In honor of earth day, I thought I’d recycle some stuff in my litter box and tally some of my favorite environmental sites.
First, let’s link to the Earthday Network Homepage. After all, they are talking about earth day all the time. Humans should be too. After all, if we want to maintain the habitable world, we really need to slow down.
I found Celsias, a blog about cooling the world one project at a time when I was looking up some more information about the disappearance of honey bees. Did you know that honey bees are just up and disappearing? It’s quite frightening when you think that many of our agricultural needs depend upon bees for pollination. There are any number of reasons this could be happening. There’s a huge lack of information on this as the bees aren’t dying off in the hives, but rather just disappearing.
Grist and the Gristmill Blog has some great articles on the environment on a regular basis and they were one of the first environmental websites I started visiting regularly.
I also have the Organic Consumer’s Association bookmarked under environment. We eat organic not only because it’s healthier for us but because of how important it is to the environment. Organically grown foods don’t pollute the earth, they don’t kill of insects that could be important to us and organically grown plants are hardier in the face of inclement weather. Fertilizers can significantly effect the output of farms in the short term, but long term organic practices actually have higher food production.
Have something you don’t know what to do with? How Can I recycle this may give you some answers.
Need some easy things to do?
- Change out regular lightbulbs to compact flourescents.
- Use 100% post consumer recycled paper (we even used partially recycled paper for wedding invitations!)
- Wash your clothes in cold water (better yet, just enjoy your fur–if you’re a cat!)
- Buy locally
- Plant a tree to help reduce your carbon footprint
- Turn off and unplug what you aren’t using.
- Carpool
There are lot of other things we can do to help. Are you already doing most of them? Great. Get out there and spread the word!
I am going to try stroller-pooling, so if any cats want to share a stroller ride, hop on in!
Chey, thanks for the list of ways we can help. I am proud of you for using partially recycled paper for your invites.
Great suggestions Chey! Over here in Germany, recycling is very big – everything is separated and recycled, and biological materials are composted. Packaging is minimal here too – stores actually have to accept the packaging if you buy an item and don’t want to take the packaging home.
We wash everything, except for bedding and towels, in cold water, and use a phosphate- and fragrance-free laundry detergent. We also try to buy as much organic food as possible. Bio-markts (stores that sell organic products) are much more common here in Germany than in North America, at least where my humans have lived.
We have those funny looking light bulbs. Momma washes everything like Dragonhearts Mom, in cold water, except towels and bedding. We can’t plant a tree though, cuz the Big Piney Woods is chocked full of them. Momma loves to plant flowers, does that count?
Patches
Very good ideas and suggestions!
We are so sorry about the Honey Bee and heard about them going away on the news.
That flower field looks like my hometown – Lompoc CA
Great post Chey. Mom’s been following the honey bee issue with great interest. We live where honey bees are very, very important (almonds, peach, apricot orchards are all around us). Its like what has been happening with the amphibians world wide, they are just up and disappearing!
Happy Earth Day!
Tara
Here’s a couple more tips for humans
– Eat more vegetarian meals
– Eat organic
– Eat whole foods
– Consider pasture-raised meats
– No more bottled water, use a filter
– Patronize sustainable restaurants
– Eat Seasonally
As far as the list goes all of the above and how about do something nice every day.
these are great tips!
All great ideas!
Our beans are super recycle and efficient waste not types.
We can not afford on of those electric cars, but they do not drive much anyway. Now my daddie works mostly from home. That is good!
I love the picture of the flower gardens wowie so pretty.
Happy Earth Day
Happy Earth Day, Chey, and thank you for all the interesting links and information. Our humans try very hard to run an Earth-friendly household, and we kitties are trying to be good envirocats. We’re even experimenting with recycling our (and our neighbor’s) newspapers as kitty litter!
A couple of things I might add are when you go shopping, try to buy the products with the very least packaging, and try not to use those plastic grocery bags. Did you know that billions of those end up polluting the environment every year, and they take more than a thousand years to degrade? And they kill thousands of animals every year!! There’s even more bad news about them at sites such as http://www.reusablebags.com/facts.php?id=2
Rocky
Thanks for those tips, Chey – it’s good to be reminded.
Happy Earth Day!