Week 22
Only a month until we’re halfway through the year! With work and life and all, I’ve let some of the pages of this site get a little out-of-date, so this is my promise: give me another two weeks until my winter break and then start looking for updates to pages all over the site. I’d like to get our Tips and Tricks page updated with new info, and I’ve been thinking about adding a section to the site for book reviews. I’m doing a lot of garbage-related reading these days, and I would like to add that information to the Green Garbage Project for those who are interested.
This week, I have added two new links to the “news” tab, thanks to the fact that I have a speaking event coming up this Thursday. If anyone is in the Salem, Oregon area, I encourage you to come to the Salem Progressive Film Series’ screening of a new film called Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home. After the film, I will be speaking briefly about our project, and one of my Master Recycler class instructors will also be speaking. We’ll answer garbage-y questions in a panel format afterward. For more info, check out http://www.salemprogressivefilms.net/ The movie starts at 7 p.m. at the Grand Theater. The new articles I’m posting appeared in The Oregonian (good article, but one error – I teach at Willamina High School, not Dallas High School) and in Salem Monthly. Check ‘em out!
We’ve spent our last week preparing for Christmas and settling back into work after Thanksgiving. This past weekend, we put up our tree and strung lights on the outside of the house. I’ve received a few comments from readers about our cutting a tree down as opposed to using a fake tree or buying a potted tree and planting it after Christmas. I appreciate comments like these and hope everyone realizes that I spend a lot of time thinking about these sorts of issues, weighing environmental factors with other things I need to consider – financial impact, time constraints, and something that is important to me, family tradition. Adam and I discussed the merits of a fake tree over a cut tree, but besides the fact that I just can’t bring myself to let an artificial tree in the house, we’re not so sure the fake tree is better for the environment in the long run. After all, though the artificial tree is used over and over, it does eventually wind up in the dump. Our tree will be composted and its nutrients return to the earth. I haven’t yet looked for a life cycle analysis of a cut Christmas tree versus an artificial one (it’s on the to-do list!), but if anyone has a link, let me know. As for the potted tree, frankly, it’s not in the budget for us this year. The holidays are expensive already, and we’ve decided to commit our social activism money toward Green Garbage Project related expenses. Maybe next year will be the year we invest in a potted tree. We did, however, replace ALL our outdoor holiday lights with energy-efficient LED lights. The house looks quite pretty all decked out for the winter.
I know I’ve made this point several times already on this blog, but I really am concerned that the environmental apathy we often see in our country stems from the fact that no matter what a person does, often it’s never judged as enough. There’s no escaping the fact that we are a consumer culture – that consumption is a part of who we are – and radical changes are not going to happen overnight. I think we have to pick our battles and reward progress – every person who uses a green bag instead of a plastic bag at the grocery store is doing something good for the planet. This year, we choose to focus on drastically reducing our garbage footprint. Maybe next year, we’ll focus on energy conservation, and the year after that, water conservation. To stay sane, we have to take this one step at a time.
Before I close, I do want to say a big thank you to a woman I only know as Mary Lou. In response to the Salem Monthly article which mentioned we were sad to have no candy canes this year, Mary Lou called the editor of the paper and passed along her homemade candy cane recipe. We’ll be trying it out soon, and I’ll post the results as soon as I have them. Thanks so much for thinking of us!
4 comments
RSS feed for comments on this post.
In regards to cutting a Christmas tree verses a potted tree, the consumer at the tree farm is purchasing a local crop, the same as if one purhased corn or berries from the farmer. This practice is renewable and sustainable.
The idea of shifting your environmental focus from year to year (garbage reduction, energy conservation, etc) reminds me of Ben Franklin’s attempt to improve his character by focusing on one virtue every day (or week?) until he had assimilated them all. His and your efforts sound exhausting but commendable.
PS – My fiance and I had the discussion about Christmas trees, too. Our compromise is to maintain tradition with the cut tree, but to see that every year 5 more trees are planted in its place (or something to that effect).
artificial trees have a lot of toxins that go in to making them. rather than choosing cut vs. fake, i recently read that there are dwarf evergreens, so you can buy your tree once, potted, and keep it outside in the yard or on the porch the rest of the season!