Earth Day 2025

Reduce - Reuse - Recycle has been the mantra for many years now. I hope that we can all contribute to curbing waste and plastics, eat well, and what’s on our plate, and thrift when we can. It’s the little things that can add up to the big things throughout the world.

A few years ago, I volunteered to help clean up Kelleys Island, Ohio (in the middle of Lake Erie between Ohio and Canada, and one of my happy places on this good Earth). In one small section of the island, my friend Jodie and I picked up over 20 large black garbage bags that filled the back of their pickup truck. Since the area was on the northern point of the island, there was a lot of trash from boaters and fishermen. I was appalled at what trash appeared to have been thrown overboard - the usual suspects of hundreds of plastic water bottles (cans, too). They were the #1 items picked up. The second most picked up items were flip-flops, shoes, mylar balloons, and tires! Tires!!! Nothing matched, or that I can remember, but that seemed weird to me. Are the mates of all those floatable flip-flops and shoes at the bottom of the Lake?

When we think about conserving energy, we turn off the lights when leaving a room, use less water, even for menial tasks such as teeth brushing, and keep the heat down in winter and the A/C down in summer. All of these help, especially collectively.

That’s what The Carbon Almanac (TCA) is all about! It needs to come off the shelves today to celebrate our Earth and possibly every corner of the globe!

Photos below: Jodie and I cleaning up the North Shore of Kelleys Island, Ohio, along with an eagle, a beautiful KI sunset, and some of our findings.