Going Green...Door County Style
"Do you remember when", will most often begin a story of fond memories and good times. Today, on Earth Day 2010 I drove through Jacksonport and up County V and I remembered a not so good, "do you remember when".
In Jacksonport and every other community in Door County, some 30 years ago, there were dumps. Places where people took their garbage, tin cans, glass bottles, oil, paint, expired medicine, and just about anything else one didn't want in their house or around their property. The items were thrown in a big hole and covered up--a landfill. Sometimes before covering things up they would burn the heaps of trash creating huge billowing clouds of black smoke, of course causing everyone to get into their cars and drive to see what was on fire.
The dumps were the first consignment shops--if the dump tender found a good chair, lamp. baby crib or other useful item he'd set it off to the side and some other towns person would happily take the treasure along for use in their home.
Fortunately, all those little town dumps were closed and we all subscribed to a trash service that hauls the garbage to one designated landfill. Then came the first wave of recycling, we all kept our aluminum cans and the kids would take them to the Golden Goat and cash them in for spending money. Recycling went a step further and we started to sort our trash, aluminum, plastic and glass and clean paper into separate recycling bins. And now the county host hazardous material disposal days where one can take those cans of paint and expired medicine to have it properly disposed of so there is no damage to humans or environment. There isn't a household that does have some sort of recycling system.
Earth Day reminds me to be more diligent in my recycling efforts--use an alumunium water bottle instead of five different plastic ones every day, print less and keep more digital files, turn off the lights, turn down the heat and sometimes even hang my sheets on the clothes line.
I hope you found something fun to do on earth day--I went to Sevastopol School and watched some of the student activities, what a fun time. For more fun, watch this little video clip--fun stuff for the kids and fun facts for adults.
