Environmentally Friendly

I know alot of people think of this area as tree huggers and hippees and while that maybe right in some degree, I must say this area sure do a great deal more to save our planet. I don't mean this in a radical sense but just in their daliy living.

They conserve energy with skylights and the new light bulbs (which I know alot of people in OK doing the light bulb switch, I know i have and so has the church).

They recycle basically everything and they sort it out in different containers and set them out for the city to pick up.

They walk or ride their bikes. They also use alot of pubnlic transportation-B.A.R.T (Bay Area Rapid Transit) or the bus. These are great and cheap ways to get from here to there pretty quick. They have a thing called City Car Share. This is basically where you rent a car for so many hours and then turn it back in. There are stations to pick up the cars in a variety of locations. Usually this is used when you are going to the grocery store or market or shopping and you will be bringing back more than you can manage walking or riding. So it costs like 10/hour but you don't have to pay for insurance or taxes or any of that stuff.

They also have lots of places for people to get or create a compost pile.

They take cloth bags to the store to carrying groceries home. If they have to use a bag from the store they usually pick paper because it can be recycled.

They very rarely use paper or styrofoam goods. They also use mugs instead of paper cups for coffee. They use compostable goods if they have to use take home containers or to go stuff.

They also try to conserve water, especially now since they are in the middle of a drought! So water is not automatically served. You have to ask for it. The dorms on campus also have a certain amount of water they are supposed to use. So they encourage the students to take really short showers, turn water off when washing your face or bruching your teeth, etc. These are simple ways of conserving water. Melissa (my roommate in OK) and I prefer to just take showers on a more every other day routine. That is as long as we don't stink! hehehehe!

Things are also very organically farmed here. There are tons of Farmers Markets and they are highly used. Most everything sold there is organically grown. I went to the store yesterday and almost everything is organic. Most of the products you and i know from Wal-Mart are not sold here. Things are more expensive on a general basis and really the organiz stuff is not that much higher BUT here is the kicker. I decided to buy organic stuff. So I bought some bread, peanut butter, and jelly (preserves). I had the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich EVER!!!!!!! The bread was so good and fresh! The peanut butter....wow! I have to say the taste surprised me at first becuase it tasted more like peanuts. Weird right...well I know that when I have looked at the ingredients of a Jiffy jar of peanut butter there is tons of sugar and extra stuff in it and it tastes more sweet than peanuty! When I looked at the ingredients it said: organic roasted peanuts, less than 1% of salt. WOW if it isn't organic we had a whole lot of random stuff to our food! Guess what was in my Strawberry presevers: strawberries, sugar, fruit pectin and lemon juice concentrate. That is about what my granny puts in her preserves! I read a sign at the Y yesterday that said children between the ages of like 6-18 or something like that were tested. Some ate all organic and some ate "regular" stuff. If I remember right, they linked those eating organic foods with have a lower risk of getting cancer because there was less pesticides in their foods. This makes a lot of sense to me. Even if it had nothing to do with pesticides, but merely the fact that the organic stuff doesn't add in all the dyes, colorings, these phates and those phates I bet we would be much heathier. I think because of the things in our food we are seeing the side effects now. Just my opinion...i'd like to know yours.

All of this to say, I think if you are reading this and you live in Oklahoma and are not currently doing anything to be good stewards of the earth God gaves us to "culitvate" (Genesis 2) then I would encourage you to see how you could make a better impact on our earth and maybe even try an organic diet for a while and see if there is any difference in your body after a month or so. yes it is a bit more expensive but I think the long term effects are worth it!