Bringing Home My Recyclables

I have a confession.  I bring home as many recyclable things as I can.  I pick up recycling around town and I bring it home from vacation when I can't find anywhere to recycle it.  And this is why:

When we were in Wyoming over the summer, there was this great public building with bathrooms and big bins for all types of recycling in pristine Jackson.  Chicago has recycling and solar powered compacting trash bins all over the city.  But our last two trips were harder.  Miami was difficult with the seemingly endless stream of plastic cups but Aruba was impossible!  

After several failed attempts to locate anywhere I could take plastic, glass, or paper for recycling, I finally made room in my backpack and come home with this:

We try to travel light by each taking a single travel backpack, so I wasn't able to bring home much of my nemesis, plastic, but I did manage to bring back and recycle all the paper we (somehow) accumulated.

You might be wondering why this is a confession.  It's not a secret that I recycle.  But bringing it home on an airplane?!  I know.  I know!  I have a problem.  I can't even bear to figure out if it's a net energy loss since I'm flying it home.  (My guess is that, yes, it is.  I told you I have a problem!)  It's just so disheartening watching the trash can fill.

Seriously, I can't stop.  I'd already put this in our car before we discovered that beach in the first picture.

Let me explain.  Not my own habits but the reason the beach looks like that.  Arubans are not going around throwing plastic on their beaches.  (Well, probably some are.)  No, that beach looks like that from people like us.  Trash that doesn't make it into a landfill, more often than not, ends up in the water somewhere.  And things that end up in rivers, lakes, and oceans end up on a beach or in an animal - including humans!  This book gives a wonderful explanation about the whole waste/water/gyre cycle.  I'm glad I read it before seeing this beach.

At least then I knew not to tut-tut the friendly people of Aruba.  That didn't do much for my growing "obsession" with picking up after others though...

Peace,

Stacey

Insight from the Inflight Magazine

As a yoga teacher, I already "knew" the beautiful benefits of meditation but a recent article in AirTran's inflight magazine really resounded with me.  

It's titled "Nothing Really Matters" and it's worth the read if you have a couple minutes.  There's no new age-y vibe in it.  It's straightforward.  Seriously, here's an interesting bit from it:

"But unplugging is hard to do. A recent study by researchers at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business found that most people consider Facebook, Twitter and email harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol. In the study, 205 adults wore devices that recorded a total of 7,827 reports about their daily desires. The desire for media and work proved the most difficult to resist."


It's a really short article that gets right to the point:

"You can achieve a lot—regeneration, calm, emotional balance—by doing nothing."

Now I know how to handle those agitated, sleepless times on my next flight.

Peace,

Stacey

Do You Carbon Offset Your Travel?

As we wrap up the biggest travel week/weekend of the year in the U.S., it reminds me about what we do to "offset" the environmental costs of our travel.

We are very nontraditional in the way we do this.  We typically donate to a charity that plants trees like The Nature Conservancy's Plant A Billion Trees program or Heifer International's Trees Are A Treasure program.  The Plant A Billion Trees campaign is planting trees in Brazil's Atlantic Forest in order to restore/preserve 30 million acres of rainforest in the next 2 years.  How awesome is that?!?  And The Trees Are A Treasure program often plants fruit trees not only to preserve topsoil but also give nutritious food to families providing for themselves.  (The vegetarian in me loves this part!)

If you'd like to go a more traditional route to offset greenhouse gases produced through travel, you may prefer The Conservation Fund.  It even provides a "Go Zero" calculator.  (Very eye-opening!)  Another one that I've heard great things about (but never used) is Carbon Fund.  I love that it has a whole section devoted to reducing our impacts listed before the offset section.

Which others am I missing?

Peace,

Stacey

Smoky Yoga Hikes

Like I said yesterday, we just got back from an amazing trip where we tried to walk lighter on the Earth and renew our spirits as well.  I can go on and on about how great traveling makes me feel… but, luckily for you, this post isn't about that.  One of the little things that I did on this trip was fitting some yoga in whenever possible.  I didn’t bring my yoga mat but I did manage to carry everything I needed for over a week on my back.

I'm loving my new pack!

I made time for a little yoga practice at the campground and without a mat, I just practiced right on the grass.  This was very grounding (get it?) as it brought me directly in contact with the Earth.  The grass was mostly dead and brittle from the severe drought but it was nice to be on grass nonetheless.

