I'm Turning Green

I love the color green, I love to wear green, my eyes are green - yes green, my bathroom is green, someday I would like a green kitchen, and most important the world is trying to go green! I want to be apart of the work of going green, not because I love the color green, but GREEN IS GOOD!

Lately I have been feeling the need to "Go Green" - recycle, compost, save energy, etc. About a month ago something came over me with paper - I was throwing out a lot of paper from notebooks and files. I felt really bad about it. I grew up recycling paper and aluminum so I knew better than to throw out all this paper. Well to make a long story short I did some calling around and found some recycling bins in Cedar City. I now have separate garbage bins designated to different items for recycling. As of now Cedar City has bins for paper, plastic, and aluminum. Each week I empty my separate garbage cans and take the paper, plastic, and aluminum to Cedar City and dump them in the bins. (Actually I give the aluminum cans to Cash so he can take them to his friend and get money...I know I need money but the amount of cans we go through is not even enough to buy me a six pack of soda - the aluminum bin actually takes a good month or more to fill up.)

It is surprising now when I go to throw something away I think about it. Also with throwing garbage away I have always wanted to build a compost, now I'm going to make it happen. I have been searching the Internet high and low to learn about composting, and compost bins - they are expensive! I have found one that will work for my budget, and as soon as the snow melts I'm going to go to work in building it. I just feel bad every time I clean out the fridge or just throw table scraps away. Composting is so NEAT! I can't wait to be apart of it!

This is what I found:

Materials

• 7 lengths of 2 x 6 lumber, each cut to 3'. Your lumberyard will make the cuts for you. Get exterior wood, like Western Red Cedar. Rough, unplanned wood is fine. The wood does not need to be treated with preservatives - untreated lumber will last many years. • Four lengths of 2 x 2 lumber (or 4 x 4 ), each cut to 4' lengths.

• Galvanized common nails, 2 3/4" long. 28 nails.

Assembly

• Sharpen one end of each 2 x 2 to act as stakes. A hatchet works best - it doesn't have to be pretty. This will keep your bin in place.• Nail the 3' boards to the 2 x 2's as shown. Leave space between the boards to help aerate the pile. Pre-drilling the nail holes will make nailing easier and prevent the wood from splitting.• Set bin in place and drive the corners down into the ground with a sledge or heavy hammer.

Also two other things that I need to invest in is, a kitchen composter, and a paper shredder. The paper shredder you ask, you can add shredded paper to composts. I will only add small amounts of paper over a period of time, but big paper like news paper, cardboard, magazines, etc will go into a recycling bin.

I'm so excited to start my journey of turning green!!! Don't you worry I'll be blogging more about it! Here are some awesome websites that I have bookmarked:

http://www.treehugger.com/gogreen.php

http://eartheasy.com/homepage.htm