Simply Ecological

I finally started to read my newest issue of Real Simple magazine. It's one of my very favorite magazines. I must admit to being somewhat of a magazine slut though. I tend to buy a lot of them. Some of them, I've never read. Something comes over me when I see all those pretty covers sitting all lined up on the shelf just waiting for me to come along and leaf through them! The magazine aisle is almost always the first place I stop in the grocery store and a lot of the time, it's the first place in the book store too.

Anyway, the October 2008 issue has a great article -- "how to recycle anything". It's the second part and I don't remember ever reading the first part! I subscribe to this magazine, but that doesn't mean that I got to read it last month. Normally, I would run right to the old issue and read the first part of the article, but just last week, I took several issues of Real Simple up to my local post office. The Postmaster had never seen it before and I decided to share them with all the ladies there. Fortunately, Real Simple thought of people like me. They have the entire list on www.realsimple.com/recycling so I just went there and printed them out. I plan to laminate them or put them in page protectors and refer to them often.

One of the problems of living in a rural area is that we don't have all of the services that are available in the big cities. So, I plan to look on http://www.recyclingcenters.org/ to see if there are any recycling centers near me. It sure would be nice. At this point, I only recycle paper and I have to drive it to Dallas, when I'm going in for something else, to do that!

I did stop buying bottled water more than a couple of years ago. I went to http://www.mysigg.com/ and bought a reusable aluminum bottle with a sports top. I love it! It's not like those horrible plastic things you buy in most stores. It doesn't smell strongly or change the taste of the water (or other beverage) at all. The first one I got was too big for the cup holders in my car, so I ordered another one. It says Simply Ecological. It makes me happy to see it! I wish I had the money to buy one for everyone I love.

The only other things I can think of off hand that I'm doing that are eco-friendly at the moment is that I've got those low energy light bulbs in some of my lamps and I recycle aluminum cans. One of my plans is to start recycling more. It's not on my 101 list because I want it to be something I naturally start and continue. Now, I guess one of the things I need to work on is buying less magazines.