El Reciclaje -- Recycling in Spanish

I'm so excited that today we started the community action chapter in Spanish class. Part of the chapter focuses on recycling. This gives me a legit way to talk to my (kid) students about what we can and can't recycle. I had already banned throwing away paper in the classroom :) and I make the students use one piece of paper over and over for warm-ups instead of starting on a fresh sheet of paper (Why do they want to do that? I don't get it.) I'm trying to think of something to really push the boundaries and learn Spanish at the same time. Ideas?

Tape

This year I have also been lashing out against tape. In an elementary school it's hard to be a purist about this, because tape is so prevalent. However, I tell the kids that it's better to glue than to tape because tape has plastic and will last forever. Maybe that's oversimplifying things. I'm pretty much making up my explanation, so I thought I'd consult Fake Plastic Fish. Sure 'nuff -- tape has plastic -- she encourages people to use either paper tape or something else.

In the meantime, my students are beginning to think I'm crazy. "She hates tape!" "She thinks the pencil sharpener is too loud!" "She cries out in pain if I throw paper in the trash!"

But come on. The pencil sharpener is REALLY loud. For Pete's sake... what happened to the pencil sharpeners that worked on people power? The electric ones stop class. It can't be money. The manual ones cost about $15 new. The electric ones? Around 30. Wow.

And the magic of giving a kid a little pencil sharpener with a catcher for the shavings? I don't see many of those. But "GGGGGGRRRRRRRRZZZZZZZ!!!!" in the middle of class? ALL the time.

Green Daisy Scouts

Yesterday was our first Daisy Scout meeting of the year. Last year I struggled with the bottled water issue. This year, my co-leader and I just decided to be up-front about it and tell the snack moms what we wanted.

So, I sent out an e-mail saying something like this:
....in an effort to reduce our impact on the earth, we would like to eliminate the use of disposable plastic bottles at meetings. The troop will be providing cups for each girl and the person in charge of snack can send a pitcher of something to drink (such as juice) or the girls can drink water from the fountain.

Maybe some of the moms rolled their eyes. Who knows. But yesterday, the snack was grapes and apple slices with caramel sauce. The troop provided cups for each girl (I brought a selection of 8 from home) and the girls drank water. There was no trash created from the drinks. Yeah!

Bottled Water is Bad

Need some ammo to convince the hold-outs on the bottled water issue? Here's some nice sources:

The Sierra Club -- this page has some great facts and links to a brochure that you could print out (double sided of course) and post at the office or other offending location.

Lighter Footstep gives a nice succinct 5 reasons not to drink bottled water.

You can encourage your friends to take the Take Back the Tap Pledge.

Finally, lead by example. When it is your turn to be snack mom, don't bring bottled water. Bring a pitcher and some cups. When you have a party, do the same. Use a thermos or canteen to carry water. Drink from the water fountain.

This is a very frustrating issue for me because since I moved I feel like I have stepped back in time and everybody around me seems to be gleefully slurping from bottles and THROWING THEM IN THE TRASH (we have curbside recycling... what gives?) I try to lead by example and I don't want to be some sort of environmental pain in the neck, but I am strongly tempted to do an Earth Day Daisy Scout meeting dedicated to vanquishing the bottled water. My main fear is that I would offend the many well-meaning moms who brought bottled water for snack. What to do?

Trends in my Neighborhood

Here's what I see:

More people are using cloth bags at the grocery store. Not everybody, but a lot more people. I also notice that people often say that they forgot their bags if they are getting plastic. At least they have bags somewhere. Often it takes a while to get into the habit.

People love bottled water. I just don't get it. It's so wasteful, but it is the #1 most popular drink at my kids' elementary school. They have water fountains! It's killing me. The "green team" supposedly worked to green the school carnival, but they sold bottled water at the carnival.

Apparently, bottled water is a big source of income at these school events. Why can't they just sell paper cups of water or sell lemonade or.... ACH! just about anything else?!

