Show Us Your Love! (Of The Planet)
How do you show your love? How do you like to be shown love? Have you taken this love language quiz? The five love languages are words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, quality time and physical touch.
Food is love. Have you ever heard that phrase? A lot of different cultures communicate their love with food. There is a saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I know that it’s the way to my heart too. Valentine’s Day celebrations often involve going out for a special meal. No surprise there.
I think the following falls loosely into the “words of affirmation” love language. We’re excited to add some new value to our website and introduce our residential customers to the commercial customers that are part of our composting community. You can now find the names of our commercial customers on our website beginning with restaurants and cafes. We’ve even added a map!
You could make visiting them part of this year’s Valentine’s Day Celebration or make future visits your special gift.
Some of our restaurant and catering customers have been with us for years and some are new. We hope that you’ll peruse the list and give them your business. Don’t be afraid to let them know that we sent you and that you appreciate that they compost.
Do you have restaurants you love that aren’t on this list? They are more likely to respond to the requests of their loyal customers than if we contact them directly. Tell them you compost at home and it’s easy. You could even show them the new section of our website and tell them we’d be so happy to add their name to the list when they begin composting.
How do you show your love for the planet? We know that you compost. Are there other ways that you tread lightly on our beautiful planet? We’ve found that expanding our community helps us to expand our impact. We are in an organization called Illinois Food Scrap Coalition (IFSC). Being in it helps us to pull back a little from our own work to learn what others in Illinois are doing to further commercial composting in our state and country. The connections are invaluable. Our committee work in this organization involves working on IFSC’s We Compost Recognition program. You can find more businesses that are committed to diverting their food scraps by checking out the different categories.
Another way to show your love for the planet is to reduce your plastic use. You can do this easily by bringing your own containers to restaurants for leftovers. We have gotten really good at this habit. In fact, when I’m out with friends, they ask me if I happen to have another container that they could use.
We are working on remembering to bring the containers in with us so we don’t have to go out to the car and get them. More often than not, my long-legged boyfriend fetches them. I took that love language quiz myself and found that I feel most loved by “acts of service.” No surprise there, either.
