Celebrating Earth Day?

Agreed. The "hazardous waste" dump is many miles away, and since I'm no longer driving, I don't know how I'll get rid of the stockpile of stuff accumulating in the garage. I'm most concerned about the exhausted CFL's, one of which was broken (gasp!) Leaking mercry is bad news. Yuska

I do all of the above but don't have anything special planned for today, so I voted other. I guess it could be a good day to add some stuff to the compost pile and turn it...but I really don't consider that something special for Earth Day...that's more like a regular Tuesday.

I saw a t-shirt at Wal-Mart last night that I thought was too funny, and I would have bought it if they came in normal sizes (something other than so tight you can't breathe in them). It had a pic of the earth on it and it said "Respect Your Mother" Maybe I'll just make my own sometime.

phuggins, I loved the Yankee thrift poem!! I hate junk mail and I feel so smug when a company sends me a letter on regular 8.5X11 sheets and wastes the other side of the sheet. I turn them over and place them in my printer to print recipes and maps and other items I print from the computer. When they have served their purpose, (like the maps to my new doctor's office) I shred them and compost them. It feels like I scored a point against the junk mailers.chuckle. No paper leaves my house without both sides being used and then recycled some way. Other junk mail not accepted by our city pick up program is shredded and composted. I compost dryer lint and cat hair as well as the contents of the vacuum cleaner bag. The popcorn kernels that are always in the bottom of the bowl that failed to pop, I crush with a brick and put out for the blue jays.

Did you know that according to the EPA, Nationwide 75% of the trash we throw away is recyclable yet only 30% actually gets recycled?

I do recycle, but probably not as much as I should.

I'm surprised so many are not familiar with "Earth Day"!? (-:

(But I suppose if you don't have children in school who bring home all the updates and news, the celebration could be overlooked/missed. That's how I always got the newest news and first heard of Earth Day)

FYI is Melody's very good article about it, if anyone wants a little more background on the day: http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/994/

And here is a New York Times link for Senator Gaylord Nelson.. Senator Nelson of Wisconsin founded Earth Day in 1963 as part of a Grass Roots movement to recognize pollution and depletion of natural resources as national and international issues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/politics/04nelson.html

And I agree, everyday is a day to conserve and celebrate the blessings of Mother Earth, but I do like it that there is one day designated to remind everyone about conservation and recycling practices and to celebrate stewardship of our Earth.

And I think the 'day' gives us an opportunity to spread the word to others and reflect on what other actions we can take in our community, home, work, and 'third place' (i.e., our other hang-outs like Starbucks, school, church, card club, whatever.)

What are we doing for Earth Day in our family? Mmmmm....we planted a cherry tree today, we spread our chopped leaf mold on our Butterfly Garden, this week we stopped drinking bottled water, and we're having a vegetarian dinner tonight. Beans instead of meat. We try to do this two times a week. Different for us, and just a small gesture, but we feel every little bit helps if everyone takes part.

I voted "no" because I recycle and compost and use a recycle place for yard waste and do all I can as a Master Gardener to educate others on the importance of doing so

Way back on this thread someone asked how to vote. Go back to your home page and scoll down until you see it on the right hand side of the screen. Vote there and it will bring you back to here.

I guess that I've never paid any attention to "Earth Day". I voted that I don't celebrate it but as chance would have it I did plant a Pindo Palm and a Queen Palm in my backyard this week. I also compost kitchen and garden waste but recycling is not offered by our refuse company, so until they do, I don't do very much of that.

I teach in an elementary school. Another teacher and I are the Earth Day committee. We decided to make use of some of the gazillions of acorns that fell this past fall and collected them at our homes and at school from our wildlife habitat. So all the students planted an acorn! I teach third-fifth graders and thought they would think it was beneath them, but I was amazed at how excited they were! They asked lots of questions and were thrilled to find out they would actually get to take their tree home.

Voted "other" as I just try to be conscious of our impact on the planet at all times. We have tried to decrease our "carbon footprint" as much as we can, including planting an organic veggie garden, but I am certainly guilty of sometimes succumbing to the "easy" route (paper towels, plastic wrap, zip-lock freezer bags instead of butcher paper and foil, etc.).

Each day is really Earth Day!

Yes, I am going one-step further than what I already do. I plan to shortly restart my worm composter and

perhaps most significantly work on recycling initiatives for the small residential community where I now live.

A few years ago, I had a revelation. In a public bathroom, no less! I washed my hands and then shook them and just stared at them. They dried all by themselves!

Our biggest environmental task is taking on the many-tentacled monster that keeps spewing out toxic products for our consumption. I'm chronically non-functional from mercury toxicity, so I don't have the energy to go into the den of the beast and slay it, but I DO have the energy to drive my friends crazy with information (that they don't always want).

Such as:
If you store your food with plastic wrap, it absorbs cadmium and bisphenol-A.
If you use a citrus-oil cleaner and there is ozone in the air, they combine to produce formadehyde.
Aspartame is neurotoxic.
Memory foam offgasses enough chemicals to give you respiratory problems or worse.
Milorganite contains sewage sludge. Sewage sludge contains heavy metals and God-knows-what.

