Hot Tip: Aldi's Canvas Bags....

After watching Oprah Winfrey's video on the great pacific garbage patch this past year, I realized

more fully, the ramifications of  that question "paper or plastic?"  at the grocery store. 

If you have not seen this video,  do yourself a favor and take a minute to watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVESX5HCq-s

Truthfully, I can't really remember the last time I was asked "paper or plastic?".  Anymore it's just plastic, with no questions asked.

So, I began to dutifully collect my plastic bags, and bring them back to the grocery store bag recycling area.

But, what about just using those canvas bags they sell, instead of the plastic bags.

About 7 years ago, I was one of the first to buy those canvas bags. I spent a whole $2 on 2 bags. Then I felt too silly using them. I can be such a lemming.  It felt ineffective to use 2 canvas bags and 10 plastic. And, I really resisted going out and just buying 10 bags. I didn't trust myself enough to really use them.

I recycle the bags, and they  come in handy for other uses around the house,but they grow and multiply like tribbles.

(If you don't know what tribble trouble is - you must be too young or too old - look it up)

Then yesterday I made a trip to Aldi's grocery store. I love that store. I don't go there nearly enough. They are the epitomy of smart shopping and smart ideas. They're not high class, at all, and thats what I love about them. 

I had forgotten that they do not provide bags for your groceries. So, I grabbed a $1.99 canvas bag at the checkout. This was the biggest canvas shopping bag I'd ever seen.

I was able to put every bit of my over $50 grocery purchase into that one bag. It would have taken about 4 of the canvas bags you can buy at the other grocery chains. Did I mention I love how smart Aldis is?

It was a bit heavy. But, it was just 1 bag! I can deal with that. On a normal grocery trip, I would never need more than 3 bags. I can live with that. Thank you Aldis, from the bottom of the great pacific ocean...

A bigger Canvas bag. So Simple. So Effective.

Oh, and look at this poor turtle!! We really need to get our garbage out of the oceans.

Plant a Tree Program

2012 - It's ALL about the trees

Trees! Trees! Trees!

Lions World Wide Goal:

To plant One MILLION Trees between

July 2011 and July 2012

As of Aug 22, 2011 -

209,252 Trees Planted already..

Only

790,748 to go!!

The District Govenors Kicked it off by planting 800

trees in one day.

ONE Tree in a million

District 13J -

which includes the Following Counties:

Greene, Clinton, Highland, Brown, Adams,

Pickaway, Ross, Pike, Scioto, Vinton, Jackson, Gallia, and Lawrence

is doing OUR part, and have pledged to plant 1400 Trees!!

Chillicothe has formed thier Tree committee.

Jamestown has 2 volunteers growing seedlings for the club.

How can we accomplish this?

Well - Here are some Ideas!!!

1. For the Dayton area - The Dayton Metro Parks has a forest foster program.

They will be planting trees in the park district and needs volunteers - Contact:

The conservation volunteer coordinator office  at Germantown Park Yvonne Dunphne , or Kevin Keplar, the volunteer coordinator at park headquarters

 Oct 21, and Oct 22, and an unset date in Spring to help plant trees, and count towards the District Lions total.

The park district  has agreed to  document the number and location Lions plant and give the information to us.

2.  Your club can make an arrangement with an institution such as a college, hospital, or community cener, to pick a day, for the club Lions to show up and plant a tree.

3.  If your club has members with green thumbs, they can find volunteer seedlings, that would normally get mowed down, and pot them, and nurture them, until ready to be planted in a proper place by the Lions members.

4.  For clubs with no green thumbs, The Arbor Day Foundataion will plant 10 trees for every $10 sent to them.

5.  Work with a school, or scout troop for an Earth Day or Arbor Day project to plant trees

Is it just too damn hard to recycle?

When I was making a presentation at the Officers training session, one of the participants brought up a point, that's probably a very common issue.

He lives in the country, as do I, and can not receive recycling pick up services from his waste management company. Furthermore, he said it's just too much trouble to take his recyclable material to the recycling center.

