Plastic Takes Over the World!

I got an email from change.org today about signing a petition that I really want to pass onto my readers. In a nut shell, the plastic industry is lobbying to make it illegal for individual towns and cities of Illinois to ban the use of plastic bags. Banning plastic will be impossible if this bill gets passed! Of course there are parts of this bill that are good, like having more plastic bag recycling locations... but recycling plastic bags is almost an oxymoron. We need to get rid of it! In the end it's up to each individual person, but when an entire city makes the decision to ban them it's a really big deal!

Here's the petition:

Change.org|Free Online Petitions

Impeach Obama?

All of these people are saying that we should get rid of Obama because he's getting nothing done. This is my response to that way of thinking:

If Obama got impeached, who do you think would be the next president? America doesn't vote for environmentalists. America votes for big oil. I agree that Obama hasn't lived up to anything he's said at all, he's sold out to every company with dollar sign eyes. As Americans, we cannot rely on the government and we cannot rely on companies, we can only rely on ourselves. There are tons of things each individual here and at every corner of the world can do to fight big oil. It starts with out wallets.

Buy local, especially local food. Shop at the farmers market where food is grown 30 miles away, or go to the actual farm itself. Large scale agriculture relies so heavily on oil in every sense of it from fertilization (ammonium nitrate) to pesticides to packaging (plastic=oil) to transportation. Farm to plate the average meal travels 1500 miles.

Stop using plastics. Start easy and don't use any plastic shopping bags or bottled beverages or styrofoam containers. Bring your own bag, your own bottle, your own reusable take home container. Then take a bigger step and vow to not by anything that comes in plastic. Stop using "regular" household cleaning products, haircare, lotion, etc. There are very basic ingredients that can be used to do everything around your house. Vinegar kills mold and disinfects so it pretty much cleans everything. Mix it with lots of lemon or lime juice to make it smell nice and the acidity helps remove grease, etc. too.

Most important, ride your bike walk and use public transit if it's available. Stop driving so much! If you're going 5 miles away, take your bike. Before going anywhere, ask yourself if you really need to drive. Put trips together into one big trip rather than going out 3 times a day.

Don't produce so much waste. I'm weening myself off of all city controlled waste pick up, eventually I plan on having no waste taken at all but currently I still have about a 1/2 crate of recyclables a week and one small bag of trash between the three of us in my household. Start a compost to efficiently repurpose food waste. Throw all your used paper in the compost, unless there's a lot of colored ink. If you cook from scratch, this vastly decreases packaging waste.

The possibilities are endless. It's up to us to fight against this ugly consumerism that depends so heavily on oil and coal. It isn't sustainable and we don't have to live like this.

So disturbing...