Friday's List of Ten VI

Ten signs of Owen's budding environmental awareness:

10. He knows the difference between garbage and recycling.

9. He knows where the garbage goes after the garbage truck picks it up. ("To Mommy's work!")

8. He knows what sorts of things go in the recycling bin ("Recycling! Not garbage!") Also funny: he insists on calling it the "recycling bin", and not the "blue box".

7. When prompted, he can actually list what sorts of things get recycled. ("Cans, plastic, and paper. Not garbage!")

6. He knows that recycling is how you make new things out of old. Unfortunately, thanks to something he saw on TV, he thinks things just all get turned back into themselves - bottles from bottles, etc. (This is only true for metal. Aluminum cans can be recycled into new aluminum cans without any loss or degredation. If you recycle nothing else, PLEASE get those cans in the blue box! Plastics become raw materials for something else - carpet, microfleece, plastic lumber, lots of other plastic things, but not food-grade plastic anymore. Glass typically is ground and used in a road aggregate, or other very base uses. Unless you're talking beer bottles, in which case they are washed and re-used. But glass very, VERY rarely (I am tempted to say never) becomes bottles/jars again.)

5. He knows the difference between the garbage truck and the recycling truck when he sees them on the street!

4. He reminds us to turn off the taps.

3. He seems excited about the prospect of taking stuff to the backyard composter (will be his job when the weather warms up.)

2. Always remembers to turn lights off when he leaves a room.

1. FREAKS OUT if anyone else leaves lights on. This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine with Steve, so I LOVE it when Owen gets on Daddy's case about the lights. :) Go Owen!