Outrage Over Amber Bottles

As a almost middle-aged American with a sedentary job from a  somewhat shabby gene pool, I am medicated for a variety of ailments.  Every month I reorder my medications and receive the majority in amber or orange colored bottles.  Every month, three more amber bottles.  Add to that my husband's prescriptions and we add another three amber bottles.  Month after month, year after year we collect these bottles as they are not recyclable.  I have put these to use holding beads and pins, nails and nuts, but still the bottles add up.  

I have asked my local pharmacy if they have a recycling plan for these bottles but they do not.  They will take one or two at a time at a time if you bring them in when you are reordering your prescription, but that is all.  And as they are constantly encouraging their clients to order in advance or have these medications mailed, they are making even more medication bottles non-recyclable.

Now one day it suddenly occurred to me that if I and my husband had six bottles a month, twelve months a year, what must the aging and ailing baby boomers rack up a month?  A year?  How many amber bottles go into the landfill a day, a week, a year?  Something should be done.

I propose that everyone who reads this should contact their local pharmacy and find out their policy regarding the bottles made of non-recyclable plastic.  Will they take them back, even if they don't accompany a reordered prescription.  Will they take them back and recycle them when they do accompany a prescription?  I suspect that for many the answer is no.  

Search the internet and find out who will take these bottles and recycle them.  Call the manufacturers and ask them to revise their packaging procedures.  Use pharmacies that have recycling plans in place.  Talk to your friends and neighbors and encourage them to do so as well.  These plastics could be a valuable resource to someone making recycled plastic products.  Keep them out of the landfill and try to find someway to get them back into the system.  Why should we get healthy at the cost to our environment?

The Burden of Recycling

I am a child of the seventies raised on Ranger Rick and goats milk.  I believe in being kind to all creatures and all life on earth.  I am a tree-hugger, a granola, a greenie.  I feel it is incumbent upon me to keep my impact on the earth low.  So I recycle.  I recycle paper and plastic and glass and aluminum.  I recycle whatever can be recycled in my area and reuse as much of the rest of it as I can.  And so I have bins and bags and garbage cans full of objects and items awaiting their fate, for in our area you can recycle very little:  two grades of plastic, glass bottles and jars, and paper. 

Armed with this knowledge I go to the grocery store to buy goods.  But as there are only two of us in my household, buying things in bulk is not particularly appropriate - things go bad before we get to them.  And buying things that are organic and made by "green" companies does not always ensure the reduction of packaging and non-recyclable materials.  Coupled with the fact that we are on a tight budget, we can not always buy the items of least environmental impact.

And what of the electronic devices so inherent to our world these days?  I could not work from home without my computer and external drives and cds and dvds.  And what of battery operated appliances that are necessities - I am speaking of flashlights and radios for when the power goes out.  And what of the plastic that everything is made of these days?  And tires?  And the toxic fluids like oil that keeps our world running?

Ever trip to the store is a mental balancing act.  I cannot just buy what I want and leave.  I must mull over every purchase of every size and every packaging persuasion.  Any purchase of an appliance must be weighed with a heavy heart and a light pocketbook.  I have two twenty year old tvs.  I have a twenty year old vcr.  We do own a dvd player, and are housing every other one we bought that died within six months.  Every dead radio or speaker, every unusable appliance that I cannot bear to see go into the landfill lives in my garage or basement or attic.  I am being buried by the weight of garbage and guilt.

It would be nice if I could just not care.  Oh how freeing to toss one's waste without thought of the future and the desecration of the land.  I have tried to throw things out and occasionally manage it - once it has been through rigorous reuse.  But I am only one person, I can only reuse so much.  

Perhaps it would be better if others cared more.  If companies could use less plastic and paper in their packaging.  If more companies were interested in recycling their products and making products that last.  Gone are the days of owning objects for a lifetime.  Of fixing things that break down instead of buying new.  Of feeling proud of every shabby sweater that has warmed you for an age.  Of embracing the old for its service and sentimentality.

And so I struggle with the bins and boxes and bags.  And I search in vain for new ways to repurpose and reuse and recycle what I can.  And I hope for a few more people to feel as strongly as I.  Perhaps some day things will change.  But at least I can live with myself until then.

