Kitchen and general household garbage (we’ll look at the bathroom trash later).
This was always by far the greatest proportion of our household’s garbage. Before we started this “kick,” we averaged two to four “kitchen-sized” garbage bags a week full of trash (not counting holidays, such as Christmas, which could create giant trash excesses).
Drumroll please. . .
As of Friday, 10 December, 2010, the lowest week’s worth of garbage we’ve had is TWO, half-gallon milk cartons, not entirely full, of garbage.
That’s it; that is all we threw “away” for an entire week.
What was in those milk cartons?
Well, the worst “offenders” were the milk cartons themselves. They are just flat not recyclable here, although I’m told that there are places where they have that capability. Apparently, you need special machinery to separate the plastic (!!!) coating from the paper carton. What, I ask you, would be wrong with going back to biodegradable wax coating on the paper cartons???
We actually have five additional cartons like these (one almond milk, two orange juice, and two organic nonfat milk in addition to the two others that were used as trash receptacles) that have been emptied and not thrown “away.” So technically, we produced more than just the two full of junk. Rather than throw them all “away,” we have decided we could at least reuse some of them: we have designated one to hold general “food waste”--compostable stuff--and one of them is just collecting eggshells--we have some roses growing outside, and the eggshells will be welcomed by them as soil amendments in the spring. I’m not sure what we will do with the others; it may be that we will have to throw them “away” as well.
So what was actually inside the two cartons that were thrown “away?”
Well, small bits of plastic--like the caps for those milk cartons, and the plastic “stopper” or whatever you want to call it that you have to remove after you remove the cap, in order to truly open the carton. And WHAT, I ask you, was wrong with the cartons that just pulled open and pressed closed, requiring NO plastic cap and no “stopper”--and incidentally, allowing you to pour ALL of the milk or juice out, which this current arrangement does NOT, unless you DO pull the entire top open???!
Other garbage included other caps, like the plastic tops of the glass bottles of salad dressing we buy (which no doubt we could make fresher and cheaper ourselves, but that would still leave us with--), the plastic tops of the glass bottles of olive oil or other oils or vinegar, which I DON’T think we could reasonably expect to make ourselves, and random bits of plastic that were mummifying products like the Feliway Comfort Zone thing.
I think that is IT. That is all of our kitchen and general household garbage.
We do have a container (originally a cookie jar) in the kitchen that is now designated to hold the little plastic windows of the DeBoles Organic Spinach Fettucini boxes (remember those?). My plan is to save up a bunch of them and mail them to DeBoles, with a letter asking them ever-so-nicely if they wouldn’t mind recycling them for me, as the #5 plastic is not recyclable in my area. If they insist on including this not-easily-recyclable feature in the boxes, then they will have to deal with the garbage they are creating. Perhaps the concrete demonstration will encourage them to “look into alternatives,” as their rep assured me they were, FASTER.
If you agree with me that it is silly to be mummifying everything we buy in everlasting garbage, please read and sign my petition:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/to-the-end-of-the-earth/
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Paying for Garbage
How does it make sense to wrap all the stuff we want to buy in so much GARBAGE?
Take food, for a particularly egregious example. It is really starting to make me ill, when I look at something I’m considering buying and eating, that it is sitting there entirely encased in GARBAGE.
And you’re paying for that, too! Your good money, your hard-earned money, is going straight to the dump—you pay more for that box of cereal surrounding a plastic bag surrounding your cereal, and when you’ve taken the cereal out, you are going to send all that “packaging”—all that garbage—straight to the dump, AND pay somebody to do that!!! (Directly or through taxes, it IS going to cost you!)
How does that make any sense?
If you live somewhere where you can bring your own containers to a store and buy “in bulk,” you will save SO much money, you don’t even have to think about the garbage you are preventing. And “in bulk” doesn’t have to mean buying battalion-sized amounts of something that then goes to waste. You can buy just as much as you need or want, save money, save food waste, and not pay for all that garbage!
Of course, we have nothing like that here.
So it’s pick and choose and make some of our own stuff (so much fresher, so much better for you, so much cheaper!) from scratch, and where food is concerned, for the most part that’s “all good.”
But what about the other stuff the companies insist on encasing in garbage?
