Earth Day

Last weekend, John's parents came down for a visit. John and Grandpa were busy 0n Saturday trouble shooting the trailer wiring on the Jeep (turns out the parts we bought were bad from the start!). Grandma, Odin and I went to a local park for an early Earth Day cleanup. Odin was a great help, climbing into the brush and retrieving items. We had two big bags, and very soon after starting had one for garbage and one for recyclables.. There is a lake in the park and we ended up on the leeward side picking empty bottles out of the waters edge. At the end of the morning the recyclables bag was the full one. It was an event put on by Friends Of Eagan 's Core Greenway.
I have been thinking about it all week.
The amount of plastic in a small sub-urban lake was to me, astounding. Thinking about the amount floating in the oceans and washing up on shores is staggering to me.
Yes, plastic has many great uses, but disposal options are not so great. Recycling is a good option, far better than landfill or incineration, but it just does not seem to be enough. Not enough oppertunities, not enough encouragement, not enough participation. For the amount of ways you can buy plastic, just in food packaging, there do not seem to be enough options for disposal.
That said, so many places that we frequent have recycling bins, but they end up with more garbage in them. Personal choices are good, but it almost seems like the people are starting to come around in being conscious of packaging, but the food companies are going wildly the other direction. Last week I saw a parent hand their child a single serve apple sauce packet with an integrated straw top. Really? Convenience is nice, but when is the big AHA! moment that the convenience comes at a very high price to all of us.

I ended up bringing the bag home to clean up the bottles so they would be taken as recyclables. So basically, I was washing garbage. I was hesitant to do it, it would have been easier if soemone else had done it. But isn't that the whole problem? People wanting others to take care of the dirty work for them, Personally I think it's time to step up.