What are your Earth Day resolutions?

Back in 1970, when the first Earth Day was celebrated, I contemplated becoming part of the movement. As it turned out, I recall thinking I just didn't have enough energy to save the world and fight for Women's rights at the same time, so I didn't sign up. As we celebrated the 29th Earth Day on April 22nd, I'm sorry now that I haven't been committed all along to saving the earth. Maybe if each of us had taken a hard look at ourselves in the 70's, when people actually used to throw their fast food garbage out the windows of their cars, we could have seen this crisis coming.

On Oprah the other day, they reported that one of our ocean garbage dumps is in an area twice the size of Texas that spans from California to Japan and is 90 feet deep. How horrible! This is garbage that comes from as far as Iowa not just California. It is the garbage we see laying on the street or flying out of our recycle bins, that drifts into our sewers, that flows into our rivers, and that flows into our oceans, etc, etc. There are several of these ocean dumps, this one is the largest.

Statistics say we use 1 million of those plastic grocery bags per minute and less than one percent are recycled. Less than 1%! If you truly can't be bothered to use a cloth bag, then at least recycle the plastic ones. They reported that in California, plastic bag usage decreased by 94% when they started to charge $.33 cents for each bag.

I hope I've taught my kids to turn off the water when they brush their teeth. They're saving 5 gallons of water everyday by doing this. And boys, you should also not let the water run when you shave - fill the sink halfway instead.

Stop buying bottled water - most of it is tap water anyway and you'll save 1.5 million tons of plastic. Consider using a reusable container for your water instead.

There's a list of places to recycle things on the Oprah show link. One of my pet peeves are used CD's. I can't throw them away because I can't stand the thought of having all that plastic in a landfill. Finally, there's a place that will take them - Greendisk.com.

Did you know Nike will take back your old yucky shoes (the ones the thrift store doesn't even want) and will recycle them? Here's the link to the Oprah page with resources to recycle http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20090422-tows-recycle

My first change is a simple one. I'm going to buy a stainless steel bendable straw. Right now, I use a plastic straw everyday when I drink my soy protein drink. Even though it's small, I discard paper and a straw every single day. Even in this small way, I'm not going to pollute anymore.

What are you going to do?