Aloha everyone.  Getting settled here in Hawaii has been quite a challenge for me.  We moved into our house on July 10th, our household goods were delivered on July 30th, and then our son, Jimmy graduated from AIT (Advanced Individual Training) as a medic on July 31st and he was here for the past few weeks on leave before heading to Fort Carson, CO.  Brad had to go to Florida for a conference and has been gone this week, while Rachel and I have been on a hunt for textbooks and other miscellaneous supplies for school, which starts Monday.  In between all of this, I have been able to do a bit of unpacking and organizing but I still have a way to go.  I say all this to explain my neglect of this website.  For the sake of ease and simplicity I have been posting to NikonGirl’s Photoshop for now.  In the coming weeks I will be transferring my blog to here but I hope to make that an easy transition.  That said, here’s my first post.

                                                                                                                                                                      Going for a walk.

We walk Minnie and Daisy, our two beautiful black Labrador retrievers, about 3-4 times a day for their exercise (and mine) and other business.  We live on the inner edge of Aliamanu Crater and we have some baseball and soccer fields near our house where we let the girls off the leads and let them run and do their thing.  We always carry bags for cleaning up after them.  No big deal for a dog lover right?  Well first off, it must be for some dog lovers cause I find myself  “discovering” nasty surprises, sometimes in a not so convenient way.  It’s annoying that there are some discourteous people that cannot take the extra 30 seconds to cleanup after their pups.  But I drive on and make sure I am doing what I need to do to be responsible.

                                                                                                                                                                           Hanging out on the field during one of our walks.

So what does this have to do with bottles and saving the Earth?   Well something else I noticed right away was how many bottles and cans are left on the ground.  It annoys the heck out me on several levels.  First off, littering affects everyone who has to see it.  Not just the people who have to clean up, but those who are trying to enjoy the surroundings.  Sure, it’s probably the kids who use the fields and the playground and the skate park who leave the bottles and cans around.  Hold up, not always.  I have seen grown people sitting on a bench enjoying their drink, get up and leave the bottle or can sitting on the ground when there is a container sitting less than 5 feet away.  Worse is when they “toss” it towards the container and they “miss” but instead of going over to pick it up and get it in the container, they turn and walk away.  Drives me nuts!!!

                                                                                                                                                                             Hitting the playground, see the refuse container?  I know the boy is way too cute to notice!

But I am not the litter police (is there such a thing?) so I just send out a glare in the hopes they see my disappointment and do something about it.  Occasionallythis works.  What makes this situation even more silly is that here in Hawaii, as in increasingly many states, there is a deposit charged on bottled and canned beverages, including water.  You can get that deposit back by taking the bottles to a collection center (they’re everywhere).  So when someone litters, they are literally throwing money away.  The waste is ridiculous!  Did I mention that our community has a recycling program that makes it incredibly EASY for us all to participate in?  They come to our house weekly to pick it up along with our regular trash.  So what’s the deal?  Why are people still being lazy about their trash?  Who knows!

                                                                                                                                 This morning’s pick up.

So I have started fighting back and getting paid for it.  I have been collecting the cans and bottles that I see on my walks with Minnie and Daisy and I bring them home to add to my own bin for deposits; which is $0.05 for each!  The first week was a whopping $5.35; the next week was $7.25 worth; and last week $6.45.  This weeks worth looks to be more.  Don’t laugh, it adds up!  How many of you are getting paid to walk your dogs?

A side note:  Our house is powered in part by solar energy and we have filtered water through our refrigerator.  We decided that when we moved in we would no longer be purchasing bottled water.  Our only justifiable exception is when there is no other available water choices.  At $0.21 a bottle, we were spending about $40 a month for bottled water.  What a waste of money.  Especially when we have water readily available to us in filtered format.   We decided that we will donate the savings to charity and we chose charity:water.  For those of you do not know about them, they are a wonderful charity whose mission is to supply drinkable water to everyone in our world by building wells where there are none.  Here’s their mission statement:

WHY WATER.
Right now, 1.1 billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean and safe drinking water. That’s one in six of us.

WHO WE ARE.
charity: water is a non profit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. We give 100% of the money raised to direct project costs, funding sustainable clean water solutions in areas of greatest need. Just $20 can give one person in a developing nation clean water for 20 years.

We also will be adding the amount we collect from our collecting.  Keeping Hawaii a little cleaner while helping to provide water for all.

Mahalo.