Happy Earth Day! Got ice?

So there I was in the grocery store check-out line this morning, gathering up my two reusable bags (which I had, on my way in, forgotten, as I often do, and returned to the truck for, because that's just extra steps on my journey to be fitter and healthier, right?), and as I stepped away I heard the checker's helper ask the lady behind me, "Plastic ok?" Her response: "Can I have extra plastic bags, please? Like, a lot? We're running low on plastic bags at home."

Seriously?!? On Earth Day?!?

ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Sigh.

Which reminded me that I just wanted to mention a couple of things today:

1.  Here in Southern California, where water is scarce, the spring weather has been quite lovely (and mostly without precipitation). Folks can be seen everywhere carrying iced drinks—tea, soda, fancy coffee, fancy water. But ask yourself: Where do all those ice cubes go? I mean, if you think of ice as the water it is, and you imagine how many times a day someone throws a take-out cup in the trash with ice in it, that's a significant amount of water.

I keep an old pitcher out on the back patio that I use to water the potted plants. Now every morning when I give Sgt. Thomas Tibbs fresh water, I dump his day-old water into the pitcher. If I make iced tea (or happen to pick up a lovely tall unsweetened black tea from that one popular place because yet another student has given me yet another gift card), I dump the ice in there as well. And if it is a take-out cup, I rinse out the paper cup and the plastic lid (plastic straw still attached) and toss them in the recycle bin. Yes, I love Mother Earth that much.

2.  For those of you who love public radio as much as I do, you still have time to plant a tree today (because you're a good person and you love Mother Earth, too, and you really wanted to do something for Earth Day but you had to go to work) by donating to KPCC in Southern California. Click here, follow the clicky buttons, and when you donate—whatever you can afford—a tree will be planted. (Well, I mean, probably not at the precise moment you enter your card info. I mean, it's not instantaneous—but wouldn't that be cool?!?)

3.  Come on. Don't be like Extra-Plastic-Bags-Please lady. Break down and buy yourself a couple of reusable bags. Put them in the trunk of your car. Yes, you will forget them every single time for the first—How many repetitions does it take to "make something a habit"?—30 times or so. Make yourself walk back and get them, and you'll not only start to remember, you'll be able to shave a minute off your boring treadmill time. Over the course of a year, you'll keep hundreds of plastic bags from going into a landfill where they don't break down, they just float around. And if you guilt one other guy into doing the same, and he guilts one other guy, and so on, we could actually begin a true revolution. You know, like we used to talk about back in 1969 when the idea for Earth Day got started.

Treasure hunt

It's trash day. I am awakened at 4:00a.m. by the piercing screech of metal grinding on metal. I don't need to look out the window. I know that the sound emanates from the rickety metal cart used by the wizened old man who roams the cul-de-sacs of my neighborhood every Monday night, gleaning treasure from the trash of others. Black trash bags, stuffed to capacity, hang off the sides of his cart like tumors on a skinny dog.

I rise, let my own well-fed dog out into the backyard, feed the cats, then wander out front to turn on the sprinkler. By now the little man, who does not quite reach five feet in stature, has made it around the cul-de-sac, and I wave to him as he crab walks past, dragging the heavy cart behind him. I never put my trash cans out at the curb until he is gone. It's not that I begrudge him my recyclables. I have witnessed him on many occasions tear open the kitchen trash bags in my neighbors' garbage cans, sifting through god-knows-what in search of an aluminum can, a plastic bottle, any small thing with re-sale value. I am not willing to share that level of intimacy with him.

And anyway, I save my plastic one-liter Evian bottles separately. (Yes, I spend the money for Evian. No, it doesn't taste the same as filtered tap water and no, water is not water. Ask a hydro-geologist. Don't get me started.) When I moved in a year and a half ago, Grumpy Bob next door asked me to save my plastic bottles for him after I caught him rifling through my trash cans. I told him I certainly would. And I have.

But this morning, I give them away. There is another scavenger who comes through the neighborhood on trash day. This one is a woman, as small and wrinkled as the old man. I want to say that she is old but when I see her up close, I realize we are probably about the same age. I am a vibrant, athletic sixty-year-old who will later walk her pampered dog around these cul-de-sacs at a brisk pace. Although the physical maladies are starting to pile up, I am confident that I will live another twenty or thirty years quite comfortably, thanks to the good health care provided by my good job which I obtained with my good education.

I wonder at the longevity of this woman, though, as I see her, like the little old man, tear open trash bags with her bare hands, scrounging through toxic waste to eke out a living. Some would find her labor disgusting. I find it humbling.

As I note the full apron she wears which covers the front of her shirt and her pants down to the knees, its floral pattern edged with old fashioned rick-rack, I am reminded of my grandmother whose first job upon coming to Los Angeles was as a dishwasher in a bar. Holding my Trader Joe's stamped paper bag filled with empty plastic bottles, I shuffle quickly across the street in the gray dawn light. I tell her good morning, offering the bag and asking, "Are you looking for bottles?" though I well know the answer.

"Sì," she says in Spanish, taking the bag. "Thank you!" in English, and her entire face glows with the brightness of her straight, white teeth. Her voice is warm with gratitude, and it resonates with me as I walk back across the street to enjoy another cup of tea before heading out to walk the dog.