High 34 degrees. Light snow.
Ice and snow has made it difficult to get outside much this winter. It seems that almost every winter, someone I know gets a nasty injury falling on ice. Last winter, I slipped and fell on Valentine’s Day. I wasn’t badly hurt, but it did shake my confidence in my ability to walk safely on slippery surfaces. A pair of YakTrax are a good investment to prevent slips on sidewalks and such.
During this cold time of year, I find myself engaging in introspection. I particularly ponder ways to live simpler-solving riddles for sustainable living, and such. Well, here’s the recent riddle and solution!
Recently, my parents adopted two kitties from the Homeless Cat Project of Westfield, MA. Although these little darlings add life and fun to their home, my parents found that they needed quite a number of plastic bags for the dirty litter. My folks recently converted to reusable grocery bags, but the need for bags was making them take the plastic bags at the checkout just so they would have them for later use. So, they were reusing plastic bags. But I knew they could do better.
I work part-time at a yarn store, and we throw away alot of the plastic bags the yarn comes in. It’s quite sad, really. So, I took a big load of these bags to my parents so they can use them for litter. That way, they can be good environmentalists on two ends (no pun intended). They can use the reusable bags at the grocery store, and they can put to use good bags that were headed for a landfill.
If you are in a similar situation, ask some local businesses about their bag waste. It will help you live lighter on the earth, and it’s good press for the businesses that send their waste on to be reused!
New England Naturalist 