Random Loudoun County Thoughts

As the title implies, this post doesn't have much of theme except that it deals with Loudoun County, VA.

With Earth Day less than 24 hours behind me, I decided to continue my commitment to getting out of my car as much as possible and walk up to the nearby Target. The stroll under a cloudless, deep blue sky was alongside a steady stream of cars whizzing by me. I had gotten about half-way to the store when a dear friend of mine rolled up alongside: "Walking anywhere in particular."

I told her where and she volunteered to take me

. I got in. Well at least I wasn't driving solo.

Inside Target I browsed the CD racks and remembered that I'd been meaning to write about how downloading music is good for the environment. I'll expand on this with a later post, suffice to say that if you're not buying your music when its wrapped in cellophane and a hard plastic case, you're doing your part for the environment, if not for your collection of music.

Anyway, since I was on lunch I had to quick step it out of there to get back to my computer and do some work.

Walking out I saw four bins beyond the check-out cashiers -- each one was marked for a different recyclable material. A few hurried minutes later I had the store manager in front of me and he told me that this particular Target had the bins in place for about three weeks now. (I didn't have the heart to tell him that I'd been to Wal-Mart twice in those three weeks).

So, all of you Loudoun County people who live near the Target off Cascades Parkway take note: you can recycle the plastic bottles

, cans and whatnot that I passed along the side of the road on my way to the store. That's right. Target will take your trash even from the outside. Read more about Target's green commitment.

A little down the road from Target is the field where my daughter practices soccer twice a week and where she occasionally has her games. Last weekend, empty coffee cup in hand I looked around for a trash can.

And looked. Nothing. Now this isn't some out of the way place; the field is part of the recreation area for a local elementary school. There's a collection of monkey bars, a small baseball field and the soccer field. But no trash can.

Every parent who has ever had a child play soccer knows that game day includes half-time snacks and then an end of game snack, not to mention water breaks during the game. But no trash cans to dispose of anything, let alone trash cans for recycling the

ubiquitous plastic water bottles.

My guess is that most of the 11 and 12 year old girls on my daughter's soccer team spent some of their time this week talking about Earth Day in school. Probably a good number of parents thought about it too, whether pro-environment or not. I wonder if this Saturday when all of us are walking back to our cars if we'll have made sure that the snack drinks, water bottles and everything else is thrown away someplace properly and not left on the grass.

Stay tuned.

National Geographic -- Water

The April 2010 issue of National Geographic opens the mind the way seeing your first dusty orange, red and purple sunset opens your eyes to a new kind of beauty; or how upon hearing Chopin for the first time opens your ears to your own heartbeat or the rhythms of wind.

The April issue of National Geographic causes sadness so deep that tears can't find their way to your eyes.

The April issue of National Geographic is about Water. In words and images that are amazing even for National Geographic, the magazine details how water represents holiness, life and our ultimate need. Nothing else matters if we don't have water. Indeed, as a Christian I know water to be holy because Jesus said, "But whosoever drinketh of the water that I will give them will never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

Water, simple H2O -- probably the only chemical compound most of us can identify -- is anything but simple for hundreds of millions of people around the world. According to the magazine, the average person in the U.S. uses about 100 gallons of water at home each day. For Aylito Binayo, a woman at the center of one story and whose four year old son is left to watch his two younger brothers while she climbs down a mountain to draw and bring back 50 pounds of cloudy, muddy and bacteria-filled water, she makes due with fewer than three gallons of water each day. What she retrieves she shares with her children, her husband and the scrabble of farm and livestock.

I would say go out and buy the issue to read for yourself, but the better use of the $5.99 cover price is to make a donation to one of the many fresh water charities.

A friend of mine a few weeks ago told me that he could tell the difference between one bottled water and another. He doesn't lie, so I'm sure that he could. But (and here comes the real sermon), the better thing to do is not to buy bottled water and do this: find an empty plastic bottle in the house, car, office -- somewhere; cut off the top and make a wide opening; every time the thought of buying bottled water comes up, toss a quarter into the opening.

Even at only once a week, after a year the bottle will have thirteen dollars in it. Thirteen dollars is about half the cost of clean water for life for a person in the developing world, according to Water.org.