We have two cats in the house, and recently rescued a mama cat (pretty much a kitten herself) and four kittens that got dumped on the side of the road near our house (a sort of Living Garbage, I guess you could say--this happens FREQUENTLY here; but that’s a whole ‘nother blog!!!). Our old boy cat was getting stressed about this (despite the fact that the interlopers were all confined to the guest room), so I bought a Feliway “Comfort Zone” to help everybody chill out.
This thing was so inextricably encased in its “packaging,” you’d think it was radioactive! I had to take progressively more deadly weapons to the “packaging” (read: garbage!) to get the thing out of there. The outer, impenetrable casing was unrecyclable plastic (THANKS, Feliwhatever!!!), with an inner layer of printed paper (at least that’s recyclable). Of course the “unit” itself is all plastic (nonrecyclable). You can buy a refill rather than having to buy the entire thing again, but even the refill is nonrecyclable plastic (still), and again entirely encased in that deadly nonrecyclable, permanently-polluting and extremely annoying-to-remove plastic!
Why, oh why? Whatever happened to selling something in a box? Or, for that matter, just the product, on the shelf? Why does everything have to be covered and encased and shrink-wrapped and mummified in plastic?
This is all the more mystifying to me when I consider that plastic is perhaps the most PERMANENT material the world has ever known. And it is being used, UBIQUITOUSLY, for things that are meant to be used once—or for that matter, NEVER used, just employed as a barrier to something ELSE you want to use—and THROWN AWAY. (I should say, thrown “away”—as we’ve seen, there is no “away.”)
This is ridiculous and absolutely has to stop.
Please see my petition for a law to put a stop to it:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/to-the-end-of-the-earth/
Please click the link to read the entire petition to fully understand both the reasoning and what is being proposed.
While you’re at it, please sign it, too.
Thanks for supporting sanity!
Take food, for a particularly egregious example. It is really starting to make me ill, when I look at something I’m considering buying and eating, that it is sitting there entirely encased in GARBAGE.
And you’re paying for that, too! Your good money, your hard-earned money, is going straight to the dump—you pay more for that box of cereal surrounding a plastic bag surrounding your cereal, and when you’ve taken the cereal out, you are going to send all that “packaging”—all that garbage—straight to the dump, AND pay somebody to do that!!! (Directly or through taxes, it IS going to cost you!)
How does that make any sense?
If you live somewhere where you can bring your own containers to a store and buy “in bulk,” you will save SO much money, you don’t even have to think about the garbage you are preventing. And “in bulk” doesn’t have to mean buying battalion-sized amounts of something that then goes to waste. You can buy just as much as you need or want, save money, save food waste, and not pay for all that garbage!
Of course, we have nothing like that here.
So it’s pick and choose and make some of our own stuff (so much fresher, so much better for you, so much cheaper!) from scratch, and where food is concerned, for the most part that’s “all good.”
But what about the other stuff the companies insist on encasing in garbage?
We have two cats in the house, and recently rescued a mama cat (pretty much a kitten herself) and four kittens that got dumped on the side of the road near our house (a sort of Living Garbage, I guess you could say--this happens FREQUENTLY here; but that’s a whole ‘nother blog!!!). Our old boy cat was getting stressed about this (despite the fact that the interlopers were all confined to the guest room), so I bought a Feliway “Comfort Zone” to help everybody chill out.
This thing was so inextricably encased in its “packaging,” you’d think it was radioactive! I had to take progressively more deadly weapons to the “packaging” (read: garbage!) to get the thing out of there. The outer, impenetrable casing was unrecyclable plastic (THANKS, Feliwhatever!!!), with an inner layer of printed paper (at least that’s recyclable). Of course the “unit” itself is all plastic (nonrecyclable). You can buy a refill rather than having to buy the entire thing again, but even the refill is nonrecyclable plastic (still), and again entirely encased in that deadly nonrecyclable, permanently-polluting and extremely annoying-to-remove plastic!
Why, oh why? Whatever happened to selling something in a box? Or, for that matter, just the product, on the shelf? Why does everything have to be covered and encased and shrink-wrapped and mummified in plastic?
This is all the more mystifying to me when I consider that plastic is perhaps the most PERMANENT material the world has ever known. And it is being used, UBIQUITOUSLY, for things that are meant to be used once—or for that matter, NEVER used, just employed as a barrier to something ELSE you want to use—and THROWN AWAY. (I should say, thrown “away”—as we’ve seen, there is no “away.”)
This is ridiculous and absolutely has to stop.
Please see my petition for a law to put a stop to it:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/to-the-end-of-the-earth/
Please click the link to read the entire petition to fully understand both the reasoning and what is being proposed.
