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.”
Thursday, May 20, 2010
My Chai
Okay, I’m addicted to something else besides pesto. I have a Chai “Latte” every day. This is probably an addiction in both behavioral and chemical terms, as I’ll notice a bit of a headache around midday if I don’t have my chai.
I used to have this at the Barnes & Noble Café, a grande chai a day (pretty much every day) at nearly $4 a pop, not to mention the cup and sleeve (at least they are both paper) and the dreaded plastic (nonrecyclable, at least in our area) lid, which no matter how much you assure them you WON’T sue them if you are clumsy enough to spill the “HOT” liquid (which indeed, you WANT to be hot—duh!) on yourself, they just HAVE to put on there—even if the first thing you are going to do the second you walk away from the counter is strip it off and throw it in the trash! Augh!
They HAVE been nice about serving it in a mug, if you are going to stay there to drink it. Funny how suddenly nobody is worried about being sued if you spill your hot drink on yourself out of a mug. Not sure how that works. But mugs are great—and recently, they have even gotten to the point of ENCOURAGING the customers to use real mugs. I guess somebody realized that giving away all that trash is not just wasteful, but actually COSTS them more than washing and reusing nice mugs! Duh.
These people are great; don’t get me wrong; I love it there. They are super nice, they have wi fi (which is a godsend, since all we have at home is dial-up), and they joke that the window table is my “office” now—so don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to give them a hard time; it is just kind of indicative of the general irrationality of the way our culture is set up: “No, the customer is not always right, if you want the paper trash you have to take the plastic trash too, because you might sue us if you spill it—unless you want a mug, in which case whatever.”
But last year, I realized that, even if I were only getting a chai five days out of the week, at $3.69 or whatever it was, that was nearly $1000 a year! And that didn’t count anything else I might buy—the occasional bagel or spinach-feta pretzel (yum!), for example. It just couldn’t go on. $1000 could buy my college daughter’s books for a semester, and then some.
So I messed around with the recipe for a Tazo Chai Tea Latte at home until I could make one I really liked with the boxed Chai they sell in the grocery stores (not the same as they make at the B&N Café, you can’t buy the same Tazo formula for home use at all—but just as enjoyable). It took months! But I finally did it.
Proud of myself for saving hundreds and hundreds of dollars a year.
Except. . .
The box is not recyclable.
I called the company; the rep I spoke to was understanding—the company is at least a little on board with the whole “eco-thing”—free trade and all that—but that “Tetra Brik” box is just not recyclable. “Not nowhere, not nohow,” as the Great and Powerful Oz would say.
Help.
I’ve tried brewing my own chai from tea bags (even Tazo’s tea bags), adding my own honey and spices—could not even get close to the taste I was hoping for. Tried powder-based formulas—UGH! As my daughter would say, “EPIC fail!”
Here is one area where the brick wall of “not recyclable” has not yielded to the path of “this is even better!” At least, not yet.
Anybody got a sure-fire chai recipe?
I used to have this at the Barnes & Noble Café, a grande chai a day (pretty much every day) at nearly $4 a pop, not to mention the cup and sleeve (at least they are both paper) and the dreaded plastic (nonrecyclable, at least in our area) lid, which no matter how much you assure them you WON’T sue them if you are clumsy enough to spill the “HOT” liquid (which indeed, you WANT to be hot—duh!) on yourself, they just HAVE to put on there—even if the first thing you are going to do the second you walk away from the counter is strip it off and throw it in the trash! Augh!
They HAVE been nice about serving it in a mug, if you are going to stay there to drink it. Funny how suddenly nobody is worried about being sued if you spill your hot drink on yourself out of a mug. Not sure how that works. But mugs are great—and recently, they have even gotten to the point of ENCOURAGING the customers to use real mugs. I guess somebody realized that giving away all that trash is not just wasteful, but actually COSTS them more than washing and reusing nice mugs! Duh.
These people are great; don’t get me wrong; I love it there. They are super nice, they have wi fi (which is a godsend, since all we have at home is dial-up), and they joke that the window table is my “office” now—so don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to give them a hard time; it is just kind of indicative of the general irrationality of the way our culture is set up: “No, the customer is not always right, if you want the paper trash you have to take the plastic trash too, because you might sue us if you spill it—unless you want a mug, in which case whatever.”
