R-E-C-Y-C-L-E

I was mentally scarred a child. I know we all were by somethings but my childhood scarring was about recycling. Yes you read that right: recycling.

In first grade-- which let me point is prime time for the animal loving stage that little girls go through-- we learned about all of the evils of pollution. Including the fact that if we didn't cut the plastic between a 6-pack of cans baby ducks, turtles, and dolphins were going to DIE. I would personally would have to bear the emotional weight of being a mass turtle murder if I didn't make sure all 6-pack holders were cut. At 6 years old possibly being a murder was intense. Intense to the point that still today at 24 years-old I will make a big old hissy fit if I see someone just throwing a 6-pack plastic piece away. My sweet boyfriend has already learn to fear of my wrath adapt to the fact that this is just the way it is. In fact, the other night I found a 6-pack holder already cut into pieces before I could even get to it.

And then there was this "music video" from an episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy that I have had stuck in my head FOR MY ENTIRE LIFE:

In the words of my mother I am a "recycling freak". I think recycling is really important and have on occasion had little mini-panic sessions about what exactly we are doing to our one and only Earth.

So when I saw this on one of the foodie blogs I read I got really excited in a nerdy tree-loving sort of way:

Coca-Cola Co., under fire from environmentalists for using plastic bottles, has introduced a new packaging material made partly from plants. The container has "the same weight, the same feel, the same chemistry, and functions exactly the same way" as a regular plastic bottle, a Coke spokeswoman says.

I try to make smart choices about the products I buy, use reusable materials (ie tupperware instead of plastic bags, hand towels instead of paper towels), and recycle but sometimes I feel like it just isn't enough. We still make about a full bag of garbage a week, I drove an old gas guzzling SUV in Dallas, and I'm planning a trip around the world with a handful of flights that send pollution directly into the upper atmosphere.

But what can you do beyond becoming this guy:

A former city employee in the Fukushima prefecture town of Koriyama has built a 4-meter (13-ft) long canoe from thousands of used disposable chopsticks recovered from the city hall cafeteria. Bothered that perfectly good wood was going to waste after a single use, Shuhei Ogawara — whose job at city hall involved working with the local forestry industry — spent the last two years of his career collecting used chopsticks from the cafeteria. An experienced canoe builder, Ogawara spent over 3 months gluing 7,382 chopsticks together into strips to form the canoe shell, to which he added a polyester resin coat. The canoe weighs about 30 kilograms (66 lbs), which is a bit heavier than an ordinary cedar canoe, but Ogawara is confident it will float. A launching ceremony is planned for May at nearby Lake Inawashiro.

WHAT? 7,382 chopsticks? USED chopsticks? Sure I'll rock my reusable grocery bags every time I can; but I am not that dedicated to recycling!