Living Nicely: The Three R's

Years ago, the “three r’s” were “readin, ‘ritin, and
‘rithmetic,”…well I still read, write, and try to do the math, but
nothing seems to add up in these trying economic days!  But the r’s
practiced and preached more often now are the rudiments of
“green-living”- Recycle, Reduce, Reuse! I myself am a practicioner of
the four R’s:  Recycle, Reuse,
Restore–RESELL! I consider the last my contribution to free enterprise
and my bank account. And its my belief that if we all tried this more
often the landfills wouldn’t be so “filled” and our economy wouldn’t be
in the toilet. After all, it is our insatiable appetite for the latest
and greatest, fed by the advertising onslaught we are subjected to
everyday that keeps our plastic world turning.

A question was asked in an editorial, why not use an existing building, which we have dozens in our town recently vacated, to house a government agency proposing to build a new multi-million dollar facility.
Good question! In every town, thanks mostly to large corporate expansion, we have empty strip malls and downtown buildings
sitting like ghost towns. Why would any city or county commission allow
the building of new structures before utilizing the existing ones?
Overdevelopment is the villain of our environment! The primary reason
for the failure of the whooping crane project was lack of habitat (re:
my blog, 2 days ago). Perhaps a careful analysis of our occupancy
rates, landuse management policies and environmental impact studies
should be the first step taken by proposed developers instead of a
profit spreadsheet.

In the end, it seems their bottom line will put us all in the red and I think I’d rather see a little more green on our planet!


