Yesterday I went to a baby shower at a very good friend’s home. We had a fantastic time laughing and joking around and I saw some old friends that I haven’t caught up with in way too many years to count. It was a great day full of food and festivity.At the end of the day, as the counters started to clear, one of the girls made the announcement that our friend “wasn’t planning to deal with recycling for the shower.” My jaw hit the ground as I truly understand just how easy it is to toss water bottles, cups and flatware into the sink to be rinsed.
I grabbed my own water bottle and held onto it as I said “I’ll just take mine home to recycle then.”
Yes it likely sounded very geeky to my friends that I didn’t just go with what everyone else was doing and throw it away, but everything inside of me was sad to think I would be adding to the plastic problem by throwing that bottle into the very full trash bag. So I held onto it and a new conversation began with my friend hosting the shower.
“Well I do recycle, it’s just that it’s downstairs in the garage and I didn’t want to have to deal with it today.”
Understandable, she is 7-1/2 months pregnant and probably worn out. Instead of making my friend do all that work, I reached into the trash & pulled out as many recyclables as I could find to bring them downstairs. And you know what? Two more of the gals came down with handfuls of plastic right behind me.
It’s taking a stand and making tiny steps that really count and I was happy to be the one to lead the charge yesterday! We love the environment here!
5 comments:
Ugh - I hate those situations! Good for you for a) taking care of your own recycling and b) grabbing some extras without pointing fingers and making people feel bad! I feel like I'd fail at B.... =P
Good for you, Jen!
(Dang nabbit, had to self-delete! After I posted I noticed several misspellings and a few typos. Boy am I in rare form today.)
It was nice that you showed you had backbone enough to stand up for what you deeply believe in.
When your friend explained that she just was not up to dealing with lugging a bag full of recyclables down a flight of stairs (and it was obvious that she was very pregnant), all that was needed was a little impetus to propel the other to lend a hand...you were that propellant. :)
Rock on, Jenn!!! It breaks my heart to see all of the recyclable material that this world consumes go in the trash...especially after the disaster inthe Gulf. You'd think that the grim future of the marine life would wake people up.
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