Little m Long a

My son, God bless him, has decided that our archaic and wasteful ways must come to an end.  He feels we have not been good stewards of our resources and has instituted some changes.

Him:  Dad, why don’t we recycle?

Is there ever an acceptable answer for not doing something that will benefit our household, our community or the environment?  Really?  Is because I’m a lazy slob going to cut the mustard here?  What about because our little village does not have a recycling program and we have to haul our recyclables 10 miles to the nearest drop off facility?  No, I’m pretty much stuck.

Me:  You’re absolutely right, Buddy.  We should recycle.

That’s all he needed to hear.  The very next time we took a trip to Lowe’s he was all over the task of selecting bins to start our recycling campaign.  We chose three basic plastic storage containers and he wasted no time labeling them.  Paper, Cans and Plastik.  It was official then.  We now recycle and he is the recycling sheriff.  His job is to police our family’s trash habits and see to it that the proper bins are used for our recycling.  My job is once the bins are full to haul the recyclables the 10 miles to the drop off facility.

One of us has not been doing their job.

Today is our regular trash day.  Would it be so wrong to leave it all at the corner and start over tomorrow?

Intended to inspire an awareness of and an appreciation for  the Earth’s environment, Earth Day is celebrated today at it has been each April for the past thirty eight years.  A grassroots campaign initiated back then served as a wake up call of sorts to help people to realize the impact of our actions on the planet and give the environment a national spotlight.  A movement was born and today Earth Day is celebrated not only in America but in countries all over the world.  But are we really doing right by our dear Mother Earth?

People take to the streets celebrating, organizing rallies, staged marches on political institutions, speeches, concerts and festivals.  One can don their favorite “Be Nice to Your Mother” t-shirt pack up the ice chest and Styrofoam plates with plastic sporks, maybe even the hibachi, and head off to the park with thousands of other like minded enlightened to listen to your favorite bands perform their favorite tunes at ear bleed decibels all the while trampling Spring’s offering of new green grass and hopeful flower buds discarding used cups, plates and napkins along the way because someone neglected to pack trash bags.  These same people will spend forty minutes looking for the recycle bin for their beer cans and in that same time span flick half a pack’s worth of Marlboro butts on the ground.

Zoë’s school had a poster campaign and a dress down day in honor of the event.  Innocuous enough I suppose, yet I hardly believe that any of the paper used for the posters will be recycled (I know the three rejected ideas in our house were not).  And the money collected from dress down privileges.  Well, that’s going towards the purchase of microphones for the auditorium.  A much needed item, mind you but in my advanced and cynical age I tend to view amplified noise as not very environmentally friendly.

So it’s Earth Day.  Again.  Like the saying goes, Every Day is Earth Day, and unfortunately I’ll have to delay my observances.  As much as I’d like to reduce my impact, if even for the day, I’m off to fire up every piece of power equipment I own because Spring has sprung and my yard is rapidly overtaking me.  Sorry, Mom.  But you need a haircut!

Anyone doing anything special for Earth Day?