by Tab Moura
When I think of Earth Day, I think of— well— the earth. The whole world. All at once. And wow… where do we even begin, right?
We can talk about common topics if you really wanna, like climate, and climate, and viruses, but I feel like sometimes we miss the forest for the trees when it comes to the planet. With all of its enormous planetness, we risk forgetting our neighborhoods and homes. This year I’m looking at the ways I can personally be more earth-conscious.
Metal Straws – this has been so helpful for my husband and I. We prefer to use glass or metal for our drinkware. Due to our kids’ special needs, we prefer plastic straws for them, but we still buy reusable.
Bees wrap – this one is growing on me. The wax paper is thick, but with use, it seems to continue to cling better.
Berkey – we were in a really tricky place when COVID began last year. Our tap water is not safe, so we exclusively used bottled water. When water was sold out, we had to get creative. Our Berkey truly saved the day.
Reusable grocery bags – this is just common sense at this point, besides being good for the environment, I am a big fan of how strong they are.
Reusable water bottles – I love my reusable water bottles, there are so many kinds. Because we have 5 people under our roof, I’ve been able to get a few kinds while we each figure out what style we prefer for functionality.
Recycling – we have found that whether we have a recycling box or not, we prefer to recycle. You can look around to find your areas’ recycling drop-off locations, or contact the city and request your own recycling bin. Recycling facilities are designed to reduce the effect of our waste on our environment, it’s estimated that the average American produces an annual amount of 2,072 lbs of trash… for obvious mathematical reasons, recycling helps us avoid a Wall-E situation.
Gardening and compost – one of the things we can do to improve the vitality of our Victory Gardens (or even the little tomato plant on your back porch) is to put food scraps from leftover produce in the soil. I’m not gonna get real technical, there are some great resources for learning more about composting. I hope you take a look!
Green medicine – we have had a cannabis industry in OK long enough for us all to acknowledge that those plastic containers begin to pile up pretty quickly. Ideas I’ve seen include: growing at home, bring used plastic containers to the dispo, or even bring a glass container to the disposal.
Buy used clothing/ donate used clothing – I missed shopping used clothing stores last year! These stores are seriously so fun to explore. I like that they have clothing from multiple decades all in one place, and this also helps to reduce waste.
What are you doing differently this Earth Day? Have recent events changed your perspective on what you can do to help reduce your own carbon footprint?