Earthday... I can remember the very first Earth Day. I was still in Elementary School. I was on the student council and we were very excited to be a part of Earth Day. For our part, we set up a store in an empty classroom and had students bring in newspapers, cans and bottles to be recycled and exchanged for "tickets" that could by them candy and toys in our pretend "store".
The promise of candy was all it took to have the kids bring in every piece of paper, can or bottle they could find. By the end of the week we had a mountain of paper so high that it almost touched the ceiling. No kidding!
Then we decided to have a student lunch. We ordered several hundred cheeseburgers from MacDonalds and preached to the kids about how much better it was for the environment to use paper wrapping instead of the styrofoam containers that McDonalds was still using at that time.
Well, we've come a long way in some respects (unfortunately, there's still a lot of styrofoam coming out of restaurants), but I think we've only gone backwards in other ways. Here are some startling facts about what we humans do (thanks to my neighbour for the research):
- Every year, Canadians use 1.5 BILLION coffee cups. You can bet most of these arent' recycled
- You could run 100,000 cars for a year on the amount of oil it takes to make plastic water bottles each year. Stop buying small water bottles!!
- The average household buys 18 kg of HARMFUL household cleaners. (pssst... I've
switched to METHOD, but there are tons out there, even Superstore has GREEN products now... no excuses!!!)
It's not practical for all of us to change the world, (i.e. I still use disposable diapers) but every little bit helps. I try turn off the TV and lights when we're not in the room. I buy GREEN products. I buy compact fluorescent lightbulbs. I try recycle everything I can (stupid Calgary for not recycling as well as Vancouver does)....
If you can change even just one thing, you're making the world better for Matthew and all other babies.
So what are you going to do?
Happy Earth Day :O)
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