Going Green

Upon moving to Winnipeg, we discovered that the recycling program out here is free. So we jumped on that pretty quick. We are still working on what we can and cannot recycle, and getting used to washing out cans, and delabeling them and stuff. But what a huge difference it makes in the amount of trash we throw out.

Then we decided we would start gardening, and built a garden plot in our backyard. We also started learning about composting, and I went to a little workshop they put on at the public library. Composting is awesome! We originally had a 5 gallon bucket in our kitchen that we threw all of our kitchen scraps into. When it got full, we put it out side, and bought one of those big outside garbage cans. I attempted to dump the contents of the first bucket into it, but it had frozen while outside. So now we have an old ice cream bucket in the kitchen, and we dump it into the big can outside on a weekly basis, which is usually about how long it takes to fill up.

Composting is an amazing process, and it further cuts down on the amount of trash we throw out. AND it creates a great soil additive.

I don't rake my leaves, but rather mow them back into my lawn. So we snagged a couple of bags of leaves/grass clippings from a neighbor and they will provide great brown material to add to our compost bin. Right now we only have green materials (kitchen scraps), so I look forward to adding the brown and having it break down come spring to really help our coming garden.

There are a lot of crazies in this whole "green movement," that I really don't want to be associated with. I'm just doing my part to reduce my personal impact on the environment. I've always been a big fan of water conservation; I grew up learning to conserve water, and it continues to impact my everyday living. I'm not as stringent about it as I used to be, and it makes me feel bad, but I'm getting back into conserving again.

I figure there are a ton of little ways that we can do our part to help the environment, whether we think it's going to hell in a hand basket or not. We all have a negative impact on the environment, it is human nature, so we have the responsibility to reduce the negative impact.