It's Not Easy Being Green

Today is Earth Day - the 38th one ever. And we're finally getting it (can you say s-l-o-w?).

Thirty-eight years ago, Earth Day began as a series of grassroots "teach-ins" about environmental conservation and pollution. Today, April 22 has become an occasion to focus attention on human-generated climate change and the policies around it -- a topic not on the public mind in 1970. But it should have been. Had humans had the foresight to see how their habits were affecting the planet, we might not be in the mess we're in now...

How many oil spills will it take before the waters cannot recover - even with help?

How long before polar bears become extinct in the wild because their natural habitat has been melted by global warming?

Remember the movie "Millenium"? The woman from the future had to smoke and smoke and smoke in order to breathe. Her lungs couldn't handle the clean air of the 20th century. Is this really what we want our lungs to get used to?

Thank goodness we're finally getting the message. Recycling is drilled into the kids at school. Where we live, we have curbside recycling once a week. We have a nice big cart for recyclables and a nice big cart for trash. And every week, we fill up the recycling cart and there might be one (occasionally two) bag of trash in the big trash cart. ZBoy is our recycling police - he checks EVERYTHING we throw away.

Today, as I drove to work, I passed a group of middle school students wearing rubber gloves and picking up garbage on the side of the road.

We've got energy efficient windows, a highly reflective and insulating metal roof. Our appliances will be replaced by EnergyStar ones when they give up the ghost (washing machine already there). As lightbulbs die, twisty bulbs replace them.

I'm sure there are more ideas out there, and eventually they will be incorporated in as much as possible. We have bikes. And small cars. We don't have a garden YET, but eventually we'll be composting and growing as much of our own vegetables as we can.

And bloggers everywhere are writing about what they're doing to go green in their own lives. It's not always easy, but developing the habits now are definitely worth doing so that tomorrow can be better.


Check out Beckie's husband - he's got being green as a requirement for his job!