While you’re at it, please sign it, too.
Thanks for supporting sanity!
Thursday, October 21, 2010
The Summer of Childhood Diseases; or, "Oh No! Cipro!"
Okay, so the blog went by the wayside for a good while, but the project didn’t.
June to October. What’s been going on? A whirlwind of dealing with (so far) a total of THIRTEEN animals dumped in our area; nine kittens and one cat (mother of four of the kittens), two giant lab-mix puppies and one half-grown smallish hound girl. This kind of “garbage” (after all, whoever is dumping them clearly sees them that way) comes with its own never-ending demands, expenses, and—hazards.
The hazards most relevant to our quest for zero garbage came with the set of four kittens who were dumped with their mother. Their mother turned out to have FIV (the feline equivalent of HIV; for which there is no effective vaccine and no cure; just one of many reasons why indoor cats are happier, healthier, and live 10-15 years longer than their outdoor counterparts), and she was in such rough shape that her kittens were suffering from multiple opportunistic diseases, too (didn’t help that they were all starving, also). Blessedly, the kittens did NOT have FIV—however, they did have upper respiratory infections, fleas, mites, various intestinal worms, and most annoyingly, ringworm.
Ringworm, despite its name, is not a worm but a skin fungus. It is also, sadly, one of the handful of diseases that can be passed from pet to person (known as zoonotic diseases). Here’s where the garbage challenge comes in. To combat the ringworm on the kitties, what they most needed was a better diet and to have the rest of the challenges to their systems defeated, so they could fight it off themselves. Unfortunately, before the kittens learned when to use their claws and when not to, every time they scratched me even ever-so-lightly, that spot would be “inoculated” with the dadgum ringworm fungus—so (despite obsessive-compulsive washing after handling them) here I was breaking out with nasty itchy spots all over me. It didn’t help that, when the spots first come up, they look and feel just like an insect bite (like mosquito bites, for example, of which we have plenty in the summer), so for a while I kept thinking that is what they were—until they spread enough to start forming the dreaded rings!
The doctor diagnosed me with one glance (and, tellingly, no touching!). And here came a prescription for an antifungal cream AND an oral prescription of diflucan, since I had the stuff in so many places she thought it best to be treated systemically. So now there’s an aluminum tube full of antifungal cream, with its who-knows-what-kind-of-plastic cap, and a prescription bottle with NO recycling info on it—who makes these little orange prescription pill bottles with the “child-resistant” caps, anyway, and out of WHAT?
Two weeks later I’m back at the doctor; having awoken with gummy eyes, one of which felt like it was full of sand. This time she diagnoses me from ACROSS THE ROOM (I don’t really blame her). First ringworm, now conjunctivitis. I don’t know if the conjunctivitis is zoonotic or just stress-related, but I feel pretty chagrined—like I’m some kind of weird grown-up that collects childhood diseases as a hobby or something.
So NOW I have a tiny little plastic bottle of eye drops full of CIPRO. The bottle (of course) has no recycling info on it, and the remaining drops (of course they always give you more than you need) are certainly nothing that we want to just cast out into the environment, to breed nasty super-bacteria that will come back to haunt us like something out of “Resident Evil.”
I’ve looked up environmentally “friendly” recommendations for throwing away prescriptions, and they all go something like this: melt some candle wax and pour it into the bottle, sealing the remaining pills inside, wait for it to cool, then put the cap back on tightly and throw the whole thing away. Um, wait a minute—I GUESS that’s likely to help keep them out of the groundwater, but it means throwing even MORE trash in the landfill. How is this environmentally friendly? Plus, I doubt that’s going to work with my liquid eyedrops in their dropper container.
So now I’ve had these things sitting on my bathroom counter for months, wondering what on Earth can be done with them. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
June to October. What’s been going on? A whirlwind of dealing with (so far) a total of THIRTEEN animals dumped in our area; nine kittens and one cat (mother of four of the kittens), two giant lab-mix puppies and one half-grown smallish hound girl. This kind of “garbage” (after all, whoever is dumping them clearly sees them that way) comes with its own never-ending demands, expenses, and—hazards.
