Barbara's Meanderings

If you look at the Earth from space you see a beautiful blue planet with patches of green and brown. It's like looking at a baby sleeping. You want to pick it up and hold it, but you know that is impossible. We have to care for the Earth as if it were our baby. We must think of ourselves as caretakers, because we will be handing it over to the coming generation and we need to keep it in good shape for them. We need to control the activities of people who don't feel this way. They are selfishly using it for their own greedy ends and they care little about how they leave it. I'm thinking about the ones who have raped the mountains of Appalachia or the companies who have come into the rain forests and stripped them of their resources, the trees. Or how about the companies who use pesticides to fight destruction of crops instead of using organic methods. They don't care about the health of the people who will eat their crops or about what using these chemicals is doing to the Earth.

We must fight these attitudes by becoming models of doing the right thing. Every time you see a company or an individual is destroying the land for their own ends you need to act. Sometimes it is as easy as signing a petition online.

In the past couple of years even when the Bush Administration was allowing companies to destroy our wilderness areas, wildlife groups sent out petitions and I signed as many as I needed to sign to preserve our wilderness areas. Preservation of these areas helps to care for the Earth. The combined power of so many people signing the same petition stopped these companies from being able to destroy our wilderness. The courts took care of them. It was a free, simple, easy way to fight back against the ones who would destroy the land. So if you get one of these petitions to sign don't think they won't work. Sign it and do the wilderness a favor. Become a member of The Sierra Club and Greenpeace. Join the African Wildlife Foundation. Help to keep animals from becoming extinct. Support as many of these kind of organizations that you can. You may get more email, but it's easy to delete the ones you don't want to read when the campaign is over. :)

An easy way to help is to recycle as much as you can. Most towns and cities have recycles added to their sanitation removal. It's so simple to stockpile your recycles and throw them out on garbage day. You can make this part of your life and your children's lives. Buy from companies that have been trying to lower their global footprint. This is a number that takes into account every activity you do to conserve energy. If you own a home consider using a more environmentally friendly insulation and using solar power for energy. Becoming Green means thinking about how what you are doing is affecting the Earth. Work on your own environmental footprint each day. Make it as low as possible. Using products from Green companies helps your footprint too. It can be as simple as changing your dishwashing detergent.

Here are ways that I have tried to lower our footprint and become more Green:

• Recycle all aluminum cans including canned goods, all glass bottles, aluminum take out tins, aluminum foil.
• Keep cardboard boxes separate and follow directions from your sanitation company for how to dispose of them.
• Recycle all magazines, flyers, catalogs, used paper of any kind, in paper bags. When you shred anything recycle the shredded pieces in a separate bag.
• Turn off any lights you are not using. Unplug appliances that are not being used.
• Replace usual cleaning products with "Green" products. One easy way is to buy dishwashing detergent actually made by Clorox that is totally natural. It works very well and is good for your hands. It's called: "green works" and comes in various scents.
• Change your cleaning liquid to one that is "Green". "green works" has products for different uses. See the website to find more. There's another very good product made by a small company called: Bio Green Clean that will clean almost anything and is safe.
• Buy organic vegetables, fruit, meats and poultry. Not only is this better for you, but these products have been grown in a way that is careful to take care of the Earth.
• Boycott products from companies that do not take care of the Earth.
• Protest anything that will destroy the environment either locally, nationally or globally.
• Take your dry cleaning to a place that uses "green" techniques. You will find that the usual dry cleaning smell is not there. Your clothes will feel and smell much better.:)

If you are using any technique that you would like to share please leave a comment here.

My usual Poem A Day post follows this one. Happy Earth Day!!!! What are you doing for Earth Day?