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Apr. 23, 2008
BFS #24 Reduce, Recycle, Reuse
Nancy's new assignment
This week's assignment is The Three R's -- Reduce, Recycle, and Re-use. I thought since today is Earth Day and this month is Arbor Day that we all could share ideas or tips that we use for recycling, reducing or re-using items in our home. Do you recycle at all? Does it just seem nearly impossible to recycle? Trying to catch every piece of trash that goes into the garbage is a hard one for me too. I have a friend who is very diligent with it and so are her children! It amazed me to see how they re-spect nature and use the Three R's in their home. I challenge you all to write about your ventures with recycling, reducing, and re-using your trash and take a pledge to at least try to use some of the tips that you read about on this assignment. Don't forget to add your favorite scripture for this assignment.
8 years ago, I lived in the burb part of a city. Once a week the garbage truck would come by, and an hour or so later, the blue bin truck would come by.. and away would go all my waste - both recycleable and non-recycleable.
Then we moved here. Here, there is no nice weekly truck.. or two.. There's no local dump to take it to either. If I want to rid myself of my household waste, there's a few ways to go about it. DIG A HOLE - Make your own dump. OR - STORE IT!
Now I have a pristine piece of land, there's no dumps by previous owners - compared with many of my neighbours, who do have huge dumps on their property. I had a friend who moved into their property and had 5 huge truck loads of scrap metal removed from their property - and then they had the big clean up - where they had another 8-10 truckloads take stuff to the dump, and they still have dump sites on their property.
So, what I do is, I have 4 large rubbermaid buckets between my washer and dryer. One contains glass and tins, another cardboard and household paper, another plastics, and another has bottles and things that can be returned for deposit. We separate as we go all day long. Under the sink I have a kitchen catcher sized bag that lasts about 48 hours or so - maybe a little more. Into that goes things like styrofoam meat trays, or sticky dirty tin foil that can't be washed properly. When that bag is full, a boy takes it to a shed and stores it in the shed - sometimes for 6-8 months. We used to burn these bags of kitchen trash, but the burning barrels are full of ash now, and we can't seem to find more burning barrels. Now we have to haul it to the city dump - pay 5 dollars for a half ton load. Trent and I did this last week. The rest of the kitchen garbage - the vegetable stuff, goes into a pail under the sink and later into the compost heap - where the dogs, cats and chickens self serve and then leave the rest for the worms.
Oh, those buckets in my mudroom, between my washer and dryer.. those I have to take to one of three towns. My town has paper, plastic and tins, but not glass or bottles. The town to the east has bottles, paper and tins, but no glass or plastic. The town to the west has paper, plastic, tins, glass, but no bottles. Each town is 10 minutes away - well, except my town, my town is 2 minutes away. We try to take them every week or week and a half.
So next time you think recycling is too much trouble for you to separate and take it to the curb in a separate blue box.. think about how blessed you are that someone comes to pick it up! Think of how blessed you are that you don't have to store your garbage for 6 months.
It's my way of life. I have no other options. - well I do, I could dump it all on my own yard and have it blow about in the wind, or have my horses get injured by it. Oh, and about 3 years ago, a neighbour took some paper recycling to the local town here.. the one 2 minutes away. She dumped her paper in the blue bin, but some how an envelope with her name on it flew out, either when she was dumping, or when another person came along.. and the police found it and fined her for littering!!! You can't win!
I reuse my milk jugs to haul drinking water to the house. I don't make crafts or bird houses, or bird feeders or anything like that.. but I do sometimes cut off the flat bottom of the milk jugs to put over baby plants before the threat of frost is over, that way it makes a little green house over the plants.
Luke 12: 42-44 42 The Lord replied, "Nu, who is the faithful and sensible manager whose master puts him in charge of the household staff to give them their share of food at the proper time? 43 It will go well with that servant if he is found doing his job when his master comes. 44 Yes, I tell you he will put him in charge of all he owns. (CJB)
Sorry, I had to come back and write more - I know this post was already getting long, but I have more to say.