The hazards most relevant to our quest for zero garbage came with the set of four kittens who were dumped with their mother. Their mother turned out to have FIV (the feline equivalent of HIV; for which there is no effective vaccine and no cure; just one of many reasons why indoor cats are happier, healthier, and live 10-15 years longer than their outdoor counterparts), and she was in such rough shape that her kittens were suffering from multiple opportunistic diseases, too (didn’t help that they were all starving, also). Blessedly, the kittens did NOT have FIV—however, they did have upper respiratory infections, fleas, mites, various intestinal worms, and most annoyingly, ringworm.
Ringworm, despite its name, is not a worm but a skin fungus. It is also, sadly, one of the handful of diseases that can be passed from pet to person (known as zoonotic diseases). Here’s where the garbage challenge comes in. To combat the ringworm on the kitties, what they most needed was a better diet and to have the rest of the challenges to their systems defeated, so they could fight it off themselves. Unfortunately, before the kittens learned when to use their claws and when not to, every time they scratched me even ever-so-lightly, that spot would be “inoculated” with the dadgum ringworm fungus—so (despite obsessive-compulsive washing after handling them) here I was breaking out with nasty itchy spots all over me. It didn’t help that, when the spots first come up, they look and feel just like an insect bite (like mosquito bites, for example, of which we have plenty in the summer), so for a while I kept thinking that is what they were—until they spread enough to start forming the dreaded rings!
The doctor diagnosed me with one glance (and, tellingly, no touching!). And here came a prescription for an antifungal cream AND an oral prescription of diflucan, since I had the stuff in so many places she thought it best to be treated systemically. So now there’s an aluminum tube full of antifungal cream, with its who-knows-what-kind-of-plastic cap, and a prescription bottle with NO recycling info on it—who makes these little orange prescription pill bottles with the “child-resistant” caps, anyway, and out of WHAT?
Two weeks later I’m back at the doctor; having awoken with gummy eyes, one of which felt like it was full of sand. This time she diagnoses me from ACROSS THE ROOM (I don’t really blame her). First ringworm, now conjunctivitis. I don’t know if the conjunctivitis is zoonotic or just stress-related, but I feel pretty chagrined—like I’m some kind of weird grown-up that collects childhood diseases as a hobby or something.
So NOW I have a tiny little plastic bottle of eye drops full of CIPRO. The bottle (of course) has no recycling info on it, and the remaining drops (of course they always give you more than you need) are certainly nothing that we want to just cast out into the environment, to breed nasty super-bacteria that will come back to haunt us like something out of “Resident Evil.”
I’ve looked up environmentally “friendly” recommendations for throwing away prescriptions, and they all go something like this: melt some candle wax and pour it into the bottle, sealing the remaining pills inside, wait for it to cool, then put the cap back on tightly and throw the whole thing away. Um, wait a minute—I GUESS that’s likely to help keep them out of the groundwater, but it means throwing even MORE trash in the landfill. How is this environmentally friendly? Plus, I doubt that’s going to work with my liquid eyedrops in their dropper container.
So now I’ve had these things sitting on my bathroom counter for months, wondering what on Earth can be done with them. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Bake Cookies, Save the World
As I understand it, in some parts of California, where people seem to be more aware in general of their relationships to the ecosystems on which we are all DEPENDENT for our very lives, it is in fact illegal to just throw stuff “away.” At least things that can be recycled. When you really take a hard look at garbage, it is piercingly clear that this should be the case everywhere. Before sitting down to write this, I was standing in line at the B&N Café for my mug of chai, and the guy before me walks away with a giant plastic cup of something, with a plastic lid, and a plastic straw, and a plastic container with his just-a-little-warmed-up muffin trapped inside it. He doesn’t take this stuff to go—he just walks over to a table and sits down to enjoy it. And I’m literally biting my tongue not to ask him, “Dude, what is going to happen to all that trash?”
“All what trash?” would probably be his response. Chances are he wouldn’t even see his armload of garbage—just the drink and the food inside it. If he did think a second longer and recognize the trash, he’d probably just say, “I’ll throw it away.” As if there is an away. Out of his sight, anyway, and out of his mind. (You can take that both ways.)
The "throw away" attitude is really a very immature way of relating to one's environment. If you would not want that thing (whatever you are throwing "away") in your own space, then why do you suppose anybody else would? ("The dump" is next door to SOMEBODY's property!) It needs to go back into the supply stream and be re-used, not just become garbage junking up the world (one thing we're not making any more of is land, so using it up to dump garbage on seems like a heinous choice, to me!). If it is not recyclable, then you probably should not buy it to begin with. If you’ve been reading awhile, you know I've started systematically calling companies whose products we have been using whose packaging is not recyclable and letting them know that we will no longer be buying their products if the packaging is not recyclable or compostable. Period. If enough people did that, you can bet every company would change over to "eco-friendly" (and thus LIFE-friendly!) packaging in a heartbeat!
