As young kids growing up in SoCal we were taught by parents who were conscious of the environment, from summer week-long camping under the stars, learning not only about deer and occasionally a black bear–to properly dispose of any rubbish we found in the campground, the trails to the shoreline of the lake, to boating on the rivers and the sea, traveling the roads and never ever tossing trash out the car window!
On the very first Earth Day in 1970, we walked joyfully in a big group to school-normally a 4-mile bus ride–my sister and I clothed in t-shirts hand-painted by Mom and spent the school day painting earth, sun and moon pictures, proudly tacked on the classroom walls and learned about recycling, while recess was spent learning about what we as young children could do to save the earth. Years later I wrote my senior grad high school thesis all about rubbish, recycling, conserving water and trees, the cardboard notebook cover a papier-mâché melange of cut-out magazine photos and word clouds of trash trucks in landfills, refineries, polluted streams and smog. Oh, the smog in Hollywood then, it hurt to breathe when practicing ballet class big jumps while looking out the windows at the brown sky.
I am so fortunate to have been raised with an awareness of our environment, this incredible blue planet we all share and all need to do our bit-the little things count too!!!
Here are a few simple bits:
• Save your veggie scraps in the freezer until you have enough to make a pot of scrap stock for soups, stews and sauces.
• Sprinkle nitrogen-rich used coffee grounds in house plants and acid soil loving plants such as gardenias, hydrangeas and blueberries and add to your compost pile along with shredded paper filters, paper toweling, cardboard, shredded paper and any kind of untreated paper-based packaging!
• Use bpa free food storage containers instead of my nemesis, the dreaded plastic wrap, my fave long-wearing and watertight brand is Sistema Brilliance as it also does not hold odors and one can cleanly stack far more leftovers in the fridge than plastic-wrapped salad!
• Don’t waste water. This really hits home when one lives rural and depends solely on roof catchment rainwater. Water is life. Treasure it.