But last year, I realized that, even if I were only getting a chai five days out of the week, at $3.69 or whatever it was, that was nearly $1000 a year! And that didn’t count anything else I might buy—the occasional bagel or spinach-feta pretzel (yum!), for example. It just couldn’t go on. $1000 could buy my college daughter’s books for a semester, and then some.
So I messed around with the recipe for a Tazo Chai Tea Latte at home until I could make one I really liked with the boxed Chai they sell in the grocery stores (not the same as they make at the B&N Café, you can’t buy the same Tazo formula for home use at all—but just as enjoyable). It took months! But I finally did it.
Proud of myself for saving hundreds and hundreds of dollars a year.
Except. . .
The box is not recyclable.
I called the company; the rep I spoke to was understanding—the company is at least a little on board with the whole “eco-thing”—free trade and all that—but that “Tetra Brik” box is just not recyclable. “Not nowhere, not nohow,” as the Great and Powerful Oz would say.
Help.
I’ve tried brewing my own chai from tea bags (even Tazo’s tea bags), adding my own honey and spices—could not even get close to the taste I was hoping for. Tried powder-based formulas—UGH! As my daughter would say, “EPIC fail!”
Here is one area where the brick wall of “not recyclable” has not yielded to the path of “this is even better!” At least, not yet.
Anybody got a sure-fire chai recipe?
Monday, May 17, 2010
The Far Horizon (Dairy)
Horizon Dairy. Weird phone call. I think this may be one of the companies that “farms out” its customer service to people who work at home? I think this because after going through a few computer choices, the phone just went silent for a bit. Then a person seemed to pick it up (not “pick it up” as in “come on the line,” but “pick it up” as if the phone had been off the hook on a desk or something and the person just saw it there and grabbed it up, from the sounds associated) in a panic and said “Hello??!” As if they had not noticed there was a call, but they should have. When I said, “Hello,” the person took a deep centering breath and stumbled into, “Thank you for—th-thank you for calling Horizon Dairy how may I help you?” Odd.
This was also a place that asked my name, “just to better address you,” the person said, but I didn’t catch the person’s name. I keep saying “the person” (I’m sure you have noticed) because the person also had one of those fascinating voices of completely indeterminate gender. Odder.
The particular product I called about—the Horizon Organic Finely Shredded Cheddar Cheese—comes in a “zip-lock”-type bag which, it turns out, is a 5, and which Horizon is aware is “not recyclable in all states.” (Certainly not our state. We can only do 1’s and 2’s, not 4’s or 5’s—apparently there is no such thing as a 3, really—maybe plastics manufacturers superstitiously skip 3, like no floor 13 in a hotel.) Their Organic Sour Cream is also in a container that is a 5. How that can be a 5, and this flimsy-looking bag also a 5, I don’t fully understand, but that is the all-out oddness of plastics, for you.
Well, as for the shredded cheese, of course it is a no-brainer that you can save much money by buying your own organic cheddar and shredding it yourself with your handy-dandy cheese grater. You are still left with the wrapper for the original block of cheese, but at least this is far less plastic per ounce of cheese. This also helps you burn off a few of those calories you are about to consume by covering your whatever with luscious melty cheese (yum!).
The sour cream, though. That’s a stumper. Unless we want to buy our own cow and start learning how to make our own—and if I want to keep these posts useful for “the average American” that would seem to defeat the purpose. I’ve been reading about “Urban Chickens” lately, but I certainly have not heard anything about “Urban Cows.” Perhaps it is time to face the fact that sour cream is a luxury—not to mention a source of fat calories—that we really can (and probably should) do without.
The rep did assure me that Horizon is always looking for ways to make things more eco-friendly. Okay, look fast, or you are losing our business.
This was also a place that asked my name, “just to better address you,” the person said, but I didn’t catch the person’s name. I keep saying “the person” (I’m sure you have noticed) because the person also had one of those fascinating voices of completely indeterminate gender. Odder.
The particular product I called about—the Horizon Organic Finely Shredded Cheddar Cheese—comes in a “zip-lock”-type bag which, it turns out, is a 5, and which Horizon is aware is “not recyclable in all states.” (Certainly not our state. We can only do 1’s and 2’s, not 4’s or 5’s—apparently there is no such thing as a 3, really—maybe plastics manufacturers superstitiously skip 3, like no floor 13 in a hotel.) Their Organic Sour Cream is also in a container that is a 5. How that can be a 5, and this flimsy-looking bag also a 5, I don’t fully understand, but that is the all-out oddness of plastics, for you.
