A few years ago, PlanetTrash vacationed in Phoenix and Scottsdale. While in Phoenix, we jumped aboard a free shuttle bus that would take us from downtown Phoenix to the State Capitol. I was amused by the sign in the bus:
If I pick up all the litter that I see in Nashville and get on the bus to ride home, I would probably violate #5 on the Dash Code of Conduct: No Smelly Packages. The Dash rules reminded me at the time of the Cider House Rules and that’s why I photographed the sign.
I like this idea from a student, who wrote this letter to the Modesto Bee. I tried picking up some plastic water bottles on the pavement at the local recycling center this week, and my hand got oily. I’m a germaphobe. What can I do to solve this problem?
Throw away the litter you see
last updated: September 28, 2007 01:51:57 AM
I am so sick of walking to school and having trash all over — cigarettes and bits and pieces of trash. We should stop and clean it up. This should be a better town and we can do it if we help. Who wants to live in a pig sty?It’s killing the planet. People need to get their acts together. Next time you see trash, pick it up and throw it responsibly in a trash can.
JOAQUIN LOPEZ
Ceres
By the bus stop, there is a nice stone wall along the sidewalk. I don’t think that it is one of the many stone walls, built by slave labor, but it’s very attractive. It’s also a place to find trash. Can you find the clear plastic cup? And how original is it to take a wrapper, wad it up and stuff it into a Red Cola plastic bottle. What is Red Cola? I can’t find a link on Google.
I need one more hit to hit 1000.
Last night, I discovered that my bus ticket is made of plastic. I should have known since it contained information about the number of rides I had remaining.
Also, Ken Burns’ The War discussed recycling, called salvaging then, on Tuesday night’s episode. This documentary played a movie which illustrated how to remove both ends of a can, put them inside the empty can, then flatten the can with a foot. The cans were then stacked in a box and taken to the salvage man, along with household grease as bacon drippings, which was used in ammunition. All types of metal objects were saved and taken to the salvage man.
No, not that bus, or the blue bus that Jim Morrison sang about, but the Metro Nashville MTA bus. For years, I’ve contemplated riding the bus to work, but I never did. Part of the reason I write this blog is to make myself honest about being environmentally aware. The price of gasoline the past few years and the hotter and drier weather we experienced this summer convinced me to try the bus. I bought a 20 ride ticket in late August. Today I took the twentieth ride on that ticket. Tomorrow, I’ll start a new 20 ride ticket.
It seems that I have taken the bus more than 10 round trips in the past month, but I remind myself that one day was Labor Day, and I was out of town on business for three days. Tuesday morning I wanted to get to work earlier, so I drove and sat in traffic for thirty minutes. I wished that I had a hybrid, which would have burned electricity and not gasoline. I arrived at work late.
Anyway, I’m proud of my first expired ticket. And it’s going to be recycled.
We’re taking a few days away from the blog to watch The War by Ken Burns. Here is a link to help save the environment. I know that during World War II that recycling was commonplace, as well as gas rationing. Hey, that’s a great idea!
Here’s a blog from England about children declaring jihad against litter in their neighborhood. PlanetTrash will add their blog to the blogroll to check up on their progress. Good luck to you, eco warrior! You’ll need it, but I appreciate what you are doing. Don’t give up!
Here’s a podcast about the Jihad against Litter.
All of the mail we receive which is not solicited goes into the recycle bin. I’ve been offended over the years about the number of useless CDs AOL used to send to our home. Now Earthlink, a service we had for maybe three months over ten years ago, keeps begging us to come back. How can we have “Premium Dial Up” when we don’t have a land line? Take me off your list.
Chase and other banks who have our names send these annoying plastic “credit cards” in the mail. I don’t know what to do with them except put them into the trash, which goes into a landfill.
Don’t direct marketers know that it’s cool to be green?
Here’s a feature from the Sierra Club about the amount of plastic bags we use:
*The Deadliest Item at Your Grocery Store?*
Somewhere in the northern Pacific floats a non-biodegradable
petrochemical blob that’s twice the size of Texas. Much of this deadly
mess originated when someone innocently took home their shopping in a
plastic bag.In the U.S. alone, we throw away 100 billion plastic bags each year –
the equivalent of 12 million barrels of oil. Yikes!
Here’s another link to find out what we should do:
What can you do? Tune in to Orli Cotel’s Sierra Club Radio interview
with Katherine Mieszkowski, of Salon, to find out.
It’s hard to avoid plastic bags in our world, but I’m trying my hardest to do it. Listen to the interview because there are solutions.
We don’t like to be solicited at home or by phone. We disconnected the land line, which has stopped unwanted calls during dinner. We live on a hill and have steep steps to our front door, so we rarely have unwanted visitors except for cats or possums. I found this flyer on my storm door recently. I don’t mind flyers being put on my front door, as I take them off and throw them into the paper recycle bin if I’m not interested. And I wasn’t interested in this series on Your Secret Life, hosted by a non-denominational church in the area. I found some of these flyers in the street a few days later.
The Earth Is Not a Trash Can