sustainable living
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judge not, and hot water
I’m back at my post after five days in the redwoods, where our little green house sits. This is the house we just bought, using bubble gum, baling wire, rolls of pennies and our winsome smiles. I’ve been masterminding its renovation, getting inspections and starting to paint, buying things like beams and plaster-patching mesh and oddments from the hardware department. I had to buy a Simpson Strong Tie item with no name, just a number, to hold a large truss and joist in place. I had to buy four of them, in fact, and the one place was out of them and I had to go elsewhere and ask for it…
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boxes, bells and whistles
Every day is a challenge when you’re trying to avoid plastic. Every. Single. Day. Plastic is so ubiquitous in our lives that it’s hard to really see it all — it attaches itself to products like static cling, and is almost as hard to get rid of. At the beginning of the month I took everything plastic-bag-like back to the grocery store bin for recycling (these are bins near the front door of most grocery stores, where you can recycle your plastic grocery bags). I put other plastic bags in with the grocery bags — from other stores, plus other types of plastic wrap, baggies, etc. I figure I can…
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news and notes, Day 27 (with a video!)
It’s been 26 days of living without plastic, or trying, and it’s all good. Here’s some of what’s going on. I wrote to the Bear River Valley cereal people, who make delicious natural cereals and have a lot of info about green energy and how they purchase credits to offset their manufacturing. That’s awesome news, and I want to support the company. Here’s the gist of their response about plastic packaging on their cereals: “…When it comes to the packaging of our products, our first priority is to provide consumers with safe and fresh products. The polyethylene bags we use provide our customers with wholesome, quality products without the high…
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trash talk
I warned you we’d have to talk about the bathroom trash can. Put on your gloves and gas mask, because this one is a stinky topic. What’s in your bathroom trash can? Compostables? Recyclables? Toxic waste? Biohazards? Betcha there’s some plastic in there, too. I was going to photograph what came out of our bathroom trash, but I got a little shy and a little grossed out, so never mind. Just use your imagination, and follow along as we parse what’s plastic and what’s actually garbage. Cotton swabs, aka Q-tips. Buy the kind with a paper/cardboard stick. Those can be composted or will disintegrate in landfill, while the ones with…
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winning
Here are a couple of wins for the record. 1) The Sunday newspaper came with no plastic wrap, per my instructions. (I forgot to mention it earlier in the week.) 2) I cooked a lot today — all of it without Teflon or the plastic utensils you need to use to avoid scratching the finish. In fact, I took all the plastic spoons, spatulas and sporks out of the drawer and all of the Teflon-coated pans, pots, cookie sheets and muffin tins out of the cabinet, and they are all ready to donate. My family is going to hate me. 3) The 7th-grade picnic went off without a hitch. I wrote a…
