Vote With Your Fork

We went out with friends this weekend, and Russ made a point of talking about how I don't use the straw that the restaurant passes out with the drinks. Yeah, it's a tiny bit of garbage, but how many straws have I used in my lifetime? How many does a family use in a year, if they eat out a lot?

When it comes right down to it, most of the things I am doing are little things. The mass of the vegetables I'm throwing in the compost and not in the trash is not huge. The amount of high fructose corn syrup that I no longer consume is not going to bankrupt the producers of high fructose corn syrup. But, I think that's the point of this blog. Big changes are really hard. Most people aren't going to go from eating 3 fast food meals a week to eating 100% locally grown organic food all at once. Most people aren't going to reduce their garbage production or their energy consumption to zero in a year.

But when other people who care about such things see others making small changes, they may be inspired to make small changes. And, a million people not using any disposable straws means a LOT less straws in landfill. A lot less plastic bottles and shopping bags. A lot more people voting with their forks, banning horrible for you packaged and fast foods in their own homes, means that large corporations have to change the way they do things if they want to sell to us. So it matters.

I want to say it again: EVERY LITTLE THING YOU DO MATTERS, whether it's in ignorance, or whether you are paying attention to the small things. So do one thing different today, for the environment, or for your health, or both.