Well, as for the shredded cheese, of course it is a no-brainer that you can save much money by buying your own organic cheddar and shredding it yourself with your handy-dandy cheese grater. You are still left with the wrapper for the original block of cheese, but at least this is far less plastic per ounce of cheese. This also helps you burn off a few of those calories you are about to consume by covering your whatever with luscious melty cheese (yum!).
The sour cream, though. That’s a stumper. Unless we want to buy our own cow and start learning how to make our own—and if I want to keep these posts useful for “the average American” that would seem to defeat the purpose. I’ve been reading about “Urban Chickens” lately, but I certainly have not heard anything about “Urban Cows.” Perhaps it is time to face the fact that sour cream is a luxury—not to mention a source of fat calories—that we really can (and probably should) do without.
The rep did assure me that Horizon is always looking for ways to make things more eco-friendly. Okay, look fast, or you are losing our business.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
"The" Oil Spill
I haven’t wanted to say anything about “the oil spill.” It’s funny how people call it that, as if there is only one. My husband, who used to work for Shell Oil, tells me there are two or three like this around the world every YEAR. They just don’t make our news. Anyway, I haven’t mentioned it, because I’ve been thinking that this blog is about my reducing my personal garbage, and that isn’t my garbage.
But this morning I realized—oh yes it is. Of course it is! As long as I drive a car, run a generator, run a lawnmower, or do anything else that burns oil-based fuel, it certainly IS my garbage. It is mine, it is yours, it absolutely belongs to and was created by every single greedy gluttonous American (self included!) that burns oil or stands idly by and lets it go on being burned as if that is some kind of a good idea—or as if it is even just okay to do.
As the granddaughter of an Appalachian coal miner and the wife of a man who used to work for Shell Oil, I tell you that coal and oil are resources whose time has come and GONE. They are filthy, dangerous, and hazardous to human health at EVERY stage of development and use; they destroy the environment and leave nothing but grief and destruction in their wake. It is long past time we STOPPED burning any kind of filthy and dangerous fossil-based fuels and grew up to a healthy and SANE relationship to and with the environment upon which ALL OUR LIVES DEPEND.
Had we listened to President Carter decades ago, we could be living RIGHT NOW in a cleaner world, and THOUSANDS of lives lost--to accidents, disease, oil-based wars, oil-funded terrorism, intolerable air quality aggravating asthma and lung diseases, and on and on--would still be with us, to the delight of their families and to potentially great benefit to the world. The World Trade Center would still stand--because if there were no demand for oil-based fuel, the funding for Middle East terrorism would literally dry up and blow away! The poor girl I spoke to yesterday, whose National Guard fiance’ is in Iraq clearing roads (perhaps the most dangerous job on the planet right now!) would be planning her wedding instead of worrying about planning a funeral. We’d have new and burgeoning industries in clean energy providing all kinds of jobs—far cleaner and safer than those in the oil industry—from assembly-line level right up to high-dollar research and design! The grieving families of the men who DIED on that rig (have we forgotten already?) would have their fathers, brothers, sons with them still. And the entire population of the Gulf Coast would be gearing up for tourist season and readying their nets for the corresponding fresh seafood demand, hoping to make a few bucks to offset the rest of the year’s hardships, instead of grabbing what panic-clean-up jobs they can and then planning to join unemployment lines and have their houses foreclosed.
Perhaps you and I could not do anything about the loss of THOSE lives, or the hardships incurred by those people; but unless we take every possible action in our power to encourage--indeed, to INSIST that our culture develop TRULY clean and TRULY sustainable sources of energy, then we WILL be to blame for future deaths.
The only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.
Please, do what is right--even if it is difficult. Indeed, ESPECIALLY if it is difficult. Do your best; see to it that the world is left a BETTER place—in some way; in ANY way!—for your having lived in the privileged position which you now occupy.
(And make no mistake; if you are able to access and read a “blog,” then you are in a privileged position, indeed.)
But this morning I realized—oh yes it is. Of course it is! As long as I drive a car, run a generator, run a lawnmower, or do anything else that burns oil-based fuel, it certainly IS my garbage. It is mine, it is yours, it absolutely belongs to and was created by every single greedy gluttonous American (self included!) that burns oil or stands idly by and lets it go on being burned as if that is some kind of a good idea—or as if it is even just okay to do.