A lot of people will think, "but I couldn’t do that, because I don't want to go to the trouble of making my own whatever," but as I tell these companies this, I keep realizing that if we really DO stop buying this product (this morning it was a package of cookies) and start making our own, not only would it eliminate the garbage problem and probably be even better tasting—certainly fresher and better for us—but we'd also save MONEY! We could bake several DOZEN cookies for the price of one small box of those cardboard-and-plastic-encased cookies. . . become enormously popular giving the extras away. . .and no plastic packaging to garbage up the world later! Instead of getting harder and harder (as I thought it might), it seems actually to be getting easier and easier--I don't feel "deprived," I feel like I'm finally seeing alternatives that are so obviously BETTER that I can't believe I've been living so mindlessly (and expensively!) for so long! I highly recommend it. Bake cookies, save the world.
: )
“All what trash?” would probably be his response. Chances are he wouldn’t even see his armload of garbage—just the drink and the food inside it. If he did think a second longer and recognize the trash, he’d probably just say, “I’ll throw it away.” As if there is an away. Out of his sight, anyway, and out of his mind. (You can take that both ways.)
The "throw away" attitude is really a very immature way of relating to one's environment. If you would not want that thing (whatever you are throwing "away") in your own space, then why do you suppose anybody else would? ("The dump" is next door to SOMEBODY's property!) It needs to go back into the supply stream and be re-used, not just become garbage junking up the world (one thing we're not making any more of is land, so using it up to dump garbage on seems like a heinous choice, to me!). If it is not recyclable, then you probably should not buy it to begin with. If you’ve been reading awhile, you know I've started systematically calling companies whose products we have been using whose packaging is not recyclable and letting them know that we will no longer be buying their products if the packaging is not recyclable or compostable. Period. If enough people did that, you can bet every company would change over to "eco-friendly" (and thus LIFE-friendly!) packaging in a heartbeat!
A lot of people will think, "but I couldn’t do that, because I don't want to go to the trouble of making my own whatever," but as I tell these companies this, I keep realizing that if we really DO stop buying this product (this morning it was a package of cookies) and start making our own, not only would it eliminate the garbage problem and probably be even better tasting—certainly fresher and better for us—but we'd also save MONEY! We could bake several DOZEN cookies for the price of one small box of those cardboard-and-plastic-encased cookies. . . become enormously popular giving the extras away. . .and no plastic packaging to garbage up the world later! Instead of getting harder and harder (as I thought it might), it seems actually to be getting easier and easier--I don't feel "deprived," I feel like I'm finally seeing alternatives that are so obviously BETTER that I can't believe I've been living so mindlessly (and expensively!) for so long! I highly recommend it. Bake cookies, save the world.
: )
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Where to Hang Out Without Hanging Ourselves
Taking a slightly different tack here, to look at the garbage I generate when I’m out and about in good ol’ Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA. Since I use wifi frequently (as do increasing legions of folks), I’ll look at some of the wifi hang-out spots. Perhaps you can use my ratings to think about places you frequent.
Barnes & Noble Café: This has been a favorite, especially since they started encouraging “for here” customers to use real mugs instead of trash to hold their coffee/whatever. Snacks and sandwiches are inconsistently served on either a real plate (hurrah!) or the horrifying Styrofoam alternative (BOO!), with either real silverware (yea!) or plastic (YUCK). If you take your drink to go (or don’t ask for a real mug), you will get a paper cup with a paper sleeve which could be recycled, although you will have to take it with you somewhere else to do that; there is no recycling receptacle. They will always put the damn, nonrecyclable plastic top on the paper cup. If you ask them not to, you will REALLY have to vigorously insist. The customer is not right about this, apparently—and I can only get them to leave off the top by really insisting and getting past the “I’ll get in trouble” and “Okay, but you can’t tell ANYbody!” objections from the staff. Apparently, there is some draconian policy that to-go hot drink cups (whether you are taking them “to go” or not) must come with this eternally-polluting piece of plastic attached. Cold drinks (the famous Frappucinos, for example) are in a clear #2 plastic cup with lid (recyclable, at least)—but also come with a straw, which I can’t find out whether is recyclable or not. Drinking through a straw is a bad idea, anyway—gives you gas and bloating—so skip the straw. For that matter, skip that 2000 calorie giant dose of sugar, save yourself five bucks and future diabetes! GQ (Garbage Quotient): Eco-C; could improve to a B if they would stop the weird insistence on the plastic lids and get completely consistent about real plates and silverware instead of Styrofoam and plastic.