This is one I can relate to. I went through a similar problem. In my case, I was paying extra to have the waste management company pick up my recyclables. The trash bill already amounted to $30 a month, and adding recycling to it, increased it even more. What made us cancel the recycling service, was when we noticed, for several weeks, that the recycling bin materials were getting thrown in with the regular garbage.

I realized the county recycling center was right across the street from where we regularly go grocery shopping, and so theorized that it would only take 5 minutes more to go across the street and drop off the recyclable material.

When you haul your recyclable materials to the recyling center that I go to, you can't just dump them all into one container and go on your way. There are seperate bins for glass, plastic, cardboard, office paper,and newspaper.

To make a long story short, We are now regularly dropping off recyclable materials when we go grocery shopping, and this is how we do it:

1. We make it easy on ourselves – We have to do what works for us. If its not easy, we won't do it.

2.  We have one plastic trash can at home for recycling, and the only thing that goes into it are glass bottles and jars.  We don't use a plastic bag, that's just something else that would need to be recycled. We just grab the trash can and go. If its a jar we can quickly rinse out, we recycle it. If its not, it does not get recycled.

3.  We use a garbage bag that we put used milk jugs,orange juice containers, laundry detergent bottles, and similiar large plastic items in to take with me as well. We use the same garbage bag each week. We just dump it and go.

4.  If we have large pieces of cardboard, we throw those into a corner in the garage, and take those with is as well.

5.  Finally, the plastic shopping bags. Those can not go to our recycling center. We have not been good about buying and using the reusable bags at the grocery store. We re use as many plastic bags as we can for other uses, but we have way more plastic bags than we could ever find another use for. We throw the extras in the car trunk, and on the next grocery shopping trip, they go into the stores recycling can. Almost every grocery store I see now, recycles these bags.

So, in conclusion – no it's not as simple as abc, and not as fun as a day at the beach – it's simply another one of those things that's a matter of habit,  what you incorporate into your daily life. My motivation are the images of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I can't go over there and clean it up, but I can reduce,reuse, rethink ways of taking care of material that ends up there and in land fills.  Every time I go to the recycling center, I am pleasantly surprised by the number of other people that are there also bringing in their materials to recycle.

Between recycling and composting, and living in the country where were can burn trash, who knows, maybe we can get rid of the pesky garbage bill for good.

My Name is Earl

Have you ever watched the series, "My name is Earl"?

It's a fun little show, that has since stopped airing, but the premise of the series, is that Earl, a loser for all of his life, learns about Karma. He does something nice, and he wins the lottery. He then makes a list of all the people he has wronged in life, and goes about trying to correct his past misdeeds.

In one particular episode, called  "Robbed a Stoner Blind", Earl tries to make amends to a stoner he had robbed blind years ago. To his surprise, the stoner has turned his life around, and lives in commune of environmental activists.

The ex stoner educates Earl about environmental issues, and Earl takes everything he says to heart. He soon realizes how big the problem is, and that he can't possibly solve all the problems, and that other people, cities, and nations, are cancelling out all the work he does.

I wanted to include some video clips from that episode in the Lions Environmental presentation, because it's funny and would spice it up a bit, but also that it speaks well to both the magnitude of the issues, and once you realize it, how overwhelmed it can make you feel. With the moral of the story being,more or less, take care of the little things, and the big things will take care of themselves. Or, concentrate on local issues you can affect, and just do your part. 

And that's basically the message I wanted to get across. We can't do it all, but we can do something.

I actually paid $1 to Amazon to "own" the video, which allowed me to download it. But, when I tried to incorporate it into the presentation, even though they said I "owned" it, they had added digital rights management software to disallow me to do what I wanted to do with it. !! But, that's another story. I am working on it, to see if there is a way around it, because I do think it would make the presentation a little funnier, and thoughtful.

Thanks for All you do!!!!

Lion Amy Jenkins