As the granddaughter of an Appalachian coal miner and the wife of a man who used to work for Shell Oil, I tell you that coal and oil are resources whose time has come and GONE. They are filthy, dangerous, and hazardous to human health at EVERY stage of development and use; they destroy the environment and leave nothing but grief and destruction in their wake. It is long past time we STOPPED burning any kind of filthy and dangerous fossil-based fuels and grew up to a healthy and SANE relationship to and with the environment upon which ALL OUR LIVES DEPEND.
Had we listened to President Carter decades ago, we could be living RIGHT NOW in a cleaner world, and THOUSANDS of lives lost--to accidents, disease, oil-based wars, oil-funded terrorism, intolerable air quality aggravating asthma and lung diseases, and on and on--would still be with us, to the delight of their families and to potentially great benefit to the world. The World Trade Center would still stand--because if there were no demand for oil-based fuel, the funding for Middle East terrorism would literally dry up and blow away! The poor girl I spoke to yesterday, whose National Guard fiance’ is in Iraq clearing roads (perhaps the most dangerous job on the planet right now!) would be planning her wedding instead of worrying about planning a funeral. We’d have new and burgeoning industries in clean energy providing all kinds of jobs—far cleaner and safer than those in the oil industry—from assembly-line level right up to high-dollar research and design! The grieving families of the men who DIED on that rig (have we forgotten already?) would have their fathers, brothers, sons with them still. And the entire population of the Gulf Coast would be gearing up for tourist season and readying their nets for the corresponding fresh seafood demand, hoping to make a few bucks to offset the rest of the year’s hardships, instead of grabbing what panic-clean-up jobs they can and then planning to join unemployment lines and have their houses foreclosed.
Perhaps you and I could not do anything about the loss of THOSE lives, or the hardships incurred by those people; but unless we take every possible action in our power to encourage--indeed, to INSIST that our culture develop TRULY clean and TRULY sustainable sources of energy, then we WILL be to blame for future deaths.
The only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.
Please, do what is right--even if it is difficult. Indeed, ESPECIALLY if it is difficult. Do your best; see to it that the world is left a BETTER place—in some way; in ANY way!—for your having lived in the privileged position which you now occupy.
(And make no mistake; if you are able to access and read a “blog,” then you are in a privileged position, indeed.)
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Bye Bye, Buitoni!
Bye Bye, Buitoni!
One of the first companies I called was Buitoni. This is because I am a pesto addict. (“Hi, I’m ____, and I’m a pesto addict.” Oh, true.) The absolute favorite pesto delivery system for this past year has been the Buitoni Wild Mushroom Agnolotti; I buy two packages of that, one of their pesto sauce, and it’s just a heavenly dinner that I have serious trouble not succumbing to absolutely painful gluttony over. It ain’t cheap though! That Agnolotti (What the heck is that, anyway? It’s basically a half-moon shaped ravioli, Buitoni! What’s with the fancy Italian name? And doesn’t that root “agn-“ mean having to do with lamb, anyway?) is twice the price of the tortellini I used to buy for their pesto, and there’s less of it (a LOT less!). Plus, recently they have reduced the amount of product in the package even more, without reducing either the amount of packaging or the price. So already I was starting to twinge a bit with guilt, buying that. But heavenly! SO tasty.
The on-hold wait wasn’t too bad for Buitoni, the hold music was tolerable, the interruptions in the moderately annoying range, and the woman who answered was apparently American and really very service-oriented; very helpful in attitude, although she didn’t have the answer right away (and when she answered the phone, she started to say the name of another company—apparently customer service for Buitoni is also customer service for some other brands, but that’s fine). Well, after Ms. Helpful spent some care and effort finding out (and thank you very much, I wish I’d gotten her name--she really was a great customer service rep!), the sad answer was returned that no, the not-reduced-for-volume packaging was also not recyclable, at all.
My closing spiel, for the sad outcomes:
“Thank you so much for the information, and please pass on to the management the message that we are SO sad that we will not be able to buy this product anymore, until the packaging is either fully and easily recyclable, or compostable.”
