Celebrating Change, Earth Day 2019
Our Shift From Single-use Plastic Pollution
As a business that holds Mother Nature at its core, Enchanted Gardens felt obliged to take a hard look at our waste production and change what we can in order to reduce it. This year, we’ve successfully eliminated single-use plastic water bottles, dishware, and flatware from our premises!
These water stations—positioned strategically under cover—are maintained and cleaned daily by our staff. Bring a reusable water container each time you visit and fill up!
HYDRATION STATIONS
In 2018, tragic news about the death of coral reefs around the world has us all reflecting on the amount of pollution we produce daily, but we still want our staff and customers to be as comfortable as possible while at the nursery. With the Houston heat, nothing is more important than staying hydrated. To compromise, we installed water dispensers that use compostable paper cups instead of plastic bottles. The dispensers also use reusable water jugs that are picked up by a third party company and refilled each week. The system has its challenges, but we estimated that it saves over 500 single-use water bottles per week from polluting our natural ecosystems—a victory for the planet and for us!
OUR COLORFUL KITCHEN
The Gardens boasts a strong family culture, and much of that is due to our frequent family lunches. A couple of days each week our Enchanted team of Power Moms magically puts together enough home-cooked food for the whole team. They often incorporate eggs from The Gardens’ resident chickens and herbs from the community veggie n’ herb garden.
A snapshot of our extensive collection of second-hand dishware. The delightful colors and designs make clean-up a little less of a chore.
Unfortunately, these lunches ended with our trashcans full of single-use kitchenware. This system was bad for the environment, our monthly grocery bills, and whoever had trash duty on those days. The change happened when one environmental enthusiast and one antique-hunting enthusiast put their minds together and came up with a plan that would clean out both the kitchen and our trash production! Today, our kitchen is as enchanting as our grounds, housing an eclectic collection of painted ceramic plates and mugs. Thanks to the support of the entire team doing their own dishes and taking all the changes in stride, the family lunches live on with less damage to the environment.
MOVING FORWARD AS A COMMUNITY
This Earth Day, Enchanted Gardens wants to bring attention to the power we all have in our immediate environments and communities. As part of both the green and retail industries who are responsible for much environmental degradation and waste production, we want to share our efforts in the hope of inspiring others to do so in Richmond, Rosenberg, Houston, and beyond. We must try to change what we have control over. It is not always easy or convenient, but change never is.
LEARN MORE …
The Houston Museum of Natural Science has a great exhibit about our local ecosystem, including the wetlands and coastline which suffer from disgusting amounts of trash pollution. Connect with your friends and family to educate everyone and make a day trip to help clean up our planet!