Dailies

Happy Earth Day!

By Joy ⋅ April 22, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Whenever I’m staying here in Vancouver, my Green Side comes out more than usual. It’s really easy to think green here, in my opinion.

I remember years ago when we immigrated to Canada and we weren’t used to segregating the trash into newspapers, mixed paper, bottles, etc. So one day, I think my mom got to lazy to do that and we got a love letter from the city’s waste management company about it. Oops. They’re watching us. I guess that’s why I feel more green here. I find more people who are actively engaged in recycling, reusing, and into eco-anything. I think our neighbor has a compost pit, too.

My friend has a spa that uses natural products which she formulated herself. In fact, she’s releasing a line of natural yoga body sprays that have reusable bottles. Right now she’s looking for recycle post-consumer packaging. [If you have any recommendations for companies that supply this, let me know!] She tries to avoid giving paper brochures because she hates wasting paper.

I’m an avid mailer and half the time I use old magazine paper as stationery, to write on or to make as envelopes or packaging material. It makes me feel a little better about my paper obsession.

This past weekends freak weather of snow and sleet in the middle of April is a very obvious reminder that we are now experiencing the fruits of our earth-sense-less behavior. Who knows what else we’re going to see next?

It’s easier to just be apathetic about the earth and our environment most of the time, and it really takes an effort to get into that consciousness of taking care of our Earth in any way we can. But we really have to, or we’re just going to keep finding new ways to deal with the symptoms (flood! drought! pollution! heat! diseases) instead of going to the root of the problem. Could it be us?

I finished reading the book “In Defense of Food”, as I get deeper into my madness for food and cooking. It’s a very enlightening read in that the author not only managed to change my attitude toward food and the source of my food, but also the source of food of my food. [Got it?] The ground that we disrespect with all these chemicals? Well, we’re eating them through the food that we eat which got its nutrients from there. The animals that we feast on? They eat that, too. Michael Pollan brilliantly bridges the connection between man, it’s food, and its environment. We are all connected in this big, symbiotic relationship and we need to take action if we are to survive and thrive.

I think it would be my goal to think about what good I did for the environment each day. I try to maintain an “accomplishment” list, and I’ll make it a part of that.

Today, I signed up for the Red Dot Campaign, which is Canada’s No to Junk Mail program. Junk mail begone! For those in the US, there’s Forest Ethics, which has its own Do Not Mail campaign.

What did you do for the Earth today?