Ms. Helpful Buitoni Person cheerfully offered me coupons. Huh. I HAD just said that we would no longer be able to buy the products. . .but she had been so helpful, I hated to say no. And perhaps they make SOMETHING that is sold in a reasonable package. So I thanked her again, reminded her to pass on my message, and we’ll wait for the coupons. I guess if there aren’t any recyclably-packaged Buitoni products, we can always recycle the coupons.
The thing is, I thought I would be really sad and upset if I found out I would have to give up the Wild Mushroom Agnolotti, but what I really felt—was freedom. My thought, hanging up the phone, was not “Oh shoot, we can’t buy that anymore” but “Okay! We don’t have to buy that anymore!” It was a relief from the pressure TO buy something—something very tasty, but that really was too expensive for what it was anyway, and—truth be told—not vastly more satisfying than any other kind of pasta with yummy pesto on it!
So here’s something else surprising that I’ve been learning. I thought this would be hard—not just logistically, but, you know, emotionally. I had braced myself for these (admittedly small, but perhaps cumulative) experiences of loss and grief, knowing that many of our favorite products would not be sustainable choices for our future. But what I’m actually finding—at least so far—is that every single thing we’ve had to give up, we’ve found something even BETTER—and so far, also CHEAPER—to replace it! This is so NOT what I was expecting.
Case in point: Pesto Delivery System.
Since I said bye-bye to Buitoni, I’ve bought the DeBoles Organic Spinach Fettucini (yummy!), which is packaged in a box that is fully recyclable as paper if you tear out the little plastic window (which is a 5, dangit, but we’ll collect those and come up with some nefarious plan for them later). DeBoles’ customer service lady was SO wonderful, she took my number and said she would call back with all the specifics of how to recycle, and she really, really did! If we lived in an area with reasonable recycling, even the little window would be no problem.
The entire package of DeBoles fettucini costs less than ONE of the Agnolotti did, and the ultimate amount of pasta it makes is more than the TWO Agnolotti packages I used to buy. We make the fettucini, top it with Kroger Private Selection Basil Pesto (glass container, steel lid, fully and easily recyclable), which is HALF the price of the next higher pesto sauce (in practical fact, it is a quarter of the price, since you can get two meals out of one jar), and to me, it is even more delicious (less sodium, more FLAVOR!). We crumble walnuts on top, serve with a big field green salad with vinaigrette of your choice—delicious and perfectly satisfying, and NO garbage left except the tiny plastic window. We’ll deal with you later, little window. . .
One of the first companies I called was Buitoni. This is because I am a pesto addict. (“Hi, I’m ____, and I’m a pesto addict.” Oh, true.) The absolute favorite pesto delivery system for this past year has been the Buitoni Wild Mushroom Agnolotti; I buy two packages of that, one of their pesto sauce, and it’s just a heavenly dinner that I have serious trouble not succumbing to absolutely painful gluttony over. It ain’t cheap though! That Agnolotti (What the heck is that, anyway? It’s basically a half-moon shaped ravioli, Buitoni! What’s with the fancy Italian name? And doesn’t that root “agn-“ mean having to do with lamb, anyway?) is twice the price of the tortellini I used to buy for their pesto, and there’s less of it (a LOT less!). Plus, recently they have reduced the amount of product in the package even more, without reducing either the amount of packaging or the price. So already I was starting to twinge a bit with guilt, buying that. But heavenly! SO tasty.
The on-hold wait wasn’t too bad for Buitoni, the hold music was tolerable, the interruptions in the moderately annoying range, and the woman who answered was apparently American and really very service-oriented; very helpful in attitude, although she didn’t have the answer right away (and when she answered the phone, she started to say the name of another company—apparently customer service for Buitoni is also customer service for some other brands, but that’s fine). Well, after Ms. Helpful spent some care and effort finding out (and thank you very much, I wish I’d gotten her name--she really was a great customer service rep!), the sad answer was returned that no, the not-reduced-for-volume packaging was also not recyclable, at all.
My closing spiel, for the sad outcomes:
“Thank you so much for the information, and please pass on to the management the message that we are SO sad that we will not be able to buy this product anymore, until the packaging is either fully and easily recyclable, or compostable.”
Ms. Helpful Buitoni Person cheerfully offered me coupons. Huh. I HAD just said that we would no longer be able to buy the products. . .but she had been so helpful, I hated to say no. And perhaps they make SOMETHING that is sold in a reasonable package. So I thanked her again, reminded her to pass on my message, and we’ll wait for the coupons. I guess if there aren’t any recyclably-packaged Buitoni products, we can always recycle the coupons.