Books-a-Million: At last check, their wifi was not free. They also have literally nothing you would actually want to eat there, their coffee is ~eh~ and their chai is not worth it. So why do we care about their garbage quotient? Moving on. . .
Hastings: I don’t know why, but their coffee is the best in town to me (of course, I’m not a big coffee drinker, so the taste I’m liking there might really turn off the real coffee fan, I don’t know). Their chai is from a powdered mix and is absolutely horrid. Nothing there worth eating either, and the atmosphere is really not conducive to staying very long, but the wifi is free. If you do try the coffee, you’ll get a cardboard cup (okay) with a fancy plastic lid with a little plastic “door” you can slide open and closed. Woohoo! Even MORE plastic! That’s gotta be good, right? GQ: Nevermind.
San Francisco Bread Company: If you buy a hot drink here, it will come in a Styrofoam cup. I’ve gotten to the point where Styrofoam almost makes me physically ill. Just the feel of it makes my skin crawl. If you eat in, you’ll get food on real plates with real silverware (THANK you!), always associated with paper of various sorts, which can be recycled if you collect it all up at the end of the meal and take it with you, although some things (like salads, where they give you dressing on the side in a plastic container with lid) come with garbage. For some reason, though, if you get just a dessert (like a piece of cheesecake), it will come on the dreaded STYROFOAM plate with a PLASTIC fork. Why is this, when we KNOW they have real plates and forks? It is a mystery. Cold drink cups can be recycled, again if you are willing to take them with you. GQ: Eco-C-minus; could improve if they served their desserts with the real dinnerware we know they have, and provided separate containers for all the paper and the recyclable plastic. They already ask their customers to sort the real plates and silverware from the trays and the trash; why not go just a little further and implode that trash load; make the world a BETTER place for “San Fran’s” having been in it?
Seattle Grind Café: Trying this place for the first time as I type this. Paper cup and sleeve for the hot drinks, the damnable plastic lid again. Muffin served on the heinous Styrofoam plate, but with a real fork (how does THAT make sense???). The muffin had a paper wrapper I will take with me to recycle, along with the cup & sleeve, and the napkin. But the dang plastic lid! Argh! Also, their internet connection would not work for me, and their wall “art” looks like it crawled out of a late-1960’s, early-1970’s nightmare. Not strictly trash-related, but not a great attraction, either (although some of it looks like it could be repurposed industrial garbage, so that could be a plus in that respect!). GQ: Eco-D (benefit-of-the-doubt bonus points for recycling trash as art).
Tropical Smoothie Café: To their credit, you CAN buy (yes, BUY) a giant, reusable plastic cup from them, and if you take it home, clean it, and remember to bring it back every time you go there, they will use that to put your smoothie in—instead of the GIANT STYROFOAM (AAAAAUUUUUUGH!) cup from hell they otherwise use. I don’t even like to think of the Mississippi-River-flow of Styrofoam (not to mention plastic lids and straws) coming out of that place every day; it makes me want to puke. All their food comes with plenty of trash, too. And I like the occasional dose of Reggae, but more than about half an hour of constant Reggae music will eventually make me nuts. I don’t know how the staff stays out of the looney-bin. GQ: Eco-FAIL. Start using biodegradable cups for the smoothies to begin the crawl up to a passing grade. Otherwise, you FAIL AT LIFE. You are the Gulf Oil Spill of Jonesboro wifi hang-out spots.
Feel free to share your own ratings of your local wifi spots in the comments!
