The Three Rs

Friday, April 22, 2011

My first job out of college was tramping around landfills in the state of New Jersey to see if the ground water was contaminated. It was an eye-opening experience, to say the least -- to see not only the mountains and mountains of garbage but also the perfectly good stuff that people threw out, which then became garbage. I think that's when my passion for the environment became a full-fledged commitment. So in keeping with the spirit of Earth Day and the 3Rs of the environment (reduce, reuse, recycle), I'm reusing some pictures in this post.

dress -- Mossimo (Target)

cardigan -- Old Navy 

boots -- Nomad (thrifted) 
necklace -- JCPenney

I first posted these pictures on January 11 of this year. (Click here to see these pictures in their original post. I didn't include this fun snappy narrative along with it, so you're really better off just staying here.)

Back in January, I thought I was being so brave by wearing this outfit to work -- those big honking boots and then the statement necklace were really different from my usual style. What were people going to say? And what were they going to think? (and why do I get so unglued about what people think? does it really matter that much?) Now, my boots and necklace seem kind of mundane, and I don't blink an eye about wearing them.

Reusing pictures wasn't the only way that I celebrated Earth Day though. It was cold, and instead of turning on the heat, I built a fire. I saved oil, and got exercise by feeding that darn fire. It was hungry, and I had to keep getting up for food.

I rode my bike instead of taking a car -- great exercise.

I composted my orange peels instead of throwing them away.

I recycle and reuse as many things as I can. If  I don't know how to reuse something, then I save it and scour the eco blogs to try and find a way to use them. (I'm still trying to find something cool to make from all the bread tabs that I've been saving -- anybody have any ideas?).

Over the years, I've found all sorts of ways to use things that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill. Here's a bag that my mom made from juice packs.

And a pillow that she made out of clothing labels. It's a little bit beat up, but I still love it a lot. My mom saved labels for a long time, and whenever she found one that reflected something that was of interest to me,
it went into my pillow pile. 

Coasters made from record albums, circuit boards, and magazines.

 Frames made from bicycle chains.

Environmentalists often get a bad rap or are ridiculed for some of the things they do (I once stopped eating yogurt because I couldn't figure out what to do with all the containers!) but taking care of the world we live in is something that I believe we should all embrace -- to me, it's no different than taking care of your home or your body.

I know that I can be somewhat obsessive about this issue, but the good thing about the 3Rs is that you don't have to do it all to make a difference. I mean, I read one article that said you could save your nail clippings and use them for a pot scrubber. I decided that that had way too much of an ewwwww factor for me, and mine go in the garbage. Find one thing that you're comfortable with doing and incorporate it into your lifestyle.

• A 15-year-old tree makes about 700 paper grocery bags. A busy supermarket can use them all in under an hour!
• Enough wood and paper is thrown away each year to heat 50 million homes for 20 years.
• Bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year and requires up to 47 million gallons of oil per year to produce. 
• An estimated 80 million Hershey's kisses are wrapped each day, using enough aluminum foil to cover over 50 acres of space (almost 40 football fields). All that foil is recyclable. 
• Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- the equivalent of one-half gallon of gasoline.
• Each person produces, on average, 4.4 pounds of solid waste each day or almost a ton of trash per year.

 

What did you do in honor of Earth Day?