I haven't yet contributed to water.org. My personal water charity is blueplanetrun.org, but I'm going to find some spare change in couch, the glove compartment of my car -- maybe even a few pennies in the bottom of an old jewelry box.

Not much to be sure, but it doesn't take much to make a real difference. Plus, if you really want to read the issue, I'll loan you mine.

A Couple of weeks before Earth Day

When you think about it, every day really is Earth Day. We're here on Earth (Terra for the sci-fi fans) every single day, but like a lot of things we profess to love, we take the Earth for granted a lot of times.

But one day every year, we're reminded by celebrations, speeches, TV commercials, and if we're fortunate -- by our friends.

A list of Earth Day activities near Virginia and Washington, D.C. can be found on the Earth Day Network website.

But just like when you realize that you've been taking someone that you love for granted, and then turn around and do something nice for them, it's the same for Earth Day -- you don't need a list of planned activities. You can show your care by doing something true, and from your heart for the Earth.

Whether it's choosing not to use plastic straws when drinking soda in a restaurant; remembering the canvas bag your green friend gave you to use when grocery shopping; or electing not to water the lawn that day, there are countless ways to show appreciation for the Earth without joining a worldwide movement. You probably have to drive a car to those events anyway, and how Earth friendly is that, even in a hybrid?

The Nickel Deposit

The other day I was out on the W&OD trail for a six mile walk. I started at the 23.5 marker at Dominion Station in Sterling and headed east. The sky was clear and the air a bit warm and I took it a bit slow. Nothing much was on my mind except getting the miles in and keeping the weight off -- I'd had a few chocolate bars the previous days, breaking my two per week target. But if you don't eat chocolate, why live, right?

I dashed across Sterling Blvd ahead of cars going way to fast. When I slowed at the little rise on the other side I saw the empty plastic water bottle. A few yards down the trail I saw another one. And another one. Then a energy drink can and a Gatorade bottle.

The trail of them kept going. I started to count them and think back to when I was a kid, probably 10 or 11 years old. In New York back in the 1970s the city government had instituted a five cent deposit on bottles and cans. Turn the stuff in and you got a nickel each. Turn in twenty bottles and cans and a kid whose allowance was just 35 cents a week could walk away with a dollar. Turn in more, and earn more.

Guess what I did. I hunted bottles and cans with a friend of mine like crazy. And not just me; a whole bunch of people collected bottles and cans for the deposit and you know what? The streets of Staten Island (the part of NYC where I lived) didn't have too many cans or bottles in the gutters and bushes. Like the ol' prospector Yosemite Sam told Bugs Bunny: "There's gold in them thar hills." Gold for me was a pile of Coke and Pepsi cans and soda bottles.

There's no deposit on bottles and cans in Virginia, D.C. or in Maryland. For a quick review of why check out this column by Marc Fisher in The Washington Post.

A couple of summers ago, I was vacationing with my family in Ocean City, MD. I had a great time in the water, on the beach and the boardwalk. I don't know how many water bottles and beer cans I picked up on the beach that day and carried the endless distance of about 40 feet to the blue barrel trash cans, but I carried more than one. I wonder if a deposit law was in effect in Maryland that fewer bottles and cans would be on the beach, and in the ocean.

I also remember seeing a few guys who looked homeless while in Ocean City. Where they stayed is anyone's guess. How they survived is also anyone's guess. I'm pretty sure that if Maryland had a bottle deposit law that these guys would have combed the beach like a kid looking for the perfect shell. We'd have had a cleaner beach and a healthier ocean.

Five cents each. How much could it be? That brings me back to the W&OD. I counted 215 bottles and cans on my six mile round trip. That would be $10.75. If I were 12 years old in 1974 that would have been enough money for practically a summer's worth of chocolate milk shakes, a few movies -- something, a lot of somethings.

Or for a person without income, living on the street, panhandling for money for food, $10.75 would buy a pretty long list of groceries:

1 pound box of spaghetti -- $1.00

1 pound of bread (generic) $1.49

4 cans of tuna fish $4.00

1 gallon of milk 3.29

1 Hershey bar (Wal-Mart) 50 cents

Quite a nutritious shopping list (candy bar notwithstanding, but hey, it's chocolate) from a nickel deposit.

