AttemptGreen.com

Do you have chemicals around your house?  Old containers of paint, pesticides, or just random chemicals you just aren’t sure how to dispose of…

I live in Cuyahoga County and this Saturday (May 10th), they are hosting a Household Hazardous Waste Round-Up.  This allows you to bring in all those chemicals that you aren’t sure how to dispose of properly and have the county dispose of these materials in an environmentally friendly way.  They have this event twice a year, and I actually took advantage of the City of Parma’s collection this past weekend.

It is very easy to do this.  All you have to do is put these containers of chemicals in the trunk of your car.  When you pull into the site, they signal to where you need to pull into and then pop your trunk.  The staff will come out to your car and empty the materials out of your car. Then you simply pull away, taking less than five minutes.

If you have hazardous chemicals around your house, take them to be properly disposed of.  It’s not just about disposing of them in an environmentally friendly way, but also to clean out the environment you live in every day of these chemicals.  There is a reason they call them “hazardous” chemicals.  Clean up your environment and be good to the overall environment.

Do you have a large collection of “collectibles”?  I sure do, several different collections in fact.  Things just seem to accumulate over time. 

As part of cleaning out my house the past few months, I’ve decided to give up my doll collection.  When I was only 3 or 4 years old my great aunt left me her entire doll collection and over the years it was added to.  Now that I’m 28, and don’t appreciate it as much, I decided that it was time to get rid of all the dolls that I don’t truly love.  I went through all of them and pulled out the ones I truly love, less than 10 of the probably 60-100 dolls that I had.

Then I started pondering, what do I do with all those dolls that I don’t want.  I picked up the phone and called my brother to see if my niece would like to have them.  After all, it has family history and is only right that if someone in the family would like it, it should stay in the family. So I just boxed up the dolls to ship to my niece. 

What does any of this have to do with being green?  Well, the basic gist here is that just because you don’t want something, doesn’t mean no one wants it.  In this case, I took a collection of items (this could be anything you collect) that needed thinned out and see if there is someone else that you know that would like them.  People love to collect things, landfills don’t.

If you are doing some thorough spring cleaning like I am, really consider how you are getting rid of items.

Today happens to be Earth Day, which is a great way to bring environmental concerns to the front of everyone’s minds.  So what special thing did I do for Earth Day?  Nothing.  At least not really.  I did greet most everyone by saying “Happy Earth Day”, much like you would for new years.  That probably made more people aware that wouldn’t normally.

The reason I didn’t do anything “special” was because I’m making a lot of little changes over a period of time and not one huge thing just today.  The earth needs a lot of help, and what I do in one day won’t make much of a difference, but what I do over the rest of my life will.  So today I used my own mug when I went to Caribou, I drove my hybrid to work, I went running outside (not on a treadmill), recycled my Gatorade bottle, and list goes on and on.  I’m going to continue to adopt new ways of helping our earth out (and blogging about).  Join in with me to make some more little changes to have a big impact.

There are tons of resources out there, especially today, about sustainability, resource consumption and the like, but I really wanted to point out a fantastic video called “The Story of Stuff“.  My attention was drawn to it by another blog, Presentation Zen, to point out how this person’s passion comes across in their presentation style (regardless of message).  While her message is very strong, she highlights how awful our resource consumption really is, especially in the United States.  I don’t necessarily agree with all of her arguments, but most are truly convincing and informative.  I’ll be thinking twice about going shopping just to go shopping.  Take 20 minutes, I highly recommend you watch this video. 

A funny side note, last night when I told my husband today was Earth Day, he said he would ride his bike to work.  No, he doesn’t have a bike since I donated the old bikes. The reason this is funny is because he works from home and doesn’t have a commute.

A friend of the family, Bryan, emailed me the other day with a link to a blog post over at The Coffee House.  If you ever need inspiration or motivation on why you should be trying to manage the amount of waste you simply throw away, you definitely need to check out this post!  It really highlights how plastic waste really affects marine life, and most of that only exists as packaging of products.   And it isn’t just packaging, but also the plastic bags so many of us get at the grocery store to bring home the products we buy.  You could think of it as packaging of packaging of the products we buy.

The video talks about turning in those bags so they can be used in other products.  However, you could go another step further and use reusable bags.  I did a post about reusable bags before, but I don’t think we can say enough about it.  I said it before, if there is one thing you do to attempt green, this should be it.  The one thing that has helped me on my little trips and remembering to bring the bags into the store has been a small bag I bought at Target.  This bag zips up to be about the same size as a female’s wallet, easily fitting into a purse so I always have it with me.

Go watch the video that the Coffee House has posted, and any time you think that it just doesn’t matter, watch it again.  I’ve added it to my favorites and will likely be watching it a few more times.

So the weather has gotten much warmer here in Cleveland over the past week or two.  This makes me want to do some serious cleaning, mostly cleaning out.  I wanted to highlight here what I’ve been doing over this past weekend pertaining to my spring cleaning. 

1. Donated my old computer – I got a new laptop a few months ago and finally got rid of my old desktop.  I did this as part of April being Cuyahoga County’s Computer Round-up month.  I loaded my computer (and any spare parts I could find that I don’t need any more) into my trunk.  The way they had it setup was so nice.  I drove into this building, popped my trunk and two guys came right over and unloaded my trunk for me and put the parts in their organized piles.  Cuyahoga County will take a look at my equipment, refurbish what they can and donate it to local schools.
2. Recycled magazines – We don’t get many magazines, but the one we love is The Family Handyman.  These accumulate over time in the bathroom.  So I had my husband go through these and get rid of as many as he could part with.  Unfortunately magazines aren’t part of our curbside recycling.  However, there are tons of bins throughout the town to put all kinds of paper into.  So while I was running over to donate the computer, I stopped at a bin and recycled all the magazines.
3. Clothing donations – I went through my closet and dresser and purged a lot of clothes.  I had sweaters in there that I haven’t worn in years.  No sense in having it clutter my closet if I’m not going to wear it.  Between the clothes and some blankets in the guest bedroom closet, I filled 2 garbage bags full.  There are also tons of bins around the city (just like for paper and magazine recycling) where the bags will get dumped into and the clothes will go towards helping people that need them. 

Getting rid of these items has really helped get my house cleaned up.  I always feel better when I come home to a clean house.