This started out as a straight-forward "here's the fun and easy winter/Christmas craft we did" (which it totally was by the way!). Pretty self-explanatory too: get pine cones (from the yard if you're lucky like us), decorate them, put them around the house. But right in the middle of all that I started looking at the pictures. I've learned a lot in the past year about plastic and what it is doing to our environment. A year ago I didn't know about the "plastic soup" in the ocean. A year ago I didn't realize that plastic "recycling" isn't recycling the way metal or glass or even paper recycling is; I didn't realize it was a one-time thing (at best) and then back to the original problem.
A year ago I bought this glitter glue system: a plastic tool with a battery that squeezes plastic tubes of glitter glue out when you press the trigger. And up until I took another look at it I thought it was great. My son never could squeeze the glitter glue out very successfully which led to a lot of frustration and sometimes even ruined the fun of the project we were working on. This glitter gun took care of all that. But at what cost? Those little tubes of glitter run out super fast and then there is nothing to do but throw the tube and cap in the trash. Eventually we'll run out of glitter tubes and then we either buy more (more plastic) or throw away the gun. And as I'm having my awakening two thoughts occur to me:
1. What was wrong with powdered glitter that you sprinkle over a blob of glue? Gus would probably like that better anyway. Was I afraid of the mess? Because there are other ways to deal with that (outdoors, cardboard box). When these are done we're going back to the old-style glitter (actually I stocked up at after-Christmas sales when the more expensive glitter that comes in glass jars instead of plastic jars was on sale). I probably should give up glitter all the way, or try and find some metal glitter...but I'm not aiming for perfection here and I have one little person who really loves glitter living in the house with me and I don't want to take it away from him yet.
2. What a difference a year makes! Or more specifically--we're all learning, we're all on a curve. I tend to think that wherever I am is where everyone should be and can sometimes think (or even say) "how could someone make that decision!" Well, maybe they don't know. Maybe they haven't been made aware. I'm so glad that now I know--that I've cut my families consumption of plastic and that we're working on cutting it more. I'm glad I found other people in the blogsphere who will keep educating me, and I'm going to keep on trying to educate people around me who may not know. Hopefully I can manage to do that in a way that brings them in and doesn't push them away!
My friend Sarah and I (we were roommates at the time) were entertaining a high school friend of hers who Sarah hadn't seen in a long time. This woman only ate raw foods, no tomatoes (because they kept her up at night because they grow at night), and so on. And she never shut up about it. And she was pretty annoying in her tone and comments on what we ate. And she brought all her own food with her and ate raw snow peas for breakfast instead of Sarah's delicious pancakes. So we were out a museum and in response to some comment about the evils of dairy Sarah promptly ordered and ate two ice cream sundaes! This was not a normal quantity. This was pure response to the annoyingness of this woman and her preaching. A good lesson for me to try and remember.
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