Blogger Action Day

Good Monday! Today, if you are not aware, is Blogger Action Day helping voice ideas, opinions, etc. about the environment, and what we each can do to lesson our impact on the planet. I admit I am not a big recycler, though we do recycle newspapers, aluminum cans, and cardboard. We also use our newspapers as a weed barrier in the garden under our grass clippings. They dissolve, and help to improve our garden soil, and also help cut down on the amount of weeding required in the garden. We are very conscious of what types of bug/weed killers we use and try to go with organic solutions when possible. At work, I recycle our empty ink cartridges by sending them to school with our daughter, where her school then gets a discount on the supplies they need, and we don't add to the landfill with all the empty cartridges. I also work hard to reuse as much paper as possible. We print on one side of the paper, and then when we don't need those pages anymore, we use them for photocopying on the other side or run them through the fax or our ink jet printer. On statement days, the mistakes I keep and the tear or cut to make them into scratch note pads. We refill our ink cartridges at home for our ink jet printer. Walgreen's has just started a fabulous service where you can get your black cartridge refilled for $10 or the color cartridge refilled for $15. That is a MAJOR savings from buying new ones, and we also have the earth friendly reusing of the original cartridge. So while we don't do a lot of recycling, we do try to do our part. We have also taught our daughter, Mina to not liter, and even when we go for walks to pick up liter and throw it away properly. Another of my pet peeves is wasting food. I really hate to see kids throw away a plate of food that their parents should have stopped them from taking to begin with. I have taught my Girl Scouts more than once, if they take it and don't eat it, they should expect to get no sweets at the end of the meal. While this doesn't make me popular with them, it teaches them to think before they act, and I think we could all use more of that.