The thing is, I thought I would be really sad and upset if I found out I would have to give up the Wild Mushroom Agnolotti, but what I really felt—was freedom. My thought, hanging up the phone, was not “Oh shoot, we can’t buy that anymore” but “Okay! We don’t have to buy that anymore!” It was a relief from the pressure TO buy something—something very tasty, but that really was too expensive for what it was anyway, and—truth be told—not vastly more satisfying than any other kind of pasta with yummy pesto on it!
So here’s something else surprising that I’ve been learning. I thought this would be hard—not just logistically, but, you know, emotionally. I had braced myself for these (admittedly small, but perhaps cumulative) experiences of loss and grief, knowing that many of our favorite products would not be sustainable choices for our future. But what I’m actually finding—at least so far—is that every single thing we’ve had to give up, we’ve found something even BETTER—and so far, also CHEAPER—to replace it! This is so NOT what I was expecting.
Case in point: Pesto Delivery System.
Since I said bye-bye to Buitoni, I’ve bought the DeBoles Organic Spinach Fettucini (yummy!), which is packaged in a box that is fully recyclable as paper if you tear out the little plastic window (which is a 5, dangit, but we’ll collect those and come up with some nefarious plan for them later). DeBoles’ customer service lady was SO wonderful, she took my number and said she would call back with all the specifics of how to recycle, and she really, really did! If we lived in an area with reasonable recycling, even the little window would be no problem.
The entire package of DeBoles fettucini costs less than ONE of the Agnolotti did, and the ultimate amount of pasta it makes is more than the TWO Agnolotti packages I used to buy. We make the fettucini, top it with Kroger Private Selection Basil Pesto (glass container, steel lid, fully and easily recyclable), which is HALF the price of the next higher pesto sauce (in practical fact, it is a quarter of the price, since you can get two meals out of one jar), and to me, it is even more delicious (less sodium, more FLAVOR!). We crumble walnuts on top, serve with a big field green salad with vinaigrette of your choice—delicious and perfectly satisfying, and NO garbage left except the tiny plastic window. We’ll deal with you later, little window. . .
Friday, April 30, 2010
The Stages of Garbage
Stage One
The first “phase” of this process was just making sure we were consistently recycling all the stuff that is obviously recyclable here. Well. . . that phase is still ongoing, to tell the truth, as (among other things) I regularly have to rescue cereal boxes from the “trash staging area” in the kitchen (the corner of a counter, near the sink), where my husband has relegated them. For some reason, he is just blind to the recyclability of the cereal box. Ahem. So I rescue them, removing egg shells and other debris from them (frequently!), pulling out the plastic bags inside them (more on those soon!), and flattening them to go in the paper recycling box. They are paper!
He is good about cleaning out clear glass and moving those, once they have built up in the staging area, to the box in the garage designated for collecting glass to take to the recycling center (we don’t currently have a place to keep this box in the kitchen, although I’m considering how to manage that, as more convenient means more likely to be done!). Metals apparently are easy, here—at least so far we’ve just lumped them together. I have to check the plastics and set the 1’s and 2’s aside to go with the glass—and then. . .
Well, in “phase one” anything else just went in a trash bag. The trash bag DID get smaller each week, as we got more faithful and scrupulous about really and truly removing all those recyclables. But now:
Stage Two
Now, when we hit anything that isn’t clearly labeled a 1 or 2 plastic, or isn’t clear glass, paper, or steel (we use almost no aluminum, which is just flat an ecological disaster and should not be used in any food-related application, anyway!), it goes to the other side of the kitchen, to a space beside the phone (the “call staging area,” I guess). Luckily, I’ve discovered, almost every product kindly has printed on it a toll-free number for the company. And since I’m only employed part-time, a part of each weekday is now devoted to the joys of “customer service.”
I get to call the number, navigate sometimes labyrinthine phone menus (are there really people who call a cereal company when they are “experiencing a medical emergency”?!), then—well, you know, wait.