Avoidance of toxins accomplishes three very important things: 1) Your poor body gets a break from being poisoned. 2) You don't enrich the companies that are responsible for the chemical onslaught. 3) You don't help to foul the nest (Mother Earth).

I picked "Other" because none of the others seemed to fit my situation. I almost chose "Don't Celebrate Earth Day", but it's more like I don't recognize it or even acknowledge it. I sort of thought I "celebrate" it everyday, but then decided that no I don't actually celebrate it. That word didn't fit either. I'm just ecologically and environmentally "aware" and try not to pollute the Planet. It's an extremely complex topic, but I think most people these days are very far-removed from the natural world, which is a shame. No one should have to be told not to toss garbage out the window or only think of the environment one day each year. It is very much "common sense" and should become second nature, like breathing!

vm

Vanillaman ~ in a perfect world that is true but it will never happen.

It has been proven that the change will be in the future generations, not the present. As Tabasco posted above

I pay no attention to any official day but do recycle everything possible every day. Around here glass is nearly impossible to recycle. I have to take it 60 - 90 miles to places that will take it. I give a lot of it to my DD who takes it to her landfill about half of the time. A lot of good that does. But she also has trouble finding any place that will take glass. They tell us it is so heavy that trucking it or even moving it by railroad to the few places that recycle it is too expensive to be feasible.

That's true podster, but I still don't agree with having an "Earth Day" per se for many reasons which are beyond the scope of this Forum!

This message was edited Apr 23, 2008 2:17 PM

our recycling pickup was today. we always recycle the papers, cardboard and cans and bottles. I have started using my three IKEA plastic carry sacks at the store because they started a program that lets you zip through checkout when you utilize their "shopping phaser". It's a handheld device that reads the barcode and then adds it on to your total. You put whatever it is into the shopping bag {yours or theirs} and then the register reads it at check out. you don't have to unload your cart and reload it. the machine keeps a running total and pops up little ads that feature weekly specials.
I hate to recycle cardboard, because that is always a wrestling match to get it down to the acceptable size for the recycle truck. Everything else just goes into the bin and they take it away. Also, I try to buy items with the least amount of non-recyclable packaging.
Martha

I posted my response on the 21st. We had to celebrate Earth Day over the weekend. But on the 22nd, I did go to a therapist and asked, "How come when I was single, I generated one brown paper bag of trash a month, and now that I'm married, we generate five times that amount?" He just stared at me. I had to remind him that I was paying $90.00 for this little half hour and he better come up with something!!

Now we do recycle everything but I know we can do so much better than that!

leaflady, you might want to try posting your glass free on craigslist.org. You can post for free and your contact info is just email. You could leave your glass at the curb when someone plans to get it, thus not even having to wait around for them to come :)

I've seen many a folks posting odd things for free there to "recycle" it such as broken concrete, old housewares, empty EGG cartons no less etc. Many schools could use such things to for craft projects. So SOMEONE somewhere out there would want your glass I'd venture to say!

Voted: don't "celebrate" earth day in the sense that we honor it one day. We try to do the 3 R's but I'm not a green buff as that also means recycling my grocery plastic bags as trash can liners :). We also plant on average one tree per year wherever we've lived.

I try to live every day as EarthDay since 1970 when the first one caused me to read up on recycling and reducing waste. I am happy that it is finally catching on with others as I saw special segments on it on Oprah and Martha Stewart today. I hope more exposure will be a good thing. I have been taking my plastic bags to be recyled and decided today to take my own bags shopping to eliminate the use of plastic bags. Hope the stores will all allow that!

I planted 3 white pines for my children. Earth day was started in Ann Arbor Michigan in 1970. It's not just about recycling but planting anything for mother earth. If we all plant more native wildflowers that
would help out a lot. These plants are easy to grow and very hardy! I also planted native woodland phlox.

I'm killing myself laughing here, digatunnel! Do I sense a little anger there lol! I'm not laughing AT you so please don't take it the wrong way, but I can just picture the poor Therapist and his reaction! I hope he/she gave you a good answer by the way!

I picked up a free tote bag from HD and used it and another one for groceries today. Oprah's show reminded me to do that, and I will get more reusable bags for groceries, too. I always brought the plastic bags back to the store and put them in the recycling barrel. All our junk mail goes to the recycling dumpster at the animal shelter, so the shelter gets the money.

We always remove our name and address and any other personal info from all papers and shred them--the shredded paper also goes into the recycling dumpster.

I planted six fruit trees and six raspberry plants. I also shred all old mail and bury in small amounts in my garden to improve the soil. I just made bird houses from old folger plastic coffee cans. I try to do what I can, still far from perfect though. We have no recycle program here and it is too far to haul it conveniently. Like most gardeners I re use alot of jars for seeds and containers for plants.

I don't celebrate Earth Day. I do try to be as easy on the Earth as I can be every day. I recycle, compost and plant trees and shrubs whenever possible -- I am now running out of room at my home.
We have to make every day earth day if we are going to stop global warming.

