This last week, I have been a little lazy when it comes to saving the environment. When I find trash on the streets and around campus, I have been just tossing it in the garbage instead of saving it for my recycling bins at home. I’ve been a little down lately and that has been reflected in my recycling habits.

I did, however, recycle a peanut butter jar. Although I am afraid that the energy used to create the mass amounts of hot water and soap that it took to clean it out may have canceled out my good gesture towards the planet.

One other good thing that happened in regards to saving the environment was that Susan and I found the South Umpqua dump….and….recycling center.  Now we don’t have to save all of our recyclables until we go to Salem; we can simply sort them and bring them a few miles up the road.

As far as killing the planet, I’ve already mentioned my lax attitude towards garbage. But I also drove to Roseburg today with some students just because we were bored and had to use some gas, but that’s no big deal.

I’ll be keeping up with this blog often to let you know how I am progressing.

The last few days I have been feeling a little under the weather so my attempts to save the environment have fallen short of my expectations due to subsequent laziness.

However, I have taken some steps that are hopefully improving my tiny corner of the environment.

I have been very dilligent in picking up trash around campus and recycling some of what I find.

My wife bought us some paper plates to use from time to time since we don’t have a dish washer. I informed her that doing so was enviromentally cautious and she agreed. So when I have been using them, I rinse them off and recycle them.

I have also done some things to kill the planet: mainly throwing some items that I find on the ground into the garbage- items like pop cans and paper.

Still due to our almost complete lack of driving and choosing to walk everywhere, I believe that we are saving the environment much more than we are killing our planet.

So I’ve been working hard to sace the environment the last few days.

I’ve been Watt-Watching like crazy: walking through the dorm where I am a dean and, turning off any lights that have been left on.

I’ve also been picking up trash around campus and instead of just throwing it away in nearby garbages, I’ve also been putting reclyclable material into my pockets so that I can place them into my recycle bins that I have made at home.

In the past, if I would have found someting like a pencil or a pen laying on the ground, I would have simply thrown it away. Lately, in my effort to save the environment, I have been saving them and adding them to my pen and pencil collection.

However, I have also been lazy in my efforts to save the environment.

I try to pick up every bit of trash thatr I find, so I am saving the environment- a little. But instead of trying to recycle it or put it to use, I have simply thrown it into a garbage where it will eventually end up in a landfill or burned in an incinerator.

So I’ve killed the planet, but I’ve also saved the environment. But due to my caution and our extreme lack of driving, I believe our saving the environment is far outweighing our killing the planet.

So today I am going to start a permanent-ongoing series detailing my activities each day that effect the environment: positively and negatively.

For some reason, most Christians that I know think that there is nothing wrong with the environment and that there is no such thing as global warming. There’s almost this sense of entitlement that becasue their God created the earth and because He has saved them; they can do whatever they want to the planet because a day is coming when Jesus will clean up the mess they have made. And since they believe that day is coming so soon- who cares what they do to the planet, right?

They tend to forget that one of the first commandments God gave us was to be good stewards of His creation- regardless of how soon Jesus is coming back. This idea is almost like saying,” Well since Jesus is coming back so soon, I think I will start murdering people because Jesus will come to sort things out any time now.”

A lot of the talk about global warming is almost irrelevant though. The planet is warming. THere is really no disputing that. Whether it is occurring due to natural long term weather cycles, human-caused pollution, or an act of God doesn’t ultimately matter. We should be concerned either way. And even if our pollution isn’t causing global warming; which I believe it is, we should still be concerned about it as well. Becasue our pollution makes the air harder to breathe, makes the sky, sea, and land uglier, is terribly bad for wildlife, taints our clean water supply, makes us sick, and causes unnatural changes in species.

Even if there was no global warming and pollution wasn’t bad for the environment, we are still huge wasters of the natural resources we have been given which shows disrespect to our Creator and causes us to work harder to get the things we need. We should learn from and admire the Native Americans who used everything from the animals they hunted and killed; and start utilizing what we have to its greatest potential and start recycling more and more.

So here starts the series:

What I did today to save the environment: The small town that we live in has no recycling program. The city that we come from has a wonderful recycling program with large blue bins to put mixed recyclables in where they are picked up bi-monthly, sifted through, organized into recyclable categories, and then ultimately recycled. Here, there is nothing.

For the last month we have just been throwing everything away and have felt very guilty about it. So I gathered five trash cans and buckets that we can throw different categories of recyclables into and once full; we will bag them and- I guess- take them up to Salem when we vist and put them into peoples recycling bins? Or see if there is a recycling drop-off center in Roseberg that we could utillize.

So what did I do today? Uum? I turned off the lights that boys in my dorm left on while they went to school. I threw recyclable waste into my homemade recycle bins. And we walked everywhere that we went instead of driving there.

What I did to kill the planet today:

Besides using electricity to watch lots of tv and be on the computer; I can’t really think of anything I have done to kill the planet today. So far, so good!