Sunday, March 01, 2009

How Green Are You?

You may be surprised to read the title of this post. If you've been here before you would not that I'm not your super green concious people. I have never cloth diapered (although I was going to try it due to my daughter's diaper rash at one point), I've never seperated my garbage to recycle (it would be easy to do if I was set up for it).. So what made me decide to post about 'being green'? Well you see, I watched this little documentary clip on dumpster divers, living on other people's garbage. It was very interesting. People would arrange to meet and they would go through dumpsters gathering food (thrown out by super markets, still packaged but on the best before date), furniture, and clothing and other miscellaneous stuff. These were not poor people either! These were business people, accountant's and lawyers and many others! This was a choice these people made, a lifestyle that they wanted! I must say, that this something that I could not do, I don't know if it's my pride or just societies view of people going through the garbage and the labels.. but I must say that these people are truely committed to living a Green lifestyle.
Along the lines of dumpster diving, my husband, on his days off, has decided to help his friend collect bottles (his friend doesn't have a job). So they go off with the truck in the morning and collect bottles from dumpsters (bottles that people have just thrown out) and they usually get back by lunch time and by supper time they've made $200-350 in one day!! This is just from what people throw out!!
So all in all, it has really made me think twice about what I throw out, and I love websites like Freecycle! Not only can you get free stuff, but you can also get rid of your 'junk' as well and give it to someone who sees a treasure. So I guess each to their own - we all do a small part in taking care of this earth :)

1 comment:

Allie said...

We recycle and were surprised to see the "laziness" of it here. Here in Cranbrook, the only thing that you need to sort is glass. Everything else goes into the same bin which is both sad and counter productive as people get lazy and just use it as a garbage can. Then, when the full bin gets shipped to places like Airdrie for sortment, it all ends up going into landfill because of the garbage that has contaminated it.

I am good at recycling but that is about it. I don't use Green cleaning products nor have I used cloth diapers and such. I should, but just never have gotten there.