Challenge taken

A few days ago, one of my readers read my Earth Day post and questioned what I would do if I won the National Geographic contest. I started to think about it. What WOULD I do? I think that they'd frown up on my idea of using it to pay off my credit cards to save the paper statements they keep sending me to remind me that I owe them money. Then I thought about a local education program. I could use it to pay for leaflets, or postcards that the kids and I could walk around to the neighbors to remind them to recycle (and doing it at the local school could bring some needed money for even more education by the school). But that seemed too trivial.

Then I got a little defensive. Nothing is too trivial. It's not the big, grandiose things that change the world, it's the power of all the little things that add up to the game-changers. Think of anything -- any industry -- any product. It wasn't the one wholly new product, idea, process that changed us. It was the steady progression forward.

My daughter is getting to a point in her development that she's starting to think, and care about, her body a little more. She fights every day with finding a balance in the amount to eat. She's not fat, nor even overweight, but she knows that she needs to keep her habits in check or she will have a problem. She exercises quite a bit, and we provide mostly well-balanced meals as well, but I'm glad that she knows about the issues we all face.

At dinner the other night she made a comment about this challenge. She said that sometimes she feels she goes a little overboard and then swings back the other way -- eating too much, then maybe paying too much attention, and then she swings back the other way. I took this opportunity to present what I, in retrospect, think was a pretty cool analogy.

My daughter loves to ride her bike. I asked her how she kept from falling off her bike when she's riding. She said that she needed to keep pedaling. I reminded her that even if she kept pedaling, she might still fall over if she didn't slightly adjust her course by steering. She agreed. Watching our diet is just like that -- riding a bike. If you're not pedaling (exercising), you'll fall over. Even if you're pedaling, you still need to adjust course (eat more if you're still hungry, eat less if you become full, or start to gain unwanted weight.) It's all about balance. To achieve balance, you need to keep making slight adjustments, and moving forward.

Going green is just like that. I didn't start by taking off in a rocket ship with a straight, well-planned trajectory. I started off small -- recycling at the office in bins close to my desk, starting a compost pile to help fertilize my little backyard garden, returning cans and bottles with a deposit. Then I started adding more and more to our curbside recycling programs - including adopting recycling from my family members out of town that can't recycle certain items in their own programs. I added a large paper recycling bin next to the desk at home for junk mail and newspapers. Then I added a designated bin in my bedroom for magazines, shampoo bottles, etc. that I come across. I remind the kids (on the seldom occasion) when I see them toss paper into the garbage, or leave the lights on. I recycle our cardboard (after crushing in our compactor). Recently my kids and I have been keeping an eye on a local playground on our bike rides and bringing trash and recycling home to keep things clean. I've replaced some of the light bulbs in our house with CFCs (in other places, they just don't fit in our fixtures). I pay attention to how I drive and use several hyper-miling tips to increase my mileage.

It's a bunch of little things, but they add up. As a family of 5, to actually "throw away" only one bag of garbage a week -- in total, I think is pretty good. Everything else is recycled. But we can do better.

I feel bad about tossing the toilet paper rolls in the garbage as opposed to bringing them downstairs to recycle. Maybe this week I'll start addressing that little bit of green potential.

$20,000 from National Geographic... Sure, it would be nice, and maybe I could make a bigger impact, but my chances of making this planet a little better are better on a smaller (but growing) scale I think.