Barnes & Noble Café: This has been a favorite, especially since they started encouraging “for here” customers to use real mugs instead of trash to hold their coffee/whatever. Snacks and sandwiches are inconsistently served on either a real plate (hurrah!) or the horrifying Styrofoam alternative (BOO!), with either real silverware (yea!) or plastic (YUCK). If you take your drink to go (or don’t ask for a real mug), you will get a paper cup with a paper sleeve which could be recycled, although you will have to take it with you somewhere else to do that; there is no recycling receptacle. They will always put the damn, nonrecyclable plastic top on the paper cup. If you ask them not to, you will REALLY have to vigorously insist. The customer is not right about this, apparently—and I can only get them to leave off the top by really insisting and getting past the “I’ll get in trouble” and “Okay, but you can’t tell ANYbody!” objections from the staff. Apparently, there is some draconian policy that to-go hot drink cups (whether you are taking them “to go” or not) must come with this eternally-polluting piece of plastic attached. Cold drinks (the famous Frappucinos, for example) are in a clear #2 plastic cup with lid (recyclable, at least)—but also come with a straw, which I can’t find out whether is recyclable or not. Drinking through a straw is a bad idea, anyway—gives you gas and bloating—so skip the straw. For that matter, skip that 2000 calorie giant dose of sugar, save yourself five bucks and future diabetes! GQ (Garbage Quotient): Eco-C; could improve to a B if they would stop the weird insistence on the plastic lids and get completely consistent about real plates and silverware instead of Styrofoam and plastic.
Books-a-Million: At last check, their wifi was not free. They also have literally nothing you would actually want to eat there, their coffee is ~eh~ and their chai is not worth it. So why do we care about their garbage quotient? Moving on. . .
Hastings: I don’t know why, but their coffee is the best in town to me (of course, I’m not a big coffee drinker, so the taste I’m liking there might really turn off the real coffee fan, I don’t know). Their chai is from a powdered mix and is absolutely horrid. Nothing there worth eating either, and the atmosphere is really not conducive to staying very long, but the wifi is free. If you do try the coffee, you’ll get a cardboard cup (okay) with a fancy plastic lid with a little plastic “door” you can slide open and closed. Woohoo! Even MORE plastic! That’s gotta be good, right? GQ: Nevermind.
San Francisco Bread Company: If you buy a hot drink here, it will come in a Styrofoam cup. I’ve gotten to the point where Styrofoam almost makes me physically ill. Just the feel of it makes my skin crawl. If you eat in, you’ll get food on real plates with real silverware (THANK you!), always associated with paper of various sorts, which can be recycled if you collect it all up at the end of the meal and take it with you, although some things (like salads, where they give you dressing on the side in a plastic container with lid) come with garbage. For some reason, though, if you get just a dessert (like a piece of cheesecake), it will come on the dreaded STYROFOAM plate with a PLASTIC fork. Why is this, when we KNOW they have real plates and forks? It is a mystery. Cold drink cups can be recycled, again if you are willing to take them with you. GQ: Eco-C-minus; could improve if they served their desserts with the real dinnerware we know they have, and provided separate containers for all the paper and the recyclable plastic. They already ask their customers to sort the real plates and silverware from the trays and the trash; why not go just a little further and implode that trash load; make the world a BETTER place for “San Fran’s” having been in it?
Seattle Grind Café: Trying this place for the first time as I type this. Paper cup and sleeve for the hot drinks, the damnable plastic lid again. Muffin served on the heinous Styrofoam plate, but with a real fork (how does THAT make sense???). The muffin had a paper wrapper I will take with me to recycle, along with the cup & sleeve, and the napkin. But the dang plastic lid! Argh! Also, their internet connection would not work for me, and their wall “art” looks like it crawled out of a late-1960’s, early-1970’s nightmare. Not strictly trash-related, but not a great attraction, either (although some of it looks like it could be repurposed industrial garbage, so that could be a plus in that respect!). GQ: Eco-D (benefit-of-the-doubt bonus points for recycling trash as art).
Tropical Smoothie Café: To their credit, you CAN buy (yes, BUY) a giant, reusable plastic cup from them, and if you take it home, clean it, and remember to bring it back every time you go there, they will use that to put your smoothie in—instead of the GIANT STYROFOAM (AAAAAUUUUUUGH!) cup from hell they otherwise use. I don’t even like to think of the Mississippi-River-flow of Styrofoam (not to mention plastic lids and straws) coming out of that place every day; it makes me want to puke. All their food comes with plenty of trash, too. And I like the occasional dose of Reggae, but more than about half an hour of constant Reggae music will eventually make me nuts. I don’t know how the staff stays out of the looney-bin. GQ: Eco-FAIL. Start using biodegradable cups for the smoothies to begin the crawl up to a passing grade. Otherwise, you FAIL AT LIFE. You are the Gulf Oil Spill of Jonesboro wifi hang-out spots.
