Even Ted Nugent is Recycling!

Join Crusade to Recycle, Reuse, Save Energy
By Ted Nugent, Texas Wildman

The hunting camp was alive with spirit and South Texas magic.

The hunt was in the air, visions of giant, mature whitetail beasts dancing in my giddy mind.

But there was something else in the air as well that fine December morning. The gagging stink of diesel fuel burned my nostrils.

The hunting operation was world-class; six matched long-bed, extended 4x4 pickup trucks with huge tires, state-of-the art radios, GPS, winches, roofracks and gunracks, spotlights, foglights and grill guards of the highest quality.

I suppose I was looking at more than $400,000 worth of hunting rigs before me. Quite impressive.

But as I have experienced throughout my dreamy history of hunting in Texas, during the entire hour-long breakfast, all six trucks were running, gushing fumes and gobbling raw crude for no good reason whatsoever.

We are talking more than an hour here, my friends, just sitting there, running.

I know Texans are a little tender when it comes to "cold" December mornings. But we Yankee MotorCity Michiganiacs do not consider 30 degrees to be that cold.

And it surely doesn't qualify as cold enough to waste all that fuel just so the big, tough hunters can be warm and cozy for the tortuous 20-minute ride to our cold deerblinds.

Tough it out

All the hunters were dressed warmly for the morning vigil anyway. A short ride in a cold truck should be no big deal. Oy!

Amazingly, this is seen all too often across the land. And not just at hunting camps.

Way too many people just let their vehicles run on and on. Add to that: In homes, every light and lamp left on. Heaters and air conditioners running full-bore. Even with no one around.
You start to get the picture that nobody gives a good damn about conserving energy around here.

Consider the habit of letting the water run unnecessarily, overrunning home appliances, tossing out half-eaten groceries and partially consumed bottles of water and various drinks. A pattern of overt waste takes shape.

Though these abuses appear minor on the surface, when added together they represent a lifestyle by far too many Americans of enormously wasteful resource mismanagement.

I hear a monstrous "ka-ching" going down the toilet here. For shame.

When we moved to Texas a few years ago, we were rather shocked at all the trash tossed into the garbage cans and headed to the landfill every week: plastic bottles, glass containers, cans, everything.

Back home in Michigan they have a soft-drink deposit system so that those gazillions of cans and bottles are recycled and never make their way to the dump.

Keep it out of ground

With the unprecedented volume of bottled water consumed these days, it should be a primary concern of all to demand a better way to recycle this toxic waste and keep it out of the ground.
Same goes for paper, cardboard and the various bubblewrap and Styrofoam packaging materials.

I feel so guilty about tossing out such waste that I tend to warehouse mass quantities until I find an outsource destination for its re-use. The Nugent family is on a crusade to prod all our family and friends to be more conservation-conscious.

If every family and business were to examine its resource use and waste procedures, we could all make a substantial upgrade for our precious environment and save money and natural resources.

Teaching and training our children to do so could make a huge difference in the future of the good Mother Earth. Why not?