On the topic of bottled water, will I come across as a nut if I tell my daughter that she is not allowed to drink bottled water? For example, she goes to a kickball game -- everybody's having bottled water, but I send her with a bottle of tap water from home. That's normal, right? And an after school meeting? All the other girl scouts drinking their bottled water and I'll just tell her to say, "no thanks. I have my own bottle."

It's funny how this seemed so bizarre, but when I write it out it seems bizarre even to worry about it. I'm suffering from bottled water peer pressure. Crazy.

My Evacuee & Hurricane preparation

My Evacuee:
My dad decided to leave Houston and stay with us. I'm glad. Reports are that the winds were up to 100 mph in Houston and that over 4 million people lost power. I'd much rather have my dad hanging out here with us, feeding the kids lollipops, than hanging out in a soggy house with no power. In the Rita evacuation, the trip from Houston to Austin took some people 12 hours (it should take 3). My dad was able to leave at 6 pm last night and got here by 9 pm. Austin is hosting over 20,000 evacuees in various shelters, and although it may not be luxurious, everything seems to be going smoothly and traffic has been fine.

So, phew...... But my older brother is in the storm's path and hunkering down as we speak (I love this media use of the word "hunker"... it cracks me up. Yes, we say it in Texas, but it's not an everyday expression). Hope everything is okay. Luckily, it seems that the storm has weakened.

Hurricane preparation:
When I was little (living in Houston), the general procedure if a big storm was coming was to fill your tub with water. I can't remember if we actually did this, but we knew that was what you should do in case of a water outage.

Now, the general procedure is to go to the store and buy dozens and dozens of plastic bottles of water. And people go to the store, find empty shelves, and freak out.

If a big storm is coming, why can't we fill some bottles with water for immediate use and fill the tub just in case? (Of course, this would only apply if you are "hunkering down" -- if you need to evacuate, you can't bring the tub with you).

Killing Trees

I'm a teacher. This semester, I'm teaching all kinds of classes. I try to minimize my use of paper. I always print on both sides of the paper; I use scratch paper to print out my lesson plans and things that students won't see, or I fold it and make it into a little coloring book for my kids.

But teaching is paper intensive. Another option is to use overheads. But then I wonder -- is it better to make an overhead, that will save about 100 pages of paper over its lifetime, or is the overhead worse? I guess paper can be reused and composted or recycled, and the plastic in the overhead will never go away, so I'm guessing that a copy is better.

I generally make my students share copies, if possible. For example, if I want them to read a poem in pairs, I give one copy per pair. Then, I often make them turn it back in and I save it for the next semester.

Many schools are now using ELMO, or another document camera. With this technology, the teacher can project a paper or picture (or anything, really) onto a screen without making an overhead. I imagine that it uses a lot of energy.

What do you think?
Overhead or copies for the class?
Elmo or copies?
Overhead or Elmo?
Slates for each child?

Importing Recycling

I know that you've been wondering where I've been. I've been a slacker. No... not, really. I moved, and then I went on a family trip to Mexico. But now... I'm back! (yeah!)

I've done a lot of traveling in Latin America, but since I had kids.... not so much. When I went to Isla Mujeres (a little island close to Cancun) this last week, I realized that I hadn't been to Mexico in at least six years. That's pretty crazy, considering that I love to travel and live in Texas.

I'm not sure what the water situation is in Isla, but I have been sick enough when traveling that I was really paranoid about drinking the water. So, for a week, we drank bottled water (boo... hiss!) I could not find it in anything but plastic bottles. Luckily, our hotel had a water cooler that we used to fill up the bottles, but between the water and some juices, I ended up with quite a plastic bottle collection. I couldn't find anywhere to recycle them (or anything, for that matter). So, I ended up importing the empties (most of them, I'm not a saint... I did throw some away) for recycling in the US.

In my previous travels, it was much easier to get a glass bottle (especially for juice and sodas), and the glass bottles were always returnable. Almost every glass bottle that our group used (many many beer bottles, as we were testing all the Mexican beers for an important research project) was non-returnable. Why? Why would they make a specifically non-returnable bottle?
I'm pretty used to this, because in Texas we don't have deposit bottles, but I thought that it was common in Latin America. When I have traveled around, you were frequently not allowed to take the bottle with you if you got a drink, or it was poured into a plastic bag so you could take it "to go". (I know... plastic bag = evil, but returnable bottle = good).

