Recycling Juice Pouches and more!

I was pleasantly surprised to find out there are ways to recycle two items I previously thought had to go in the trash: cookie package wrappers and juice pouches.

Terracycle has a program where you send them your empty drink pouches (without straws and not torn) from Capri Sun or Honest Kids they will donate 2 cents per pouch to a charity of your choice. Any other brand of pouch, they'll donate 1 cent. You send them in a prepaid mailing pouch (the only drawback is you have to drop it at a UPS store or drop box).

You can do the same with Chips Ahoy or Oreo cookie wrappers.

Terracycle makes new products from these things. Looks like a win-win situation...less trash in a landfill, money goes to a charity and Terracycle continues to make and sell recycled items.

While we don't drink from drink pouches very often, I do buy them on the rare occasion (Honest Kids juice pouches just happened to be on sale this week!). So it may take me a while to get the 100 pouches needed to mail in the envelope, but that's ok. Now cookies, on the other hand...my boys LOVE their cookies. In an ideal world, I'd make homemade cookies but that's not happening any time soon. I do buy both Chips Ahoy and Oreos for them, so I know that envelope will be filled faster (it only has to have 50 wrappers).

This whole program was exciting to me and I've signed up for it. Have any of you participated in this?

Trash update!

I've been doing the Enviromom Challenge, trying to get to one can of trash a month. I'm surprised...since we started composting and continued our regular recycling, we have managed to have probably 1 and a 1/2 cans a month. I didn't think we'd even get down to two cans! So to celebrate our reduced trash (and to make more space in our kitchen), I got a smaller, pull out trash can that goes under the sink.

The composting is working, but going slow since we're doing it worm-free (for now). I was afraid what our little compost bin would look/smell like when we got back after a week at the beach, but I was pleasantly surprised. The last thing I put in there was corn husks, and it smelled like...cornhusks!

In other exciting (probably only to me!) news, we got our Pur water dispenser for the fridge. Yay! Between that and our iced tea maker, we'll be avoiding a lot of the prepackaged beverage bottles.

Has anyone else been doing the Enviromom trash challenge?

I just saw WALL-E...

I've never really thought I'd be discussing movies in my blog, but we just got back from the movies and thought WALL-E was worth a mention. I thought it was a good movie entertainment wise, but also had a positive message about the environment.

When I saw the movie previews, I figured it was just a cute robot love story, but I was surprised to see it was also a movie about the environment. (Stop here if you're going to see the movie and don't want to read some spoilers below).

In a nutshell, WALL-E is a cute little, lonely, trash compacting robot who is lonely because he's all alone (except for a roach) on Earth, which has been abandoned by the human race after they trashed it. Another "girl" robot flies in from outer space and he's in love.

The girl robot is sent to find signs of plant life on Earth to see if it's inhabitable again, 700 years after humans left Earth. They now live on the space equivalent of an ocean cruise ship, eat liquid fast food, and are so fat and lazy, they don't even walk...they scoot around in floating chairs.

I thought the movie did a nice job of showing the negative effects of pollution and consumerism in a fun, kid friendly way. The ending was hopeful, with the humans returning to Earth to try to revitalize it (although they do wonder if the small green plant they tend to will grow into pizza).

I was glad to have my son see a movie that promoted taking care of Earth and avoiding an unhealthy lifestyle. So the movie in itself was a positive thing.

I was disappointed in a couple things, though. Maybe this was an opening day of the movie thing, but they gave each kid a plastic digital WALL-E watch. OK, how many of those will end up in a landfill? It would have been great to instead give the kids a little book with games or activities that dealt with the environment...or not anything at all.

I also looked at the WALL-E website, thinking they might have something environmental there. Nope. Just little games and wallpapers and stuff like that. I feel like Disney/Pixar wasted the chance to inspire an educate kids. It would be so easy for them to make a recycling game on the website, or kid friendly tips to help the environment? Disney/Pixar missed a real opportunity here.

Overall, though, it was a good movie with a positive message that I'd recommend for families. You just have to do your own follow-up about the environment with your kids afterwards.

A Trashy Post

Catchy title, eh? Sorry, though, this is just a G-rated post about my garbage. I've been very conscious of our trash production since the Enviromom challenge of 1 can a month. After one week...well so far we have about 1/4 can filled! Could it be we might succeed? I'm excited about my trash (or lack thereof). Yay!

And I found out today that my trash collectors now take recyclables 1-7 !!! Woo-hoo! Previously, they had taken 1-3 only.

I think our compost container is helping. We haven't gotten worms yet but we're composting without for now. I read that I should have used a dark container (not clear) because it works better away from light, but since I had already drilled the holes in it, we just decided to keep it under the deck where it's dark.

So the plastic recycling goes in the recycling bin, paper in the paper bin, food scraps (like banana peels and eggshells) go to the compost bin and what's left for our monthly trash challenge is pretty much just stuff like granola bar wrappers and milk cartons.

This really gives me a sense of accomplishment...When we save electricity, a smaller bill is great, don't get me wrong, but actually seeing a physical difference in our trash is pretty cool, and not as hard as I thought!