I’m becoming a connoisseur of hold music. Nobody has the old-style “muzak” anymore. Most companies regularly interrupt with sales pitches, which I find extremely annoying (I’m calling your company; what are the chances I haven’t already BOUGHT your product?), or with every-few-seconds “Your call is important to us” messages, which I find even more annoying (I’ll see how important my call really is by how quickly and how courteously I am answered; your computerized message interrupting so frequently just continually confirms how not a person I am to you at the moment!). The best “holding,” to me, is classical or pseudo-classical music, with little or preferably no interruption. The music is most likely to be soothing (any kind of pop music is going to have some irritating associations for some customers), and the interruptions, as I’ve said, are just annoying and serve to emphasize the fact that you are NOT reaching a human being yet.
Once a human being answers, there is either the nerve-wracking experience of attempting to make yourself understood to someone with whom you do not share a common first language, and who almost never shares your values or perspective, or the slightly less nerve-wracking experience of speaking with someone who does share your language, but still doesn’t share your values or perspective, or—oh, joy!—the far more pleasant experience of talking with someone who gets what you are doing, completely.
I’m finding most of the food companies at least do have customer service reps for whom (American) English is clearly their first (most likely only) language. They are still often nonplussed, or even sound vaguely disgusted, when I go into my spiel:
“Hi, I’m _____ and I’m calling from _____. We just love your product, _______!” (usually there is some happy reaction to this—I suppose mostly these people hear complaints—but then. . .)
“Our family has committed to reducing the garbage we produce to zero by the end of this year.” (insert puzzled—“huh?”—or even vaguely disgusted—“ehh. . .”—noises here—maybe just the mention of garbage is disgusting?—in every single case, though, it is quite clear this is not what they were expecting to hear)
“So I am calling all the companies of products we regularly use, to find out if the packaging is compostable or recyclable, and if so, as what.” (response here will either be quick and decisive—this only happens for companies who are already at least somewhat “earth friendly” as a part of their image, and then only sometimes—or a pause as the person silently freaks out because they’ve never had this question before and have had no training in answering it)
Then, there is the “info search” period (mostly the customer service reps don’t actually know—it is upsetting to me how off-the-radar this issue apparently is). This can be either a few seconds, several minutes, or in one case the rep took so long searching for the info that she eventually took my contact info and promised to call back. Then, either the sad or the happy outcome. We find out that another product has bit the dust of our buying habits, or that one has become a new favorite-among-favorites. It’s kind of like an elimination “reality show,” only it’s actually real (as opposed to fake “real”) and you, reader, don’t get to vote. Except—oh yes you do, with your OWN purchases! Remember: money talks, and every dollar IS a vote. Exercise that considerable power wisely.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Who the heck are these weirdies, and what are they up to, anyway?
We’re actually pretty average, to tell the unremarkable truth. We are a married couple, one of us (thankfully!) with a good full-time job, one of us has been out of work for the past three years, actively looking for work for the past two, able to find some part-time, temporary stuff for the past six months or so. We have a (completely amazing) 17-year-old daughter who finished high school early and started college this past fall. All of that means that money is definitely tight.
Like many Americans, we have pets, including both dogs and cats, with all the random expenses and products involved there. One of the dogs and one of the cats need prescription foods, so we aren’t exactly free to switch around if their food is packaged in non-environmentally friendly ways.
Our house is oldish—the oldest part built (not too badly, but not with the greatest attention to quality) in the ’70’s or ‘80’s, with a new and absolutely bizarre extension built sometime in the past decade by someone who was, to judge by both the design “decisions” and the execution, quite insane (more on that later, I’m sure). The floors are tile in the kitchen and bathrooms, and wood (cork) that we put in everywhere else. On a regular basis, it seems, something else will go kaflooey and need major repair or replacement.
We live in an area where you have to set up and pay for your garbage service, and where there is no such service that handles recyclables. To recycle things, we have to sort and take them ourselves to the recycling center, which is quite limited in what it will take: only #1 and #2 plastics, only clear glass, and of course cardboard, paper, aluminum and steel. So we probably don’t have it any easier than you do, with respect to getting things recycled—so I’m hoping this will be a fair estimate of what would be involved for pretty much any American who wanted to try to do what we are doing.
Most importantly with respect to this experiment, we are also people who have become acutely aware that there is no “away”—as in, “throw that away”—that expression is just pure nonsense. Anything that you do not constructively reuse or recycle builds up as pollution in YOUR air, water, or soil. The Earth is a closed ecosystem, and it is getting smaller all the time.
