We all have been there and started with it. You know...the recycling movement. I just finished the latest issue of OnEarth, and I sit here mummified and overwhelmed with the whole thing.

 Where does someone like me start? I see the polar ice cap melting, factory smoke polluting the air in China, farmland in Sacramento is threatened, and how do I "Go Green" in my job with retirement looming? Are you kidding? I'm tempted to go running out of the room like McCauley Caulkin in "HOME ALONE" screaming and hands slapped along the sides of my face. The big part of my day is to go to the mailbox and grab the mail. I'm such a little force in the face of these huge problems!

 Mail...hmmm...that's it...the paper used for the envelopes. How many times do I simply throw out paper like this instead of recycling? Then come all of the flyers included in the mail. Them too...plop! Right into the recycling bin. Afterwards, I always have been emptying out bottles, cans, plastic containers, but giving them away to someone who has A LOT to take to the recycling centers. Why not keep track and isolate all of the "containers" I had been giving away to others? Let's see how that will work...

I had to call the waste disposal management company for a second waste recycling bin two weeks later, WOW!

Following, I was left alone at work for one week when my coworker went on vacation. I kept track of how many sheets of paper I, myself, retained instead of throwing them out. SIXTY sheets of paper came up as the number and I presented this to my boss, shocked, and passionate about this fact and sad to say, "No recycling bins!" We have 150 employees in our department. I will quickly do the math for you; 9000 sheets of paper in one week! 36,000 in one month.

WE NOW HAVE RECYCLING BINS IN EVERY MAJOR SECTOR OF OUR DEPARTMENT.

Yeah-h-h-h-h...some companies are still out there without recycling bins, tsk,tsk.

At my second job, (yeah, a second one, have you seen the gas prices?) a recycling bin is present but at the other end of the building. To get there, I can equivocate this to taking my 30 minute hike on my lunch hour. Well, here we go! Tennis shoes on, IPOD playing, except this time, a right handed turn into the boss' office with the same data as the other place. Thirty pieces of paper in one week, instead of sixty but the idea is still the same. Four employees "back there" and one hundred and twenty pieces of paper a week going into the trash..Where, oh where is a closer bin? OK... so they didn't spring for an official bin but we now have a box available to empty out later.

Next, is my local church. Now here is where tightening the old budget belt truly comes in. In these economic times, not only is the budget tight but donations are way down. I am working on getting funding, bins and cooperation to start recycling but it is tough. I am going to keep pushing this through. But consider where I am at and who just might be helping me. Who says miracles don't happen?

I decided to tackle the plastic bag issue. I was given a plastic bag in a grocery store line and said, "No more, I just threw out over 100 plastic bags in my home." I carry items myself to the car or in a cart or in the now decorative carrying bags that every store sells. Multiply 100 bags times 10,000 people and you have saved over 1,000,000 plastic bags.

Now that is what I can do. It's what all of us "John and Jane Doe's" of the world can do. It began with one envelope, one piece of paper, one plastic bag and it can simply build steam but we have to decide to do it ourselves. One act of recycling, one act of conservationalism, one act of kindness. One step starts us down the road.