Musings on Perfection

As a child I sought long and hard to find the exact right way to do things:  the perfect way, the only way, a way to ensure that I would be safe, that life would be perfect.  I killed myself trying to remember everything I had ever learned so that I did not have to look foolish.  I rehearsed phone dialogs in my head and then chose not to call anyway - even if I didn't have to identify myself.  I would not enter conversations even if I thought I had something to add because I could never be sure enough of the information I thought I knew.  I could not stand to be wrong.

To be wrong was to be ignorant, uncooth, unlikeable and imperfect.  To be wrong was to open oneself up to the opinions and judgements of others:  to be insecure, to be vulnerable.  I simply was too soft, too unsure of myself and my value to allow for others to challenge it.  So I stopped being.  I would not speak to others outside of my family and possibly one or two close friends.  I did not offer opinions or answers in school.  I did not engage with others in outside activities.  I hid in my head and tried to remain unseen by the world.  I did not look people in the face.  I tried not to know their names for if I didn't acknowledge them, they wouldn't acknowledge me.

For years I perfected my ability to think and remember.  To come up with retorts and witty conversation, but to keep them to myself.  I went through grade school and middle school and high school and college, trapped in my own mind and at the mercy of the outside world.  Those few with whom I felt safe and comfortable got the full brunt of my need to be heard and understood and acknowledged, suffering through day long conversations, arguments and diatribes.

Upon graduation and the need to find a job, I fell into a situation where I was forced to interact, to speak, to be.  So I watched and I learned and I analyzed the right way to do my job.  I memorized every client, every voice, every job we had ever done.  I knew where everything was, how everything worked and which of the other personnel to keep away from.  I was liked, respected, and driving myself crazy with the burden of it all.

Finally, after years of flogging myself to be perfect, the breakdown of my defenses began.  I felt I could offer my own suggestions, have my own opinions and stop being disingenuous with those around me.  I was no longer a yes man.  I had knowledge and value in my own right.  No one criticized my notions.  People enjoyed the discourse.  I still had value, but as myself, not as a tool for someone else.  And something inside told me this was right.

It is right to be real, to be alive and have meaningful interactions with others.  It is right to have integrity and follow your own moral code.  It is right to be yourself to the utmost exact.  And in this you can attain perfection.

Blackberry Thoughts

On a recent berry picking expedition, I was amazed at the amount of life that inhabits a blackberry briar in the fall.   The brush was alive with the humming of bees, flies, mites, and midges.  Every cane arch was strewn with spider webs covered in dew.  Large garden spiders nestled into curled leaves – dens from which they raced when an unsuspecting insect flew into their web.

It occurred to me that this experience of a blackberry briar might be good fodder for a poem, so here is my first attempt:

Blackberry Breakfast

Seek out the spider in her lair 

of thorny briar and berry fare.

On tremulous wire she bobs and weaves 

amidst the thorns and blackberry leaves.

Droop the drupe filled blackberry canes,

laden with fruit washed by the rain.

A midge upon an o’er ripe orb

does rest a moment there to gorge.

Then aloft the midge does fly 

Into the web he did not spy.

Spider hurtles through the air 

to snatch her snack awaiting there.

Welcome to the BlandLands...

Welcome to my first foray into the world of blogging.  I have always wanted to be a writer but I have never pushed myself to see it through.  As a child, I was good and writing essays and stories and poems.  In fact I considered a major in English at college I enjoyed it so much.  But these days...

I have titled this blog BlandLands as that is how I see myself, my life and my creativity.  I am quite humdrum and unimaginative.  I love the colors beige and tan and gray.  My life is repetitive and even and calm:  and that is the way that I like it.  I am boring and usual with nothing interesting to say.  And when I sit down to write or scrapbook or feel creative, I just sit and nothing comes of it.

So now I have decided to try to recapture my childhood joy of writing by writing something every day - good, bad, or indifferent.  I hope with time and the practice of creative writing on a regular basis, I will be able to realize my childhood dream.  And I invite you to help keep me on the path to reclaiming my creative spirit.

Good Luck to us all

Korina