.  

One time, when Elizabeth was in second grade,

she came home and said "Mom, we need to recycle".  

Somewhere, she had read about it and was inspired.

At that time, there was only one place to drop 

off recycled items and they were open from 10:00 to 12:00 

on Saturday.  If you missed the two hour

window, you were stuck with your items for

another week!  She labeled separate bags for 

paper, cans and plastics and our family

made a valiant attempt to recycle!  However, weekends 

are very busy for us and we could rarely make the 

drop off time.  We suffered with stinky garbage for weeks

and finally, with good reason, our recycling 

efforts fell apart.  I tell you this so that anyone

reading this who is not from this area, can understand

that you must have a support system and 

community effort to have successful recycling.  

It must be my age as for some reason, I am starting

to become very aware of just how much plastic

we use on a daily basis.  People that live in our area

think nothing of buying cases of water, and everyone I 

know has water bottles in their refrigerator.  Surprisingly, 

I, a product of the non-recycling South, have a problem  

with this.  So, after years of buying plastic water bottles

and throwing them in the regular trash, I have 

stopped using disposable plastic water bottles.  

Several months ago, our local grocery store had these water 

 bottles on sale. I bought five, one for each member of the 

family.  I still bought some disposable water bottle for 

"guests" that came to our house. 

It worked really well; there were no complaints

from the peanut gallery.  So, I expanded and bought 

more.  We labeled the bottles with names of our family,

friends that come over on a daily basis and "guests".  

I now buy no more plastic disposable water 

bottles and really do think they should 

be outlawed.  Now, this doesn't

sound like much of an accomplishment to 

people who recycle on a daily basis, but for me ~ 

it is a giant step forward!  

Maybe garbage separating trashcans will be next!

FYI - Pesto Making Post is still "coming soon"!