God’s creation is a beautiful thing, and we should not take advantage of this gift. As spring arrives and we watch the trees bloom and the flowers start to peek up through the ground we are reminded of our wonderful heavenly Father who gives us new beginnings. Each year we look forward to this time following a cold winter. But as we take a look at all the newly budding beauty around us, we cannot ignore our responsibility. Especially as Christians realizing this gift of our beautiful surroundings, we should take responsibility by “putting back” into our environment; and caring for our trash and how much we dispose into constantly growing landfills.
The State Office has made some recent efforts to become more responsible by “caring for God’s creation.” We realized that as much paper as we use in promoting state events, processing transactions, copying, and the like; the waste paper was ending up in the trash and thereby the landfills instead of being recycled. So we have initiated an endeavor to be more conscious of recyclable materials. In turn we have the entire staff on board by taking a few moments to take plastic bottles to our bin for recycling plastic, aluminum cans to another bin, and of course provided paper recycle bins in every office.
Once you become more aware of appreciating God’s creation and the land mass that is being quickly consumed by our landfills, it isn’t difficult to take those few minutes to recycle our trash. As we make these efforts, we are also realizing more conscious efforts personally from staff members. One staff member purchased a reusable hot cup holder, and uses that with coffee cups purchased from Starbucks, etc. returning the unused disposable cardboard holders to the vendor in order to minimize the daily waste. Another staff member chose to discontinue purchasing paper plates and plastic cups at home in order to eliminate them ending up in landfills. One staff member has always been “creation conscious” in her consumption at home and at the office. At times, prior to our office’s “creation conscious promotion” she had taken home paper that was going to be trash, and placed in her own recycle bin to make sure it was recycled. She also encouraged several of us to purchase reusable shopping bags to have in our purse to eliminate the constant use of stores’ disposable plastic bags.
There are many things each of us can do to make a difference by becoming more “creation conscious.” We should not disregard our small efforts as not being enough. If each of us start with little things and continue to look for ways to change the effects of what we are doing to our living environment, we can make a difference. We will be surprised at all that we consume and what we waste in our everyday lives. By doing something about it, we are considering our most precious treasures, our children, their futures, and the land, water, and resources we are preparing today to leave for them tomorrow.
