I have decided to participate in the 365 Days of Trash Challenge this week.  For those of you that don’t know about 365 Days of Trash, it’s a pretty fascinating story about a guy in California who documented and saved all of his trash for one year.

Dave, aka Sustainable Dave is an award winning cameraman who wanted to see, not only how much waste one person creates but, more importantly, how much waste one person could avoid.  As extreme as his experiment may seem, his approach is actually very common sense and normal.  He shows that it take very little extra effort to lessen your impact on the environment.

My first step into understanding the catastrophe that plastic bottles are creating started about 1 year ago this month.  In that short time, I’ve worked hard to read what I can and educate myself - although I find I’m still learning every day. I’ve gone from about 5 trashcans and 1 recycling bin down to 3 recycling bins and a trash can most weeks.  For a family of 5, we’re making progress.  Reading Dave’s daily account of what trash he created and what he did with it gave me really great insight into some of the basics and obscurities with recycling.  (Who knew that worms would eat a q-tip?!?)

I’ll keep you posted on my week long journey.  In the meantime, check out Dave’s website.  You’ll be hooked!

In the meantime, I’ll recap my first three day’s of our family’s challenge in a post this evening.  It’s been enlightening for us.  There are already changes that we realize we need to make…

We are currently in the process of refining our program of providing reusable bottles for school fundraisers.  It’s something that we’re really excited about and several variations of the program have been very well received on a local level.  In addition to being able to raise money for schools and green projects, it’s a great way to raise awareness of the growing problem that the disposable bottles create.

Personalizing the bottles with names is especially smart - no lost bottles for your little ones or mix-ups on the team!

I thought I’d share the latest ad that we’ve used in a swim meet program. We can do something for your school or team, as well!   We were lucky enough to find an extremely creative local advertising pro/artist/swim dad to come up with the ad.  Check out his fantastic website where he sells very hip and funny portraits.

New Ad for School Swim Team

Want to see an innovative way to use all your old water bottles - now that you’ve Taken The Pledge and given them up?!?  Check out this website and see how some guy built a house from them.  Even better, see the chandelier that someone made from 1 liter bottles!  Plastic Bottle House

Rodin's Thinker understands the impact of a small, mindful choice!

Being mindful of our actions is something that I try to impress upon my kids. But it’s not just being mindful about the big things.  Small changes can add up to a huge difference.  If you’ve been buying one case of 1/2 Liter disposables for $6.00 a week, by switching to a reusable water bottle from H2Ox2.com, you would have…

Saved yourself $312.00. (I didn’t add in the 31 cents that the same amount tap water you would have   to pay for!)  If you don’t like your water, that will pay for a $118.00 filter and leave you lots of extra!

Saved 156 liters of oil! It takes 1/4 of a bottles volume in oil to produce it.

Saved at least 624 liters of water! To produce these bottles, estimates are that it takes between 2 and 3 times their volume in water waste.

Made a great choice - to deny our evergrowing landfills of more plastic waste.

Made a great choice to have one less bottle recycled!  While we support recycling, the better choice is to REDUCE!  Remember, they aren’t made into more plastic bottles…why do you think fleece is so cheap?

Think about it…Living a mindful life can be very inspiring.  It doesn’t take a huge change to make a huge difference.

To The Editor:

As the owner of a brand new business in Michigan targeted at reducing the amount of landfill waste that the disposable bottles create and natural resources that they consume, I’m heartily in favor of our bottle bill being extended to “disposable” water and sports drink bottles.  However, I appreciate the burden that retailers face and wonder if there isn’t a simple, creative option for assisting them.

According to your article, Michigan lags behind the other Great Lakes States in recycling with a rate of only 15%, however, we have a 97% returnable redemption rate.  The Michigan Recycling Coalition states that approximately 30% of Michigan’s population is served by curbside recycling.  Logic tells us that even if curbside recycling is tripled, we’re still not going to be recycling nonreturnable beverage containers at a rate anywhere near those covered by our current bottle law.

According to the Michigan Department of Treasury’s Office of Revenue and Tax Analysis, in 2007, the estimated total deposits collected were y $409.5 million.  $8.9 million worth of these deposits were unredeemed.  Of that amount, 25% went to larger retailers that sell returnables, and 75% went to The Cleanup and Redevelopment Trust Fund.  As a state, if we were to amend the bottle law to cover all beverage containers, not only would our total deposits increase, but our unredeemed deposits would increase, as well.  Why not give all of our retailers that are on the “front line”  collecting returnables a larger piece of these unredeemed deposits to cover their burden?

I’m proud that our state took progressive action in 1976 to become the national leader in beverage container recycling.  Nationally, water bottle sales increased from about 12 billion in 1996 to almost 60 billion in 2006.  With the dramatic increase in bottled water and sports drink consumption, it’s time to step up our commitment, but not at the expense of our already suffering retail establishments.

Of course, let’s not forget to reduce and reuse…

Julia Girdler
President
www.H2Ox2.com