What's going on? Is this common throughout Mexico? Is it because of US influence? Are returnable bottles going out of style? Or is it just because I was in a tourist area?

Water and Wine (or Grape Juice!)

Water
Why?

Why does Whole Foods sell bottled water? Why is it prominently displayed?

Oh yeah... money.

But here's what I really don't get. The Whole Foods downtown has water for FREE -- and ice -- and paper cups. If you're eating there, and you didn't bring your own drink, or buy a drink in a glass bottle, you don't need to pay for water. But if you look around, lots of people have paid for water.

I think that drinking bottled water is a habit. You buy lunch, you want a drink. Everybody buys something -- a Coke, a juice, whatever.... you buy a water. It's easy to temporarily forget about the environmental impact of the water. That's when it's good to be frugal as well as green. The frugal person is thinking about two things -- the environment, and the fact that he/she doesn't want to pay for something that should be free = more likely to not buy the water.

If you live in Austin and go to WF and get thirsty -- there's free water. It's not prominently displayed, but it's totally free. (And icy!)

Green Church

The Catholic church has added new social sins, including hurting the environment. At the time, I wondered if the church would be changing its ways. A friend reports that at her local parish, they switched to ceramic cups for coffee. Yeah!

Yesterday I attended a Protestant service that included communion. At a Catholic mass, each person sips wine from a communal chalice. At the service I attended yesterday, tiny plastic (non-recyclable!) cups with tiny sips of grape juice were passed out. It seemed like a lot of waste.

Is this typical for Protestant services? I've been to other services, and plastic cups were always involved, but that may just be coincidence. Are there Protestant churches that serve grape juice in some other way? I guess that it is to reduce transmission of germs. When I go to church, I don't receive the wine part of communion if I'm sick, because of the communal chalice.

P.S. Please don't take this as some sort of Protestant vs. Catholic debate. I'm just noticing a difference that I had not noticed before.

Guardian of the Plastic

Do you ever feel like you are hoarding trash? Sometimes I do. For example, what am I supposed to do with a plastic bottle that held moisturizer? There's no recycling number on it, so I can't recycle it. Maybe I could use it for something else in the future. I keep trying to convince myself it's a fun bath toy, but really all that happens is that the kids squirt water on the floor.

How long do I have to hang on to plastic stuff that I don't want? I feel bad just chunking it in the trash, but that seems to be its destiny.

Also.... stickers. Stickers are the bane of my existence. There is nothing good to be said of them. Kids stick them on the furniture, on the walls, on the windows, on the floor, on their bodies (and then cry when you peel them off). Of course, they can't be recycled. They're just trash. Please stop giving my children trash! (This is directed to the world at large, including WF ... I don't care if the stickers are of dolphins.)

Can you tell I've had a frustrating day? Actually, it hasn't been too bad, but the stickers have been weighing on me lately.

An interesting plastic turning point has occurred this week -- our huge stockpile of plastic bags that we have been using as trash bags came to an end. What are we supposed to put our trash in? I feel like this is a dumb question, and there must be a really obvious answer, but really.... tell me. Here are the options that I can think of:

• paper bags -- but it will get gross and leak
• put the trash in other bags and non-recyclable containers -- this is what we're doing, but it makes a big mess.
• no bag -- C is fond of this option, but I find it icky.

It's true... I have a huge trash aversion (well, who doesn't?). The trash is totally C's department, but since I do most of the throwing of stuff in the trash, I probably get the most exposure to the trashcan. So, what to do?

The average American throws out 4.5 lbs. of trash a day. That means my family would be responsible for 22.5 lbs. of trash (a day!). I think that we're below average, but we still seem to throw out a lot of trash. The worms are helping out, little by little, but they really need to reproduce.

