You CAN do something green every day

Like it or not, there are very few things we manage to do every day.

Exercise? Five times a week, maybe.

Eat healthily? Everyone needs a cheat day.

Brush your teeth? I won’t tell about the time you fell asleep and forgot if you don’t.

But one of the joys of becoming a pet owner is the guarantee that every day, at least twice a day, I take my dog for a walk around the block of my apartment complex.

And every day, at least twice a day, I will find myself picking up litter on my walk.

I’ll admit, I didn’t notice all the detritus until I began collecting cans. But once I did, I couldn’t turn my head without catching the gleam of an aluminum can in the rocks or the sheen of a plastic bottle in the grass.

It was appalling. Hadn’t I moved to Colorado, the great state of the outdoors and the environmentally conscious?

Thanks to a poster hung up in the copy room at work, I soon had my answer.

Despite Colorado’s reputation as a green state, a 2018 report by Eco-Cycle found that 9.3 million tons of trash would up in landfills last year, 95 percent of which could have been recycled or composted.

Not only that, but the state’s recycling rate remained stagnant at 12 percent, well below of national average of 35 percent.

It’s wake-up calls like this that cause us to reexamine our own green behaviors. Are we really as green as we think we are?

And I think the lesson to be learned here is that we can always do better.

That’s what I love about Cans for Kili. It’s a call to put matters of the environment in our own hands.

It’s easy to walk down the street and see somebody else’s garbage as just that — somebody else’s.

Since joining the Cans for Kili team, I’ve been empowered to take charge of somebody else’s trash and turn it into fuel for a great cause.

I’m not saying that we all have to start being roadside trash collectors to make a difference. But we can all find something green to add to our daily routines — whether it’s incorporating reusable materials like grocery bags, paper towels or straws, or being more responsible when it comes to recycling and composting our own waste.

And unlike other goals that are so hard maintain every day, being environmentally positive is something we CAN and should do every day to take care of the planet we call home.

At Cans for Kili, we encourage you to start, one CAN at a time.

Never stop climbing,

Captain Denver