That's smoke from the newest wildfire. (We'd already taken down our tent.)

Most days I played on the logs that separated us from the other campsites.  (You can see my favorite log in that picture above.)  Somehow I don’t have any pictures of this but I’m guessing most of our neighbors do.  I’m sure they thought I was crazy because I was usually just seeing which balancing poses I could do on knotty logs that kept rolling.  As you can imagine my warm-up sun salutations worked out much better than my balancing-half-moons and warrior-threes.  

Look at all that smoke behind my mid-hike mermaid pose

How could I “walk lighter on the Earth” without actually walking though?!?  We did a fair bit of hiking while we were there.  I mean, really, we had to at least hike to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point near Jenny Lake.  Plus, you can’t see Old Faithful nor the Paint Pots from your car as you drive around Yellowstone!  Hiking was really fun for us.

The trail at the summit of Signal Mountain (elevation 7,720 ft.)

Of course, you can’t take me hiking (or pretty much anywhere outside) without some sort of yoga thrown in for good measure.

Notice my hiking shoes were needed to get down to Jenny Lake.

What about you?  How do you connect with nature when you're away from home?

Peace,

Stacey

Eating Greener While Traveling

We just got back from an amazing trip!  We really like to travel… and most of the time it is via airplane.  Knowing how much pollution that causes, we try to live like locals once we arrive especially concerning our food.  We shop at local markets, look for locally grown food, and eat at "home" as much as possible.   

This trip was different than our usual beach jaunts though.  We visited National Parks!  If you don't know, these are places in the U.S. where you’re practically forced to get outside and enjoy nature.  We were lucky enough to make it to Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park!  Both were beautiful even though our visit was shrouded in smoke from all the wildfires.

The Grand Tetons - our last day was the only one without wildfire smoke!

Being surrounded by nature’s splendor helps renew my commitment to the “little things.”  When we went to the grocery store, we made it out with only one plastic bag, which we reused to “pack things out” before the week was finished.  After grocery shopping, we were able to cook most of our meals so we wasted less food.  There was even time to make my easy granola!  We had the pleasure of eating out a few times, too. 

I found a local microbrewery where everything is handmade.  They even have their own bakery that uses only 100% organic flour.  The veggie burger (including the bun) was wonderful.  The real star of the show was the OB-1 (Organic Beer Number One) though!  If you can’t get it on tap, then it is only sold in cans!!!  Cans!  There’s our “little thing” of this post.  Cans are better for the environment than bottles because they weigh less to ship to you so it creates less pollution during transportation.  Aluminum is 100% recyclable.  (Glass is, too, but plastic can only be down-cycled. Who wants drink out of plastic anyway?!!?)  Plus, cans cool faster than bottles, which uses less energy.  Oh, the power of cans!  The other cool thing about the beer from the Snake River Brewery is that it doesn’t use those ubiquitous 6-pack rings.  Nope!  It comes packaged with this:

It's even made from 99% post consumer waste!

Yes, it is plastic but it is reusable (please, return them) or when you’re not conveniently located in Jackson, Wyoming, you can recycle it – unlike it’s ringed cousin, err, ancestor.

We also went to a fun little pizza place at Signal Mountain Lodge called Leek’s Pizzeria.    Unbeknownst to us, it turned out to be a Certified Green Restaurant. 

Yes, I took a picture of their green street cred.

The pizza dough is made with organic ingredients.  Most of the drinks and food are locally sourced.  They use renewable energy.  I didn’t see a single-use (disposable) cup in the place!  Even the kid’s cups were reusable.  To make it even more enjoyable, we were able to sit on the back deck and enjoy an evening view of Jackson Lake.  When we were finished, we didn’t worry about asking for to-go packaging.  We knew they wouldn’t use styrofoam.  I expected a cardboard box but what we got was a sheet of aluminum foil.  No excess.  Just the right amount.  And it can be recycled easily and completely.

See eating on vacation doesn't have to cost the planet!

Now it's your turn.  How do you explore our planet while treading lightly on it?

Fountain Paint Pots Trail - my favorite part!

Oh, and don’t forget the cans!  Next time, buy cans!  I’m not asking much, am I?

Peace,

Stacey

If you're still reading (thanks) and know how to rotate the second and the last pictures, please, let me know. They are both saved on my computer with the address horizontally but the pictures keep rotating when I upload them.  Eek!  I figured it out.  I'd still love your comments though. :)