I think it's more of an every day thing. But having a designated day helps to spread awareness. We all need to be aware of what we over-consume and what chemicals we put in the ground.

I'm planting an Oleander, I think that's a tree. I recycle computer paper by putting it in printer as new paper, just using the other side. I've only started that recently. I recycle newspaper & plastic bags, by using them for various other purposes. (Cat litter, garbage, puppy training pads, etc. They sell more plastic bags for these purposes, when we have plenty leftover bags, that can be used just as well. I enjoy celebrating Earth Day. It brings me back to the H.S./College days where we would all take a trip to Central Park for a celebration. I think their version of celbrating was a little off to the true meaning of Earth Day, but nonetheless, it was a lot of fun, those many years, and many years ago!!

So wonderful to see the reaction to this question ...I am not surprised because most gardeners realize more than anyone about caring for the Earth in all of the many facets of every day living ...so like you I voted *other* as every day is earth day here too!
chrissy

I voted 'Other' - I rescued a bunch of plants from a lot that was going to be razed. :-)

i am going to move from "trying" to use re-usable bags at the stores to actually doing it
we do recycle, however i'm sure there is a lot more we can recycle and even re-use

my husband found a bus to use for commuting to work, since we are about 80 miles from DC and that can easily be over 2 hours each way including metro the money saved is huge and he gets a subsidy for commuting & can relax while others fight traffic and doesn't have to drive more than 10 miles each way to the bus and home....helps in multiple ways

we are doing a veggie and fruit garden this year....have bought several fruit trees and berry bushes along with veggie plants and seeds
we get our own eggs
working on setting up compost
i started consolidating errands....having moved to a more rural location (not way out, but out of the way none-the-less) it's easy to end up driving 50-100 miles round trip or each trip, so i hit as many places as possible on one trip and try to go out once during the weekend w/o going during the week (has been easy with one car needing repairs ;-) )....luckily the bus meeting place is in a walmart parking lot & across from tractor supply & lowe's, so if basics are needed DH can pick up on his way home
i have found some items much cheaper on line w/free or cheap shipping that eliminate the driving around looking

these things fall into an every day earth day category, however i like using the celebrated earth day as a reminder

Vanillaman - Actually he did! He told me to get my DH out in the garden with me more! (All DGer's are well intentioned. No worries!)

I am dissappointed that one of the options for voting was not going organic or reducing, and reponsibly applying feritilizers and pesticides. The home gardener along with such institions as golf-courses are HUGE contributors to nutrient wash into the watershed. As the nutrient load soars phytoplankton blooms explode. That sounds good, but they have short life spans, they die sink and decompose, depleeting the deeper areas of the estuaries of oxygen. Fish which use the cool deep currents are forced into warmer surface waters to which they have not evolved, stress and disease then strike the fish. These are fish we eat, such as the striped bass. Huge dead zones apppear to be growing in coastal areas across the globe. So.... Resist the urge to fertilize. Use compost and other organic fertilizers instead of chemical fertilizers. If you absolutely need to us something stronger opt for ferilizers that you work into the soil, thus reducing runoff. And don't apply pesticides or foliage applied fertilizers such as Miracle-Grow if rain is in the forcast. Remember, everyone is uphill from the sea, our gardens are connected to the gardens of coral, and we are destroying them.

I am with all those that said - each day is an earth day. But this year I added a fruit tree - hardy quince to my landscape. Montgomery Cherry was last spring. I did not plant them on the "Earth Day" exactly, but think about them as two trees that will give more than shade :)

For those of you curious about the history of Earth Day I am posting a link to Wikipedia's entry on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day

Speaking of fish, I recycle our old pond water by watering the plants with it--fish poop makes great fertilizer!

Earth Day is for people who need something to make them feel good about... for a day. I love the idea of composting, organic gardening and planting trees. I detest the agenda that events like Earth Day represent. The people who started Earth Day probably flew their G-4's around the country, burning the fossil fuels they constantly tell us not to burn ourselves so that they can give speeches telling us to stop burning fossil fuels. How convenient for them.

And on a lighter note, I forgot I planted a Raspberry & Blueberry tree! First time having my own little tree!! he he he Michelle

Thanks for posting that very interesting Wiki article about the history and significance of Earth Day, sladeofsky. The article made some good points, perhaps not news to to most DG members, but worthy of a reminder to 'keep on talking' to our friends, neighbors and leadership about our concerns for conservancy and stewardship principles intrinsic to the meaning of Earth Day, especially on Earth Day but everyday, too.

I thought the most interesting part of the message was that this event, which has effected change for the good all over the world, was propelled by the power of WOM (Word of Mouth) marketing as a grass roots movement. --A tribute to the power of the individual who engages his neighbors and friends in simple dialogue to promote active change.

For those who are not familiar with the founder of Earth Day--here is a link to Senator Gaylord Nelson's Obituary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/politics/04nelson.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I am encouraged to read about everyone's efforts to protect our Earth for the generations to come. The spirit of Earth Day seems to be alive and well here on DG! (-:

Cheeto, well said!!!!!!