As a result, we are people who are actively working on reducing the trash our household creates to ZERO by the end of the year. Wish us luck, and next time you have the choice to trash up the world even more or make a little extra effort to get that can, bottle, paper, or whatever into a recycling container, I hope you will do the right thing. I don't know about you, but when I was in kindergarten, I was taught a basic principle to always "leave your space nicer than you found it" (LYSN TYFI--something I’ve started calling the “Listen Tiffy Principle” in my head). Just think what would happen if everybody left the space they occupy in life even just a LITTLE nicer than they found it! That’s what we’re up to, anyway. Wish us luck!
Friday, April 23, 2010
What the--? The Kindergarten Principle
We've decided to try to reduce our family's garbage production this year. To nothing.
And now that I've told a bunch of people, I realize that the general reaction to this, from everybody, of any age, any education level, in any occupation, is: "What the--???"--and then an unspoken "WHY?" Strangely, they don't ever say the "WHY?"--but boy, do they look the "WHY?"
So here's the why:
I was taught in Kindergarten (back when there was real Kindergarten--that's a whole 'nother blog!) a very simple, elegant, and all-important principle: Leave Your Space Nicer Than You Found It. Note that "nicer" part. Not just "as good as," not "in an acceptable condition," not "passable," not "legally acceptable for health department code," and certainly not WORSE.
And we've done fairly well--we thought--about keeping this LYSNTYFI (listen-tiffy?) principle in our lives. Certainly every home we've lived in, we have left much nicer than we found it: by hardwood floors, lovely new countertops, marvelous bird-and-butterfly-friendly landscaping, and on and on. We've given to charities that are working to save wildlife, save homeless pets, save children with life-threatening diseases. And even in our contacts with people day to day, we've tried to "leave our space"--the social space we occupy--nicer than we found it: driving with courtesy (it's contagious!), greeting people (even strangers) with a smile and a wave, all the tiny things that just might turn a day around in even a slightly nicer direction. I would have thought we were doing okay.
But I've realized that every single day, multiple times a day, we are doing precisely the opposite of that all-important and undeniably RIGHT principle, in at least one huge and ever-increasing way. We are consigning things into the garbage, every day, all day long, that will make the world WORSE for our having been in it.
It simply has to stop.
More on all this later--who we are, what we're doing, the struggles and triumphs (we hope!) of rising to this challenge. But for now, I just want you to take a moment and consider this--really use your imagination and consider:
What would the world be like
if everybody, everywhere,
simply committed
to Leave Their Space
--even the slightest bit--
Nicer Than They Found It?
And now that I've told a bunch of people, I realize that the general reaction to this, from everybody, of any age, any education level, in any occupation, is: "What the--???"--and then an unspoken "WHY?" Strangely, they don't ever say the "WHY?"--but boy, do they look the "WHY?"
So here's the why:
I was taught in Kindergarten (back when there was real Kindergarten--that's a whole 'nother blog!) a very simple, elegant, and all-important principle: Leave Your Space Nicer Than You Found It. Note that "nicer" part. Not just "as good as," not "in an acceptable condition," not "passable," not "legally acceptable for health department code," and certainly not WORSE.
And we've done fairly well--we thought--about keeping this LYSNTYFI (listen-tiffy?) principle in our lives. Certainly every home we've lived in, we have left much nicer than we found it: by hardwood floors, lovely new countertops, marvelous bird-and-butterfly-friendly landscaping, and on and on. We've given to charities that are working to save wildlife, save homeless pets, save children with life-threatening diseases. And even in our contacts with people day to day, we've tried to "leave our space"--the social space we occupy--nicer than we found it: driving with courtesy (it's contagious!), greeting people (even strangers) with a smile and a wave, all the tiny things that just might turn a day around in even a slightly nicer direction. I would have thought we were doing okay.
But I've realized that every single day, multiple times a day, we are doing precisely the opposite of that all-important and undeniably RIGHT principle, in at least one huge and ever-increasing way. We are consigning things into the garbage, every day, all day long, that will make the world WORSE for our having been in it.
It simply has to stop.
More on all this later--who we are, what we're doing, the struggles and triumphs (we hope!) of rising to this challenge. But for now, I just want you to take a moment and consider this--really use your imagination and consider:
What would the world be like
if everybody, everywhere,
simply committed
to Leave Their Space
--even the slightest bit--
Nicer Than They Found It?
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