Isn’t it interesting that old is new again, like organic food or being “green” by recycling?  All of a sudden people realized it’s bad to put pesticides on or inject the food we eat with chemicals; how brilliant of them! Could we be missing a simple fix to being green that’s beyond recycling? I found this great timeline on the History of Recycling.  The world has been working on the premise for centuries. 

Let’s step back in time to MY childhood which is not quite a century yet – ha ha. 

We had milk delivered in glass bottles and returned the bottles to the milkman.  We used paper straws and had to drink quickly before they got too soggy; they were paper. We covered left-overs in glass dishes with reusable covers sort of like shower caps.  And we used the popular re-sealable and washable Tupperware bowls to keep food fresh.  We wrapped our sandwiches in wax paper (no plastic sandwich bags) and took lunches in paper bags.  Oh and there weren’t plastic coffee pods, just percolator coffee pots that sounded awesome.  We didn’t have disposable dish cloths or throw away foamy scrubbers.  We had cloth napkins and carried cloth sacks to the grocery or were given paper bags.  We hung our laundry out to dry, no dryer sheets necessary.  We didn’t have paper towels; we used a dish towel to clean up messes.  And for diapers, I actually used cloth for both my ‘now’ grown-up children until potty training time. 

So America, besides the straws and plastic bags we’re all worried about, what about the trash generated from fast food? In a 2018 article from Franchise Help stated that “Globally, fast food generates revenue of over $570 billion – that is bigger than the economic value of most countries. In the United States revenue was a whopping $200 billion in 2015 – quite a lot of growth since the 1970 revenue of $6 billion.” That’s a lot of paper trash.

I’m not a hater on fast food, but this cannot be good for our waistlines or our “waste bins.”

What surprised me in California, which has banned plastic bags and frowns on straws, is the huge lack of recycling centers.  How is it possible that the people in California “lost out on at least $308 million in nickel deposits on cans and bottles in 2018, largely because it’s increasingly difficult to find a place to recycle them…”  KTLA.com. 

And while we’re at it should we be including those few gazillion cardboard boxes that are generated by that oh so convenient Amazon delivery company in this discussion?

Will the ban of plastic straws and plastic grocery bags keep the world from being polluted?  It obviously can’t hurt but how do we get other countries on board?  An article carried by Deutsche Welle in 2017 stated, “90 percent of all the plastic that reaches the world’s oceans gets flushed through just 10 rivers: The Yangtze, the Indus, Yellow River, Hai River, the Nile, the Ganges, Pearl River, Amur River, the Niger, and the Mekong.”  How do we make the world aware?  It seems that many just don’t know or don’t have access to recycling centers.

After mulling over all of these points, I wanted to come up with some earth-shattering solution to be presented on Earth Day 2019.

The solution, at least for Americans, was very simple:   TIME

We have one or two jobs and our children need to be involved in something 24-7.  Our work week is no longer 40 hours but rather 60, making shopping on-line for clothing, food and entertainment a way of life, which then generates a whole lot of boxes.

Drive-thru food is convenient when there’s no TIME to cook.  Disposable packaging means less TIME doing dishes, cleanup or planning.  We don’t really think when we reach for a plastic bag to store a slice of cheese or grab a paper plate to hold a few chips.  If we slowed down we’d grab a reusable bowl to store that cheese and a glass plate for those chips.

With more TIME we could reach for reusable things not just recyclable things.  We would be present in our lives instead of living a blur to get us from this day to the next; a blur that causes us to do things that are more convenient than conscientious. We might like being calmer and choose a lifestyle that affords us more TIME which would ultimately help us create less trash. 

Well that was easy…. Enjoy your Earth Day 2019!!

Grateful for you and living on this big blue planet,

Sheree