I'm calling this day of Dangerous Living "Map to a New Adventure."
For some time now I've encouraged my family to recycle. There aren't many of us - five and a dog but it always amazes me how much trash and garbage we generate. A goodly sum of this is due to the packaging we are forced to endure.
Some of you may remember this from the mid-80's - someone was putting poison, cyanide I believe, into Tylenol capsules. Back in those days, there weren't all the extra layers of plastic wrapping openings, wrapping packaging, wrapping whatever might be able to be tampered with. Think about opening a bottle of aspirin. Once upon a time you could buy the bottle, pop the top and be in the business of relieving your aches and pains. Not so anymore. Next time you open an over the counter medication be aware of how much you have to go through to get to the medication you are trying to take.
Yep, Tylenol scare.
It changed the way we did business and effected every single one of us on a personal level.
Now, all that packaging has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is either into your trash, or into your recycling.
Recycling is important. More and more important with each passing year. Recycling is one of those two edged swords. When we recycle we reuse, but reusing plastic impacts the businesses of those who create plastic. If they've been slow to reconfigure their business to adapt and use recycling, people are put out of work, maybe out of business. But new jobs are created you might argue and there is a need for new jobs to complement the new processes being created to use items like recycled plastic. Now that would be well and fine if the laborers displaced from the original plastic plants were cross-trained either on their own or by the benevolent (not) company they work for.
For recycling to work, business and laborers need to keep an open mind to new procedures and an open eye to something that might benefit everyone.
But what about all that plastic we do recycle? I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm tired of filling up a recycle container larger than my trash container and having it picked up twice a month, and at my expense no less. Yep, I pay extra for the privilege of recycling paper and plastic goods.
So, I pay for the plastic when I purchase something in it, and I pay for the plastic when I do the right and ethical thing for my children and my planet when I recycle. Hardly seems fair.
So, in this year of dangerous living I am going to reduce my carbon footprint. Maybe not by a lot, but I figure every bit helps and the bit I am going to help with is yogurt.
Yogurt? Yep, yogurt.
For some time I had some trouble with my internals and so, to counteract some of the nastiness I try to eat things with macrobiotics and probiotics in the food.
For my next step in Dangerous Living I am going to be making my own yogurt. There are a number of advantages to making my own yogurt.
1) I control what the yogurt is made of.
2) I am storing my yogurt in glass containers that can be washed and reused over and over.
3) I make enough for my family; it is always fresh.
4) The yogurt has it's own "starter" that once used can be carried over into the next new batch I make.
5) I save money, plastic,and a few square inches of the environment.
All in all not a bad investment. What was the investment? An $11 bag of starter and a yogurt machine that cost about $35. I usually get yogurt at the grocery store for $1 for a small container, or about $5 for a large container. I'll be ahead financially after about six weeks.
It will be an adventure. I've read quite a bit about yogurt making on the Internet. A lady I highly respect has been making her own for several years. There are directions with the kit, and with the machine. I've got the road map so to speak. The only roadblock in this adventure is myself. Since I'm working on eliminating roadblocks, i.e. excuses, I'll be totally responsible for this adventure and its success or failure.
I've made an investment though, and I'm a bit of a cheapskate, so I'll make it work one way or another.
This is just one part of the adventure - creating and making my own food, food that is as fresh as possible and as free of preservatives as possible.
I figure the closer I can get to real food without the junk in it, the closer I'll get to obtaining better health. That's a worthy goal in and of itself.
And then, there is my slightly smaller carbon footprint. Yep, I'll work to make it work.