Feel free to share your own ratings of your local wifi spots in the comments!
Friday, May 28, 2010
Over the Edge
Last year, I read about a Native American tribe whose home village is near the edge of a mesa. For centuries, whatever refuse they had, they would just toss over the edge. And that was fine. In a natural human environment, where anything you might use (or indeed, ever encounter) was entirely natural and almost all of it organic (having grown in the ground or water, or having grown up eating what grew in the ground or water), anything you tossed down there would be food for something else—from vultures to coyotes to ants—and quickly and efficiently dispatched. Optimal system; worked great.
Of course now that the tribe has adopted our dominant culture’s notion of “progress,” suddenly their system ain’t workin’ so well. Now, there is a growing mountain of garbage, creeping up towards their village like some kind of creature from a 1950’s B-movie.
This is because GARBAGE is actually a NEW PHENOMENON. Sure, there was refuse before—bones, shattered pottery, unusable parts of plants, even fabric that was ruined beyond use and re-use. But
a) There wasn’t much of it—resources were properly seen as precious by most people; every part of a plant or animal that could be made use of in any way was made use of, things were used and reused until they just flat couldn’t be used any more or literally disintegrated. Yes, even things like bones, like torn and stained fabric, even broken pottery.
b) What there was, was entirely useful. Perhaps no longer to the people who generated it, but to scavengers, ants, and other creatures, sure thing. It would be consumed, carted away, or converted into something by one or many of these, and return to “the circle of life” (thank you, Rafiki). Even stuff like potsherds would break down in the weather and re-enrich the soil.
So now we cart pounds and pounds of garbage to the curb every week—not per village, but per HOUSEHOLD—most of which will still be present when our sun goes supernova, to dump into a giant, creeping mountain of garbage that is slowly creeping up on us—on me, on you, on all of us (do you even know where your nearest dump is? –not far, I’ll bet—not far enough; never far enough), like that 1950’s B-movie creature.
And nothing will ever use it, not for anything. “LANDFILLS” fill our land and pollute our water with toxic chemicals and metals, radioactive material, plastics that will never return usefully to the Earth. Considering that we aren’t making any more LAND (and indeed, with rising sea levels, can probably count on less of it in the future), FILLing it with garbage seems to me like the worst kind of crime.
How is this “progress?”
Of course now that the tribe has adopted our dominant culture’s notion of “progress,” suddenly their system ain’t workin’ so well. Now, there is a growing mountain of garbage, creeping up towards their village like some kind of creature from a 1950’s B-movie.
This is because GARBAGE is actually a NEW PHENOMENON. Sure, there was refuse before—bones, shattered pottery, unusable parts of plants, even fabric that was ruined beyond use and re-use. But
a) There wasn’t much of it—resources were properly seen as precious by most people; every part of a plant or animal that could be made use of in any way was made use of, things were used and reused until they just flat couldn’t be used any more or literally disintegrated. Yes, even things like bones, like torn and stained fabric, even broken pottery.
b) What there was, was entirely useful. Perhaps no longer to the people who generated it, but to scavengers, ants, and other creatures, sure thing. It would be consumed, carted away, or converted into something by one or many of these, and return to “the circle of life” (thank you, Rafiki). Even stuff like potsherds would break down in the weather and re-enrich the soil.
So now we cart pounds and pounds of garbage to the curb every week—not per village, but per HOUSEHOLD—most of which will still be present when our sun goes supernova, to dump into a giant, creeping mountain of garbage that is slowly creeping up on us—on me, on you, on all of us (do you even know where your nearest dump is? –not far, I’ll bet—not far enough; never far enough), like that 1950’s B-movie creature.
And nothing will ever use it, not for anything. “LANDFILLS” fill our land and pollute our water with toxic chemicals and metals, radioactive material, plastics that will never return usefully to the Earth. Considering that we aren’t making any more LAND (and indeed, with rising sea levels, can probably count on less of it in the future), FILLing it with garbage seems to me like the worst kind of crime.
How is this “progress?”
Friday, May 21, 2010
Buitoni Fails
Received the coupons from Buitoni. Apparently all they sell is refrigerated pasta and sauces, all encased in utterly non-recyclable, non-compostable, plastic GARBAGE. At least the coupons and the envelope they came in are easily recyclable.
As my teenage daughter would say, “Buitoni fails at life.”
As my teenage daughter would say, “Buitoni fails at life.”
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