Karen Neder, of Moline, is passionate about recycling, going so far as to find places to send toothpaste tubes, coffee bags and blue jeans.
Tara Witherow, of Davenport, plants native coreopsis and purple coneflowers in her front yard, saying a green lawn is "just a waste" because it provides nothing for birds or insects.
Rod Saelens, of Fyre Lake, Illinois, gives money to Planned Parenthood because he considers overpopulation as the globe's biggest challenge.
Sandy Stanely, of Muscatine, is board president of Clean Air Muscatine, a nonprofit group organized in 2011 to prod Grain Processing Co. to stop polluting the city's air with particulate matter and sulfur dioxide.
These are the stories of four of the 20-25 Quad-City area residents who showed up March 25 at a gathering of environmentally minded people at a Davenport restaurant.
The event was organized by members of Progressive Action for the Common Good, a nonprofit that aims to educate, engage and empower for the common good. But the goal was to launch a different, informal group called Green Drinks.
The aim of Green Drinks is to bring together like-minded people to share interests and socialize. It is targeted at people who work in environmental fields, but anyone interested is welcome. The first group was organized in London in 1989.
Climate change was high on the minds of everyone at the Davenport meeting, but participants also had personal stories — things they're worried about, things they're doing in their own lives.
In celebration of the 49th observance of Earth Day, here are their stories.
Karen Neder, passionate recycler
Neder got started on her recycling path in 2007 when she joined an Earth Keepers group at Trinity Lutheran Church, Moline. The group was to figure out ways the congregation could be more environmentally responsible.
Going online, Neder located TerraCycle, a private U.S. recycling business headquartered in Trenton, New Jersey. According to its website, it collects what is essentially non-recyclable waste and partners with corporate donors to turn it into raw material to be used in new products.
There's even a rebate program in which recycling can be a fundraiser.
One of the items Neder recycles is chip bags, the foil-lined containers in which Fritos or similar snacks are packaged. Forty pounds is the minimum amount accepted for credit; the last time Neder sent in a shipment, she had 54 pounds.
"That is a lot of snack bags," she said. "And you have to have a gigantic box. I went to Menards and got a refrigerator box." For her efforts, she received two cents per bag, or $84.
Neder has her pastor's enthusiastic blessing, and he has given her a room in the church complex in which to collect, sort and box her recyclables. (She previously did everything at home.) The church has sorting parties once a month.
By now Neder has expanded her reach beyond TerraCycle, thanks to ferreting out programs on the internet for glue sticks, crayons, blue jeans, floppy discs, old sports trophies ... all sorts of things.
She speaks to various groups to spread the word and is heartened by the support she is getting.
"Over the last year, this program has taken off like you wouldn't believe," she said.
Ultimately, though, society's goal should be to slash its dependence on plastic, which is infecting every place on earth, including the human body.
"Plastic never ever goes away," Neder said. "Every single bit that has ever been made is still on the planet. You can't recycle it, you can only downcycle... I think of our oceans, the garbage in our oceans, whales filled with garbage."
To reduce her own use of plastic, she has adopted a habit that she recommends to others of always carrying with her a reusable straw, at least two reusable bags and a reusable drinking container.
That way, one can turn down single-use plastic straws and bags and when buying a beverage, can ask to have it poured into your own reusable container rather than a single-use cup.
Neder also keeps a container in her car trunk to take with her into restaurants in case she has leftover food.
"The hardest part is remembering," she said.
Everyone has them: dead pens and markers lying in the bottom of your desk drawer like a sad literary graveyard.
And as a writer, I've got more than my fair share of used writing instruments. I didn’t know what to do with them, until now.
The REAL Deal Reuse Store allows you to drop off your used pens and pen caps, mechanical pencils, markers and marker caps, permanent markets and permanent market caps, highlighters and highlighter caps. REAL then delivers them to Staples, which runs a recycling program out of their store in partnership with waste management company, TerraCycle.
The two companies have partnered up in an effort to provide a second life for used writing instruments. Once collected, they're separated by material composition and then are cleaned, shredded, and made into new recycled products. Through the in-store collections across Canada, over two million writing instruments have been diverted from landfills.
Looking for ways to recycle household waste that isn't available through recycling programs offered through our municipalities has become really important to me. Lately, I've become more and more critical of things I'm throwing in the trash. Before, I wouldn't have thought twice about tossing another dead pen in the garbage.
Now, I've got an alternative. Although the pen recycling program isn't run by REAL, president Barb Hicks, said offering to collect the items at the reuse store, an effort that started last fall, helps make recycling the items more accessible for everyone.
Hicks said it's a small thing, but recycling them instead of throwing them out can make a difference.
I've now got a box for people in our newsroom to put their dead pens in. I've committed to disposing of them through this recycling program. It'll be interesting how many pens, pencils, highlighters and markers we can divert from the landfill over the next couple of years.
To find out more about products REAL can help you recycle, visit: https://www.realaction.
Styrofoam, broken glass, food wrappers, coffee cups, beverage bottles and cans as well as pieces of clothing and unidentified plastic made up most of the trash. Large items like eavestroughing, a plastic chair and a piece of a toilet were carried back to the dumpster (thank you Miller Waste) on a bike trailer (thanks 
he Owen Sound Farmers' Market, selling reusable and low-waste items from produce bags to bamboo cutlery and toothbrushes, and speaking to local residents about small changes that can have a big impact on our waste stream.
Saturday's pick-up coordinator, St. Mary’s Grade 12 student Meredith MacFarlane was encouraged by the efforts of the group. “It was a pretty wet day, but that motivated us to get the trash off the ground before it can make its way into our harbour. I just wish everyone would realize they are contributing to the decline in water quality and marine life when they casually toss a cigarette butt, candy wrapper or plastic coffee lid on the ground.”
Meredith and Owen Sound Waste Watcher Facilitator Laura Wood hope to present the findings of the day to Owen Sound City Council within a month and urge immediate action to reduce single-use plastic and improve awareness of the problem.
“Our planet has limited resources and we need to learn how to use these resources wisely. We look forward to more events like this in the days ahead,” says Wood.