Fix What We Can

Occasionally I receive one of those chain emails I am deeply touched by. And while I prefer not to forward them since most people already get too much email, I do want to share why one I received last week affected me so profoundly. In short it was a message about what a "throw away" society we have become. And although the focus was on relationships and realizing that we need to treasure those and repair them when they're damaged, I took something different from it as well. These words leaped up at me from the screen:

"Sometimes, what we care about most gets all used up and goes away, never to return again.
So while we have it, it's best to love it and care for it, and fix it when it's broken."

• Currently floating in the Pacific Ocean is a giant field of plastic trash (plastic bottles, bags, bottle caps, beverage can holders, etc.) twice the size of the continental U.S! This sea of plastic trash is slowly poisoning marine life, birds and ultimately via the food chain, human beings too.
• In the U.S. alone, everyday we discard some 70 million plastic water bottles, less than 15% of which are recycled.
• U.S. businesses use a total of some 21 million tons of copy paper, more than 4 TRILLION sheets each year. This amounts to an average of 10,000 sheets per office worker a year.
• The U.S. is the world's top consumer nation. All of this consumption generates more than 1650 pounds of trash per person per year.
• Every month more than 100,000 CDs are tossed into landfills.
• Our disposal burden is so large that we often ship our compacted trash to third world countries; if you look at North America from space, the highest point on the eastern seaboard is a landfill!

1. Reduce or eliminate bottled water consumption. If you want to drink water that has been filtered for heavy metals and other toxins, purchase a home filtration system. Or for less than $30 (and a new filter every couple months) buy a water pitcher (like Britta) and use that to filter your drinking water. Plastic is derived from petroleum and it takes some 1.5 million barrels of oil a year to satisfy America's demand for bottled water!
2. Eliminate the use of plastic bags. Use instead cloth or reusable bags available at most grocery stores for a few cents. U.S. households dispose of nearly 100-BILLION plastic bags annually, millions of which end up littering the environment and endangering wildlife. Plus they're made from you guessed it...oil.
3. Reuse and recycle paper, and try to buy post-consumer recycled paper products. If we reduced paper use of all kinds (think paper towels, napkins, single-sided copies, paper cups, fax cover sheets, junk mail) by half, we'd clear space currently occupied by more than 1,000 landfills. Plus recycled paper costs 44% less to produce, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions and solid waste.
4. Recycle used cell phones. About 130 million cell phones a year are simply thrown away! Stop to think about it: each phone contains batteries and other toxic ingredients that if improperly disposed of end up leaching into our water and soil. Many non-profit groups collect cell phones to be refurbished. Find one and pass your old technology on to someone that can make good use of it.
5. Purchase products with as little packaging as possible. Grocery retailers like Trader Joe's and Fresh and Easy are great sources of high quality products with a minimum of packaging, and often lower prices as well.
6. Get voicemail service for your home phone. If all the answering machines in U.S. homes were replaced by voicemail services the resulting energy savings and reduction in air pollution would be the equivalent of removing 250,000 cars from the road for a year!
7. Wash your car(s) at a commercial car wash rather than doing it at home. If every American who washes their own car switched to a commercial car wash just once it would save some 8.7 billion gallons or water and prevent about 12 billion gallons of soapy, polluted water from being dumped into rivers and streams.
8. Don't take an ATM receipt. ATM receipts are one of the top sources of litter on the planet. If everyone in the U.S. opted out of their receipt it would save a roll of paper long enough to circle the equator 15 times!
9. Unplug your power-gobbling electronic devices when not in use. Did you realize that 10 percent of the electricity used in your home is burned by communication devices and appliances when they are turned off? Not ready to go around uplugging all of your appliances and electronic devices? Start by simply unplugging your electronic battery chargers when not in use or use power-saving surge protectors with a simple on-off switch to cut down on the energy drain.
10. As much as possible, buy local food and produce from farmers markets and other local resources. More than 15% of the energy used in the U.S. is used producing and transporting food. When you buy local you not only support neighborhood producers, which generally means better use of the earth's resources in your area, you help reduce our dependence on oil in the process.

Quote of the Week:

"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

~~Joni Mitchell, Singer, Songwriter

"Transforming Your Potential into Performance!"
Betty Mahalik, PCC Life & Business Coach, Trainer bettym@dynamic-coaching.com www.dynamic-coaching.com	Dynamic Solutions 5240 Mustang St. Las Vegas, NV 89130 tel: 702 658-4425 fax: 702 658-5802 mobile: 702 443-0175
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