Waste Reduction Tips for the Holiday Season
The holiday season is here with the accompanying shopping, decorating, gift giving, entertaining and feasting. As we celebrate, we also tend to generate lots of waste. Did you know that an extra million tons of waste is generated nationwide each week between Thanksgiving and New Year’s? Here are a few ideas and suggestions on how to have a wonderful, gift giving holiday season and still be earth friendly.
100 percent
It’s a lofty goal to say you are striving for 100 percent of anything. So, when on Jan. 15, 2014, the Sonoma County Winegrowers committed to making Sonoma County the nation’s first 100 percent sustainable wine region by 2019, some may have questioned setting the bar so high.
Up in the air?
One might say that the current dispute about a flight school at the Healdsburg Municipal Airport is simply a NIMBY issue by folks who live near the airport. The rest of you could say, “It doesn’t affect me”….or does it?
Cannabis invaders
On our most recent visit to the state capitol in Sacramento, we witnessed the mounting waves of an invading army, a strange confederacy of hired-gun lobbyists, backwoods entrepreneurs, green-tinged lawyers and cannabis-sniffing capitalists.
From the street to the creek
Most people have heard the slogan “Only rain down the drain” or have seen decals near storm drain inlets with the words “DRAINS TO CREEK, NO DUMPING” on them. And we know what a wonderful environment we have in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties — our rivers and creeks are a major part of what is so great about living here. As you go about your daily tasks at work and home, you want to do what’s right to protect our environment, but sometimes it seems more convenient to overlook the responsible action, or just take a shortcut. It may seem easy to just clean a paint brush or roller with a hose into the street gutter or inlet rather than into the sink. After all, it’s just a little paint. Or when completing the replacement of a portion of a driveway you might be tempted to hose off the excess concrete into the nearby storm drain inlet — what else can you do with it? Let’s say the area around the dumpster or garbage can is getting a little dirty so why not a quick rinse with a hose to clean it up? It goes to a treatment plant, doesn’t it? These are all examples of how waste can end in our creeks.
