Teaching Him To Reduce Reuse And Recycle

This is the point in my little life where it takes a wee bit of a strange twist when into my existence comes the love of my life. He is my rock, my all encompassing source of strength, my man.

He is a compliment to myself, and to my life in all ways except for one, he knows nothing of recycling. Eeek.

He actually has the crazy notion that "Going Green" is some strange new government conspiracy to get a little additional money out of the average working Joe. So as soon as my belongings hit his doorstep the retraining process began.

We are living in an era where each and every individual has to become more environmentally aware and learn to work together at reducing the green house gas emissions that we create. It is a new world that we live in today and we need to adapt to a new way of living.

The three r's of recycling have been a focal point in my life since virtually the time that I first started walking. Raised on a farm I learned early to limit the amount of garbage that I produced. Garbage wasn't picked up at our curb. We had to haul it to a garbage dump some ten miles away so we were taught early in life to limit the amount of garbage that needed to be taken away.

Any paper or wood waste was burned in our wood stove, vegetable and other food waste was fed to the hogs, coffee grains were placed in the garden compost. We had our own cows so we didn't have to worry about recycling milk containers, but most of the other containers that our food came in were cleaned, and then reused to store other things in.

We not only recycled our own pop and beer bottles but we hunted them out along the roadsides. With a family consisting of six kids money was scarce and these bottle finds provided us a means of money.

They were our movies, our treats, and our vacation money. They were the difference between just existing and really living. We were taught early the value of recycling and it is something that each of us siblings have carried with us into adulthood.

In today's world recycling is important for so many more reasons than it was in my childhood days. It is now a matter of life and breath.

His eyebrows go up and he gives me a little look that says all too clearly, "Okay. Now what did I do wrong?" He knows he is in trouble but he's not quite sure why.

The man is beyond training. If he were a puppy he would be relegated to spending the remainder of his life out of doors.

I reach into the trash can and retrieve from it the four liter plastic milk jug that has somehow magically found its way there. I see the light flash on in his eyes. He has received my message and he now understands all too clearly the current predicament that he is in.

"If every family in this town recycled one bag of these things a year that would be 36,000 less bags of plastic in the landfill each year. If every family recycled every single jug they used think of how much less garbage could go into the landfill each year?" Nag. Nag.

I feel like the wicked witch of the north. He sighs.

Going green hasn't been easy for him. He was born in the "disposable era", a time when almost everything was eventually tossed into the landfill. The concept of actually sorting through and recycling garbage just isn't an idea that makes any sense to him.

Unlike my grandchildren who happily recycle pop bottles for their spending money, compost the household vegetable waste, and actually argue over who gets to put the milk jugs, tin cans, cardboard, and paper products into the recycling bins at the side of our house, he just can't seem to figure it out.

Mind you, he has been good in other areas. After reading an article on conserving energy, the thought of lower electricity bills had him so excited that he switched to fluorescent lighting almost as soon as the first bulbs hit the store shelves. Our hot water tank had its heat reduced, the electric blanket was discarded, our electric clock was replaced with a windup, and the thermostat in the house had its temperature levels reduced dramatically at night.

The rising cost of gas has him carpooling to work and he and I now drive a lot less than we used to. I'm not even sure if he realizes how much he is doing for the environment by just initiating those simple changes to his lifestyle.

He can see exactly which neighbors recyle and which ones don't by the number of bags that they set out on garbage day. When I moved in he was contributing a full bag to the landfill each week but now with two of us living here we are setting out only half that amount. He now proudly carts his half bag of garbage out to the curb for pickup each week. The neighbor kitty corner to us sets out three bags each garbage day, and like us, they are a family of two adults.

I don't have to nag him anymore to compost. He even hauls our little compost bucket out to the garden area as often as I do. A few more years and he might be just as environmentally consious as I am. If I can get him over the government conspiracy notion that is.

Going green isn't all that difficult a task to accomplish. It is just a new pattern of living to incorporate into your current lifestyle.

Reducing your carbon footprint is a concept that is actually pretty simple to adapt to. Switching lights and appliances off when not in use can save you money on heating and electricity costs. Composting can keep your garden or flower bed nutrient rich. Why by fertilizer when the nutrition in your kitchen waste will work instead?

Try your hand at going green. You may find that you actually like it.