New Initiative

After doing some research and watching programs on television advocating for the reduction of our carbon footprint on the Earth, our family has decided to start recycling plastic containers.

We drink a lot of bottled water and my husband drinks a lot of Gatorade, even my son’s Juicy Juice containers are recyclable. I’m sure a better option would be to get a filtration system to avoid buying plastic water bottles and we could get reusable containers for our water. But you gotta crawl before you can walk. . .

So, we are setting up a slim garbage can in the garage for plastic bottles. We’ve explained this entire initiative and why we’re doing it to my son and he’s quite excited. Although he initially thought we could recycle everything plastic including bags, which is a no-no. Once a week I will drop the containers off at the large center in our neighborhood on my way to work. I’m hoping this is a habit we can start and keep!!

This is just a small step (one of many) we plan on making in the coming years to do our part to help save the planet. Here are some recycling facts from http://www.earth911.org/:

--In 2006, Americans drank about 167 bottles of water each, but only recycled an average of 23 percent. That leaves 38 billion water bottles in landfills.
--Bottled water costs between $1 and $4 per gallon and 90 percent of the cost is in the bottle, lid and label.
--According to the Beverage Marketing Corp, the average American consumed 1.6 gallons of bottled water in 1976. In 2006 that number jumped to 28.3 gallons.
--It takes over 1.5 million barrels of oil to manufacture a year’s supply of bottled water. That’s enough oil to fuel 100,000 cars.
--Eight out of 10 plastic water bottles become landfill waste.
--In 2007 we spent $16 billion on bottled water. That’s more than we spent on iPods or movie tickets.
--Plastic bottles take 700 years before they begin to decompose in a landfill.
--If everyone in NYC gave up water bottles for one week they would save 24 million bottles from being landfilled; one month would save 112 million bottles and one year would save 1.328 billion bottles from going into the landfill.