Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Change The World Wednesday
How did you do on last week's challenge to twist off light bulbs? Hopefully we raised our awareness and learned that we don't really need all that light.
Speaking of raising our awareness, this week's challenge is about exactly that. It comes from one of our newest readers, River221, a 13-year old whose Geography teacher asked the class to try this out. Here's how it goes:
This week, collect your garbage rather than toss it out. Continue to compost and recycle, but rather than take your bag of "real" garbage to the dumpster or put it out for collection ... keep it. At the end of the week, take a look at how much you've collected and consider ways to reduce it. This should truly open our eyes to the amount of waste in our lives.
Since this is something which we all can do, there won't be a second half to this challenge. But ... if you write about it, be sure to let me know and I'll Stumble and Tweet it. And by the way, if you'd like to Tweet about this challenge, please use the hashtag #ctww.
Let's take a look at our Honor Society:
Brian, from The New Author, stopped by and shared how he not only twists off bulbs but actually changes fixtures in his house to use less.
EcoGrrl from EcoGrrl Speaks reminded us to use daylight when it's available and to resist the automatic reflex to turn on a light when entering the room. Good tip, EcoGrrl!
Elizabeth Barrette wrote Choosing the Right Light. And from our Zero Food Waste challenge she wrote, Avoid Wasting Food. Both articles are well worth the read.
Kate from The Holdfast Seeker dropped in. She simply doesn't replace burnt out bulbs in her bathroom and has found she can live with only two.
Ange came by and offered us some great ideas (LEDs and candles) and offered to send Elizabeth Barrette (and I suppose anyone) instructions on how to fix a light socket. She also wrote Fill your paper.
Our friend, John, from I have dreams came by. He shared that he has twisted off bulbs and reminded us to simply turn lights off when they aren't needed.
Better Man from Becoming a Better Person stopped in. Thanks, Better Man, for the award!
Mrs. Green wrote about our challenge at Little Green Blog. She also told us that she couldn't participate in this challenge because, in her house, they only use solar powered LEDs. Way to go, Mrs. Green!
Rewinn joined in and said that the "simple act of looking over the fixtures while unscrewing a bulb suggested other ideas" which he wrote about in Dusting Lightbulbs for Fun and Profit.
Eemilla was here and wrote How Many Light Bulbs Do You Need.
River221 joined us for the first time and offered us this week's challenge. Thanks, River221 ... and by the way, if you leave a link to your blog, we'll stop by and give it a read.
From Ann we got this Save The World Wednesday post.
Le-Chat came by and wrote My Seventies Bathroom.
As always ... our Honor Society did a brilliant job.
That's it for this week!
Are you ready? All together now ...
WE'RE CHANGING THE WORLD ... ONE CHALLENGE AT A TIME!
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I only have garbage collection once a month - most communities offer this option and it's also WAY cheaper (we still get recycling weekly and yard waste biweekly). After doing this for so long (and having neighbors who have multiple household members as well doing the same), it's hard to imagine how people can fill up an entire can in a week.
ReplyDeleteOn the last Thursday of every month the local landfill allows us to deposit our trash for free. Knowing this we cut down and recycle as much as possible to make it to that last Thursday. We are a family of three but we generate maybe one kitchen bag per week. It saves money, saves landfill space, and most importantly helps the environment. We plan to cut back more as I plan to compost.
ReplyDeleteIm glad that the youth are being educated about what is happening in our environment now. In this way, their eyes will be opened and I hope they will going to realize the huge impact we we do not care enough to our environment.
ReplyDeleteWe can do a lot to help save our planet. And one of the easiest way is to start on our own house, to reduce, reuse, recycle our waste and old things and to dispose them properly.
Local town halls here have offered a 'composter' (a sort of huge green plastic container with no bottom and slits in the sides for a small sum so people could put their compost 'cleanly' in their garden. There was a great leaflet explaining everything, including tea and coffee grinds and recycled paper towel, that could go in there. So we have one.
ReplyDeleteWe too have one full 50L bag of rubbish (for 5 of us) that we throw out every week (not counting recyclables) yet I seem to spend my life sorting every piece of rubbish out. Many things (yoghurt containers etc, tetra packs and now even aluminium cans are not recyclable here. Which makes the sorting a bit sad sometimes.
We have managed to reduce by buying a water filter instead of using bottled water. We also try to buy family size containers instead of individual yoghurt portions and buying ham from delis instead of packaged from the supermarket.
We recharge out batteries instead of using disposable ones too...
Looking forward to seeing what other people have done.
PS - for the lights. DO WE REALLY NEED SUCH BRIGHT Christmas Displays??? Could we not reduce with just some lovely LED lights in an outdoor tree instead of every house looking like Disneyland?
I love your idea of "Change the World Wednesday." While changing the world all at once can be rather overwhelming, if you do a little here and a little there, it soon adds up. Good luck with it!
ReplyDeleteHi Ange,
ReplyDeleteYour comment about the LED Christmas lights is wonderful. And here's a tip for anyone who would like to replace their existing string of lights with LED Christmas lights ... Home Depot is taking your old string in exchange for a $3 coupon towards LED strings. They will then recycle the old variety. So ... it's a great opportunity to exchange those old lights without spending too much money.
Thanks for your comments!
SF
we only take out about a half of bag a trash a week. I am not sure how we do it, but we do. If all the children would leave home we could do even better! LOL
ReplyDeleteKelli
SF, I was almost about to miss this week, you'll see why on the post I have made.
ReplyDeleteBut I found this video clip and went off on a tangent.
http://tomusarcanum.blogspot.com/
Enjoy.
AV
I still live in the comfort of garbage pick up twice a week, but I don't fill more than one plastic bag in three weeks I think. All paper, glass, textile, chemicals, go to the proper collection points. I don't compost fruit/vegetable peels and seeds (because I prefer fallen leaves)but simply feed most of them to the birds in the yard.
ReplyDeleteThanks to this 'comfort' I'm also twice a week confronted with what other people still simply put on the curbs on our trash tours. So I'm glad to hear children are being made aware of this. Because you won't believe the amount of paper, glass bottles, paint cans and textiles I see being dumped on the curb. And whatever goes in that compression truck won't get recycled (not here, though I know in some poorer countries people get paid to hand pick useful materials from the sludge, that's good news). What I bring home as much as I can is the textiles. A lot of it I simply wear, if it's my taste, size and not worn out. The rest I reuse to craft with, otherwise I bring it to the collection point myself. Here you can see some knitwear I rescued to make into new pretty things:
http://trashcollector.blogspot.com/2008/02/free-yarn.html
Wonderful challenge; what a great geography teacher you have, River!
ReplyDeleteI'm all posted up on our site and am looking forward to seeing how people get on. As you know, this is a subject that is close to my heart!
http://littlegreenblog.com/blog/green-news/change-the-world-wednesday-week-11/
I have posted about garbage on Gaiatribe.
ReplyDeleteI had a little fun with this, in Growing Mr Scrubby
ReplyDelete