I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that we are head-over-heels for Mother Nature! This Valentine’s Day we’d like to encourage everyone to celebrate the lady in ALL of our lives with these small things that can make a big difference in our local environment.
Recycle More, Trash Less – Make Mother Nature very happy by keeping waste out of landfills. The more we all recycle, the less waste ends up in the landfill—where some things may live forever. Aluminum cans can be recycled an unlimited number of times, but take about 100 years to decompose in a landfill. This is a no brainer, find out what you can recycle and where.
Choose Tap Water – Water is Mother Nature’s gift to you! You can pay a dollar or more for a bottle of designer water or, for that same dollar, you could refill a 20 oz sports bottle from any Hampton Roads faucet over 1,500 times. And as an added bonus, you won’t be creating extra waste by using disposable containers. Drink up, Hampton Roads!
Protect Our Pipes – Do yourself and Mother Nature a favor by keeping your plumbing free from clogs. Using a strainer in your drains, ditching the garbage disposal, flushing only your ‘personal contribution’ and keeping fats, oils and grease out of the sink are all small things that help keep sanitary sewer lines from backing up and spilling sewage into our homes, streets and waterways. No matter how you look at it there’s just nothing romantic about spilled sewage.
Scoop the Poop – Mother Nature loves all her furry creatures, but she’s not so crazy about animal waste and bacteria polluting the waterways. Dog poop contains lots of nasty and dangerous bacteria that pose a health risk for you, your family, your pet and our waterways! So scoop it, bag it, trash it!
Before You Fertilize, Get Tested – Did you know you might be wasting money and harming the environment when you apply fertilizer? You should only fertilize when a soil test reveals that your lawn is missing something. Otherwise, there’s no need to add it! So get yourself a soil testing kit and find out what your lawn really needs to be happy.
Plant a Bouquet of Flowers – What lady doesn’t love a bouquet of flowers? Plants are great for cleaning our air, soaking up rainfall, cleaning pollution out of stormwater and making our communities beautiful. Mother Nature’s best kept secret is native plants. These little rock stars don’t require extra water or fertilizer to thrive because they are naturally adapted to live in our area. Black-eyed Susan, wisteria, wild columbine, aster and dogwood trees are all popular native plants that will add beautiful color to your flowerbeds.
Do small things with great love – Mother Teresa
Happy Valentine’s Day from the whole askHRgreen.org team!