Tuesday, April 22 was Earth Day. In reality, every day out to be Earth Day, because if it isn’t, one day, we won’t have an inhabitable planet.
I’m concerned about the kind of world my grandkids and your grandkids will inherit. Heck, even the world our sons and daughters will get. We’re not talking about concerns 50 years in the future. We’re talking less than 20 years. That means it affects you and me, too.
What are you doing to stop polluting the earth? Do you carry your own bags to the grocery store? I do. Rarely, do I have to get plastic bags, and when I do I line my trashcans with them. 😊 And I recycle them. Lots of places take those plastic bags now. Walmart, Tom Thumb, Albertsons. I’m sure other grocery stores do.
My state, I fear will never pass any laws outlawing plastic bags, but that’s a choice you and I can make.
Here’s a visual from the Greenpeace site showing what all the plastic is doing to our oceans and the life there. It’s disturbing. Donate or not as you choose. I’m not pushing that, but the info is important.
I know sometimes I think they may go a bit overboard (no pun intended), but they have facts on their side. We can argue about what to do with that information, but facts are facts. Because of the earths’ spin, the sun rises in the east and sinks in the west. The moon travels around the earth. Water freezes at 32 degrees F and 0 degrees centigrade. Facts are facts.
Here’s another link, my husband shared with me from National Geographic. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/reduce-plastic-use-families-kids-environment-culture/ Great ideas to use with kids. One of my favorite ideas was to use a non-disposable plastic straw. I did that for awhile before I realized all those straws were creating lines around my lips, so now no straw of any kind for me. 😊 The second is to eat ice cream in a cone and not a cup with a plastic spoon. Isn’t that super?
You can walk your neighborhood and pick up trash. Bob does that regularly where we walk. Here’s a pic we saw just this morning. 
What causes someone to toss out a whole sack filled with their trash from a fast food meal? What’s with that?
All the plastic wrapping on EVERYTHING is out of control. Maybe you think you can’t do anything about this issue, but you can. Use a reusable bottle or cup to drink you water. Stop buying water bottles by the gazillion. Even if you try to recycle the bottles, if you don’t pull off the caps and the plastic around the top that used to connect to the lid, they will get thrown out and dumped in the dump.
There’s the whole area of packaging of hygiene products I stumbled on and gosh, I don’t know what to do with that.
This is really too massive a topic for a blog post, but it’s a start. I feel certain I’ll circle back to this again.
What do you do to recycle? Do you carry around a plastic water bottle all the time, or do you have a reusable container? (Mine is turquoise, of course.) Love to hear your thoughts on this important subject.
(The featured image is the NASA Blue Marble free from Pexels.)
Marsha R. West, Author 
Reuse, recycle, reduce!! Bill is an extremist on this. Which is a good thing! Everyone should recycle and help in ways that are in their control. It doesn’t take much effort to do so, and to do so the correct way. Thanks for pointing that out and for this post.
Government is another story, protecting industry and big polluters. We need to vote those people out of office for the sake of our grandchildren and their children. I wrote a post about this on Earth Day! Here was a link I attached.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/how-trump-is-changing-science-environment/?fbclid=IwAR3MTdgSMdql-PCS32Tz6GXDM7rM5TC43BoW2KUAwk7cRbN4MX_lLViFbZI
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hey, Susan. More of us need to speak out on this important issue. It’s real. And it’s not going away on if we take no action. Thanks for sharing the link. I’m going to check it out later today. On a tight schedule. Thanks so much for stopping by and for what you and Bill do for the environment. 🙂
LikeLike
We’re doing more with composting our food waste into the garden. The city passed a ban on plastic bags and is working on plastic straws and containers. Small steps, but it’s a start.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hey, Jacquie, that’s super. We should look into composting. Congrats to your city leaders. Every little bits helps. Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I use refillable water bottles, cloth grocery bags, and buy my shampoo in bar form now. We’ve reduced the amount of stuff we have and stuff we buy, and won’t go to restaurants that put straws in their drinks.
I also keep an eye open for “more” I can do easily, like switching to waxed paper instead of plastic wrap.
The cool thing is that the environment is there, front and center in my mind. I don’t do anything without considering the impact on mother earth. 🙂 …. that said, sometimes I choose to do the “wrong” thing, but this happens less and less these days 😀
LikeLike
Good to make people aware of ways to help in small and large ways. Anything helps. I’m so glad our city picks up recycles
So much easier for us to recycle and we don’t have to store the stuff waiting to make a trip ourselves. Michigan has a 10 cent deposit on cans and plastic bottles. That has really helped to keep roadsides clean. Watch Our Planet series on Netflix. Mind blowing info on climate change and how nature works together. Gorgeous photography too.
LikeLike