I just took my son potty. I noticed there was a poop smudge on the tiles. Instead of reaching for one of those disposable clorox towelettes - I reached for a rag, used some water and wiped it off. Minutes later, I had to wipe my daughter's bum.. Again, instead of a disposable whatnot - I used a rag. I never bought those baby wipes, I have dozens of cheap face clothes that I used to wipe bums. We just rince them under water in the tap and squeeze out the excess, wipe the bum, and then throw it in the laundry, never to be used again until it's clean again.
I used cloth diapers - can you imagine me storing a year's worth of diapers? - forget trying to burn diapers.. I have had to use them for the second year as his volume of pee was too great for the cloth diapers, but that's why I also worked hard to get him potty trained soon - a year of disposable diapers was enough for me!
Water conservation.. I use infant potty training to conserve using cloth diapers and having to wash them..With Janney, she was pretty much potty trained at 10 months old, having rarely sat more than a moment in a wet cloth diaper.. but then we took a trip across Canada, and she sat in disposables for a month - and it took me over a year to get her potty trained after that month in disposables. Infant potty training is the best - compared to disposable diapers which fill landfills, and cloth diapers which use water and time and energy to dry them.
I use my clothes line as much as possible. I haven't started yet, it's still too cold - the items would be out on the line - and I only have enough line for 3 wash loads - nothing would be dry to take down by the time the 4th load was washed. But in two weeks or so, I should be putting everything out on the clothes line for the rest of the summer.
I don't read magazines.. so I'm not wasting that "paper pulp" - I read books, and I use the library, and we have thousands of books in our own personal library - some stored on bookshelves, some stored in rubbermaid boxes in the basement waiting for more shelves to be made.
I don't use much paper towel in the kitchen.. I do use some.. but I wipe up spills with dish towels or rags and I wash them. I don't use much that we would in our day call disposable - because disposing of it is such a pain.
I whip my eggs and whip cream with a wisk, I make bread by hand, not with a machine, I use a knife not a food processor to cut vegetables...
And when it's all said and done, I don't do this for the environment, I do it because it's my way of life, it's slower, it's more family oriented, it's more user friendly, it's .. it's just easier to me. My Unassisted Birth group and my Homeschooling group have both been discussing a number of articles that came out this week, about Rationing food in the USA, or The Very Great Depression of 2008. When you look at some of the posts Julie writes about Haiti - the devastation of famine and bad economy - when you look at Lori's blog about starvation and malnutrition and insufficient healthcare.. .. and then I see a commercial about how much thinker the Mr. Clean wipes are - more like towelettes even though they pop up like a kleenex.. UGHHH! It makes me want to scream! How dare I use a Mr. Clean wipe, and then throw it away.. our world is throwing away the lives of the people in Haiti with just as much disdain and disrespect.. and it's not just Haiti, it's everywhere - We have such affluence and blessing of the Lord here, We MUST NOT FORGET that God created this world, not for the glory of the world.. not because the earth is such a masterpiece, not because it's beautiful.. God created this world to be our home.. for US.. God's purpose is US - Humans - God's children. We MUST put people first. We must turn our focus off ourselves and start seeing the world through much larger world view glasses - and decide that we're not going to be complicit in aiding the devastation of other peoples like the Haitians.
Ginny has already commended me on my small part.. Thanks.. but my small part is still not enough. And not because of the way I'm abusing the earth.. because I don't think I am.. my small part is not enough because I'm still living a comfortable life, and not devoted enough in prayer for Lori's hospital patients, or the children who need families, or my neighbour who still doesn't know his Messiah. Where's my acts of service? Am I giving enough to charities? Lori's sister needs things like plastic cups for the children to drink from - have I sent any money or cases of peanutbutter or tuna fish to Julie's orpanage? Nope... But, I have told my husband I want to support The Lords Prayer ministry in Liberia, where John and his wife are building a school, teaching the children who their saviour is, and is training them up to be the next generation of educated people, of Servants to the Lord in their nation..
And now I shall end my rant..
John 3:16 - for God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, shall have live and not die. (the Sombra's Memory version - probably mixed up version of lots of translations)
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Posted by nancysnook 
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Apr. 23, 2008 - Oh my...
Blessings.
Ginny