Helping the Environment

For years now I've toted things around in cloth bags and reused plastic and paper bags. This year I've decided I'm going to try really hard to remember the cloth bags for grocery shopping. I have a couple I keep in my car and I can never remember to take them into the store with me. Today, Jim and I went to the commissary. I remembered most of my bags. So when they said "Paper or plastic" to me today. I got to say "paper after you fill up my cloth bags." They filled up my cloth bags first and then finished with paper.
Europe has been doing this for years. Now we need to do it, not because of a paper or plastic shortage, but to not add more trash to landfills.
This past week in my classes we have been talking about polluting our groundwater.
My 4th hour worked really hard one day and the next day we had a few minutes free.
So I challenged them to come up with ideas that would be good for the environment and benefit our economy. One of the things we had talked about the day before was how China buys our trash, sorts it out, recycles it, makes things with it, then sells those things to the US for us to buy. Here are a couple of the kids' ideas:

1.We keep our own trash and have unemployed people sort it, recycle it, and use in our factories to make things. Everything made stays in the US unless we export some it.
2.Build places to burn trash that will not let chemicals & ash out into the air.
There will be jobs for the unemployed to burn trash.
3. (This is mine)Either Federal or State Government give people tax credits or reimburse them for making their houses more energy efficient & proving it has saved gas or kilowatt hours of electric. The people who do the improvements have more work, the people who pay for it will get tax credits and have more money to spend or invest and less energy is used - costing less, so there is another way there would be more money to spend or invest.

I'm sure they will come up with more this year.


Newest bag. I bought about 10 of them in Oregon.


I used new and old bags today.


Lexi had to have her picture taken with a bag.


I've been collecting bags for years. Some I've even worn holes into the bottom & had to throw away.