Plastic Waste at Public Events

On Friday, my family went to a festival at the elementary school. A potluck dinner was part of the festival. Knowing this, we brought our own plates, cups and utensils. Bottled water was free at the festival (donated by WF. Why?) We filled up our cups with water from the fountain. That was no problem.

Last time we brought our plates, it was a big mess. This time was an improvement because I brought a plastic bag to put the dirty plates in. All in all, it was pretty easy. Blech factor? Not too bad. It just took a little thinking ahead.

Laundry detergent update:
A couple of weeks ago, I made my own laundry detergent. The results are in -- it works! Actually, C and I think it may be even better than the store-bought stuff. The clothes are clean, and they have an appealing clean (but not chemical) smell.

Driving Update & Depressing Plastic

Driving Update
Over the last week, C and I have driven a horrifying 287 miles! GAH! It seems like every week we drive MORE instead of less. Here's the breakdown:
190 miles -- camping trip
3 trips to elementary school - 12 (one of these trips was my fault because I overslept and my son missed the bus. Bad me!)
1 trip to work -- 8 miles (it was raining)
1 family trip to hang out with another family -- 8 miles
C drives to school -- 15 miles (or so)
"business" -- 40 miles (at least)
That leaves 14 miles. My estimates may be off.

I wish that we could drive less. The trips to the school are always in a carpool -- there is no bus service for PreK in the morning. The camping trip was a lot of driving, but there is a limited camping season before it gets too hot. I think camping is important for children, but I think driving is bad -- it's a quandry. I do feel good that we have basically eliminated a lot of the short trips we used to take in the car. I don't drive the car 1/2 mile to the grocery store to pick up something for dinner. I ride my bike or pick it up on the way home from school.

The main reasons that we drove this week were:
1. Camping -- impossible to reach any other way: 190 miles
2. Much faster to drive/need to carry kids or other stuff in car: 48 miles
3. Bad weather: 23 miles
4. Car pool: 8 miles
5. Oversleeping: 4 miles

We did keep to the goal of driving less than 100 miles if you leave out the camping trip, but I'm puzzled as to how to get the mileage down.

Depressing Plastic
I LOVE Beth's Fake Plastic Fish blog. She is so inspiring. She is trying to eliminate plastic from her life and is educating others about the evils of plastic. Her blog and others have had me really thinking about plastic lately.

Here are some fun facts that I have learned:

• All plastic that has been made is still around.

• Plastic doesn't biodegrade -- it just breaks into smaller and smaller pieces.

• There is a huge amount of plastic swirling around in the middle of the ocean (The Great Pacific Garbage Patch).

• Plastic is really hard to avoid.

I ran into this picture of a sea turtle on shipwreckcentral.com. Guess what's around its middle. Yep. Plastic. This picture horrifies me, and I can't help but think about it when I'm at the store.


The more that I read about the issue, the more I can't believe that people aren't more upset about it. I think it's a natural tendency to look away from hard problems. I am mad that when I go to the grocery store I am forced to buy plastic that I don't want -- and then I have to figure out some way to responsibly reuse it or recycle it. And it doesn't even really recycle! Plastic bottles don't become new plastic bottles! They need virgin plastic for that. Plastic bottles become stuff like fleece or park benches... (actually, I am still kind of surprised that fleece is made out of plastic). It's sickening.

BUT! I did have a small moment of plastic happiness today. I saw someone throwing boxes full of plastic bottles into the dumpster, so I ran outside:
(let the freak show begin)
GG: Hi! Are there bottles in those boxes?
Dude: Yeah... mostly plastic ones.
GG: Oh! You don't have to throw them away. We recycle. I'll recycle them for you. (I am such a geek. I cannot believe I am offering to recycle a stranger's trash)
Dude: Yeah, but they're not #1 or #2.
GG: Ecology Action accepts all the numbers.
Dude: They only accept #1 and #2.
GG: Yeah, they used to, but now they take them all. It's new.
Dude: Oh, great, I recycle there anyways.

(And he put the boxes back in his car to take them to the recycling center)

...or maybe he drove around to the other dumpster to throw his trash away in peace.