Cell Phones and the Environment

On February 23, 2010, I wrote a post about recycling batteries.
The site that I have posted a link to, is specifically addressing cell phones and cell phone batteries.

The program is called:
Call2Recycle

Retail Partners
Call2Recycle's retail partners provide easy access for customers to drop off their used batteries and cell phones for recycling. Participating retailers include notable: Best Buy, Black & Decker, The Home Depot, London Drugs, Lowe’s, RadioShack and The Source.  

http://environment.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=environment&cdn=newsissues&tm=61&f=00&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.rbrc.org/call2recycle

Pack a Waste-Free Lunch, not just a Waist-Free lunch....

Pack a Waste-Free Lunch

A waste-free lunch means that you have no packaging to throw away when you're done - nothing other than apple cores, banana and orange peels, peach or cherry pits. The best way to reduce garbage is to not create it. (source: Environmental Forum of Marin)

Five Simple Ways to Pack a Waste-Free Lunch

YES	NO
REUSABLE carrier (cloth bag, lunchbox)	NO throw-away bags
REUSABLE containers	NO plastic wrap, foil or styrofoam
THERMOS for drinks	NO single-use cartons or cans
CLOTH NAPKIN to wash and re-use	NO paper napkins
SILVERWARE to wash and re-use	NO plastic forks and spoons

Lunch Waste Facts

ALUMINUM FOIL	More than 20 million Hershey's kisses are wrapped with 133 square miles of foil every day
ALUMINUM AND TIN CANS	In the time it takes you to read this sentence, more than 50,000 12-oz. aluminum cans were made
BANANA AND ORANGE PEELS	Food debris in a landfill decompose only 25% in the first 15 years (try composting or vermiculture!)
JUICE BOXES	Most inorganic trash retains its weight, volume, and form for at least four decades
PAPER BAGS AND NAPKINS	It is estimated that 17 trees are cut down for every ton of non-recycled paper
PLASTIC BOTTLES, FORKS, WRAP	U.S. citizens discard 2-1/2 million plastic bottles EVERY HOUR
STYROFOAM	U.S. citizens throw away 25 billion styrofoam cups EVERY YEAR

Recycling batteries, is there a right way and wrong way to do it?

In speaking with most folks, people don't really give it much thought about what to do with their batteries once they no longer work. From the AAs to the re-chargeable kind, the everyday transistor, now there's a word, kind of batteries. I mean, where do they go when they "die"? Do we bury them in the ground as we do most everything else that dies? And if we do, how does that affect our environment? A little battery here and there certainly won't be a big deal, right? Well, that is the way most Americans think, it's not a big deal, who is to know? What will it hurt?

I'm posting some info about what to do with our dead batteries. Yes, it takes effort to make the extra trip to the recycle them, but it makes a big difference and every little bit counts.

Since I live in So Cal aka Southern California, here is a link for how to recycle batteries in our Golden State.

http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/ReduceWaste/Batteries/

This site provides battery recycling kit information that will really help out to store those dead batteries then ship them on their way to be recycled.

http://www.batteryrecycling.com/

Stormy weather reveals what lies beneath So Cal beach front...anybody for a swim?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34926340

California Department of Water Resources

It's funny how people are, I mean, we get a few days and a few inches of rain and snow, and we hear, "The drought is over." Isn't that not only naive but premature? We have been in a drought for years and years. We barely get any rain, thus the fires, thus the mudslides when we do get rain. Do you hear about mudslides in Oregon? No, because they get a lot of rain. We get flooding and mudslides because we have been in a drought that caused some fires or enabled fire starters to set their blazes, and then we get floods and mudslides as a result of no shrubs that are able to grow because we have been in a drought. It all comes full circle.
People who have lived in the colder, wetter, snowier parts of this country, that saw the Rose Parade on a cold bitter New Year's Day at home on the TV sets, moved out South West in hopes of a better climate, you know, no rain and no snow, so us So Cal Natives that have been here before the 70s remember the days of normal rain days that we had, even for here, and it has not been normal in years. So this is yet to make up for the 20 some odd years of drought.

Here are some resources to help us conserve our precious water
http://www.cadroughtprep.net/watshort.htm 
http://http://wwwdwr.water.ca.gov/

City of Fullerton - Laguna Lake Park

Being a Fullerton, California Native, I've seen quite a huge influx of change and culture diversity. After all, I grew up in Lilly White Sunny Hills, and I was the only one in my neighborhood whose last name ended in "ez".

In the neighborhood I grew up in, there is an old lake named the Laguna Lake. It was a really neat place to go to when I was a kid, however over the years, it was getting quite run down. The pollution coming from the sludge at the bottom had headed out to sea, as a result, quite a bit of money had gone into giving this historic lake a much needed remodel. In February, 2006 the lake had re-opened and fishing was back in season.

One is an article in which The OC Register had written on the re-model and the other is a link to the City of Fullerton featuring Laguna Lake.

http://www.aldermanengineering.com/clientfiles/file/OC%20Register%20Laguna%20Lake%202006-01-16.pdf

City of Fullerton - Laguna Lake Park

Reintroduction to Water Trash and Graffiti

I'm now writing this blog for my Journalism class entitled: Opinion, Editorial and Column Writing. So for the purpose of introducing this blog to my new class I will re-introduce my reason for choosing to blog on water, trash and graffiti. This post will be my Reader's Digest Version, for the longer more in depth version, see my first blog dated: 09/19/2009.

I'm passionate about keeping our environment clean and litter free. That passion ignited when I was nine years old after watching some films in my fourth grade class (in the early 1970s) at Laguna Road Elementary School in Fullerton, CA. I was horrified as I saw the way that trash affected the ducks and fish in the lakes. I really wanted to do my part, as much as a nine year old could. With the introduction to cans, aluminum, plastics, paper plates and the like, our world was truly becoming disposable and with that meant more trash. Obviously if people were encouraged to live life on the microwaveable-run, grab food and go, they were also starting to toss the trash where ever they felt like it. Surely they don't want the paper bags and plastic folks and knives to smell up and clutter their vehicles. So with the progression of modern fast food technology along with the packaging to go with it, came the increasing problem of these articles tossed wherever was most convenient to the consumer. Here in So Cal, that could mean anywhere and everywhere someone felt like it.

I welcome your comments to my posts as well as any posts that contain links or suggestions to keeping our environment clean and our land litter free. Please refrain from any polluted language that is considered trashy as we can be passionate without expressing our views in heated expletives. Trust me, I get angry when I see some thoughtless idiot flick his/her cigarette ashes and then for the finale flick the cigarette butt out the car window. Like one police officer told me what he tells a non-law abiding citizen he has pulled over just before he executes the litter ticket, "All the world is NOT your ashtray." Well said, my friend, well said.