Not to mention the increased beauty of the W&OD, the Ocean City beach, and just about every other place we'd like to keep nice.

Thinking, doing, changing

It's been ages since my last post, and while I've been collecting information to share, I've been occupied with other things. But not today. Tomorrow night on Planet Green, the show Blood, Sweat and T-shirts premiers.

The show traces where our clothes come from, the every day stuff we wear a little bit or for a little while and then easily toss into the trash and go off and buy something new.

The stories of the lives that are affected by the decisions we make when it come to clothing are heartbreaking. Everyone should watch.

As an advocate for clean water, I'm all too aware of how much water goes into our clothes. Cotton is one of the thirstiest crops on the planet; it takes more than twenty five bath tubs of clean water to grow enough cotton for a single 9 0z T-shirt, according to Fread Pearce, author of When the Rivers Run Dry.

Well isn't that nice

Environment Leader reported a few days ago that Pepsico Inc. is going to reveal how it measures the carbon footprint of one of the products it markets in the U.K. Well whoop-dee-doo as they say. As one of the largest sources of plastic bottles in the world, Pepsico absolutely needs to make sure that it does all that it can to report its carbon footprint, reduce its carbon emissions and in general, do better for the environment.

Look, we all like to drink a Pepsi now and then, and who really can eat just one Lay's potato chip, but Pepsi is one of the driving forces behind the misuse of fresh water today, and the proliferation of plastic bottles on our beaches and just about everywhere else.

As the bottler of Aquafina water -- just tap water pushed through a filter and then sold for more than the price of a gallon of gas -- Pepsico contributes to pollution on grand scale. Read the book, Bottlemania, to see just what went on to create the wild demand we see today for bottled water.

The company does try to put forward a positive environment story. A visit to its website and a read through the company's corporate sustainability report shows in excruciating detail the lengths that the company goes to be green. I give them a point for that. But the bigger picture is one of corporate profits being pushed way out in front of planet sustainability.

Pepsi is doing something; a lot of other companies are not, but let's not hurt our hands patting the big guy on the back.

Carpet You Could Live With

The economic crisis is affecting everyone. Unemployment is higher than it has been in more than a decade and in some places as many as one out of every six working age adults is without work. To put it bluntly: the economy sucks right now.

The housing market from Rhode Island to Miami and up to Seattle is bad -- improving-- but still bad. In the midst of the worst housing downturn in seventy years, a lot of homeowners have learned that moving up to a better home just isn't an option right now. Their alternative is to make the home that they have a better place for them to live. So they're remodeling.

From ripping out old kitchens and baths to making the tough and costly decision to add on a room, homeowners are rolling up their sleeves and building their own dream home right where they are. But while many homeowners are remodeling, not enough of them are doing so to keep earnings at the country's largest do-it-yourself superstores climbing. Six weeks ago, The Home Depot reported a drop in earnings and so did Lowes.

More importantly, however than how well the big stores are doing, is what are homeowners doing when they're remodeling their places top-to-bottom.

I hope that they're recycling. As a kid I remember a buddy and I scoring big time stuff for our clubhouse from the curbside trash of neighbors. I especially remember the carpet remnant we dragged through the woods to our very own Fortress of Solitude. I remember because when we started a fire in an old cast iron pot -- we wouldn't think of just starting a fire without protection -- we forgot that the heat would pass through the pot and start burning our precious red shag carpet. We survived and tossed the burnt rug into the trash along with miles and miles and tons and tons of other old, worn carpet from everyone else's homes.

That doesn't have to be the case today: homeowners can choose to recycle carpet. The Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE -- yes, overused and corny, but it works) is a national association committed to keeping old carpet out of landfills and directing it to be reused. There's a carpet recovery/recycling company here in Northern VA. According to the CARE website, the organization and its partners have diverted more than 1.3 billion tons of carpet from America's landfills. That's a lot of shag!

Put another way, by diverting and recycling the carpet into other uses, CARE and the homeowners that choose to go this route have helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 238,000 tons or about the equivalent of two million barrels of oil.

The fact is there are opportunities for all of us to do something with our garbage that is better than letting it pile up in a landfill somewhere. So when you're remodeling your home or doing just about anything, think about how what you're doing can be done with a green theme. You'll like the result and our grandchildren will too.