Sweet

 I’m enjoying a new pair of pants from Sweet Grass Fibers.  They are stylish, have a great fit, and are made with sustainable alternative fibers.  Here’s a quick quote from the company, “Style, like beauty, comes from within.  Feeling good from the inside out starts with knowing that the clothes on your back were made responsibly from fibers grown without harming soil, water, air or people.”  I like their designs, they have a good selection of clothes for home, work, and leisure.  They have an online store and also sell through some local retailers, see their site for info on where to buy: www.sweetgrassfibers.com .

Savin’ Stuff

I love it when people make it easier for me to be less wasteful.  I love it even more when they use the power of business to further that cause.  I read about a company that is doing just that for thousands of North Eastern US companies.  The business is called “Save that Stuff” and they focus on paper, cardboard, organics, and bottle salvage.  If you happen to live in the NE check out their site at www.SaveThatStuff.com and see if they can help your company keep usable stuff out of the regular dumpster.  However, even those outside their service area can benefit from the inspiration of a company that is filling an important niche, helping the environment, and making it easier for other businesses to save time, money, and resources.

Meal Planning

As I tossed out a cube of moldy cheese today I though about this entry. I am not always the best meal planner, but in the end it can save a lot of waste (both of food and money). There are some things we use enough to stock all the time like yogurt, apples, rice, pasta, flour, eggs, and sugar. But there are a lot of things that don’t keep so well, like milk and cheese, that I have to be pretty purposeful about using up before they go bad. We also have a daily vegetable market on our way home from work so I’ve transitioned from buying large quantities to just what we need for the next day or two. I know this type of daily shopping is just not practical for everyone so a little prep time before doing your big grocery shopping trip can really come in handy. www.wastedfood.com gave a reference to this handy site which has printable outlines for meal planning  Meal Planning Grid

Pages for Peace

I recently read an article about two men who are doing great work to bring understanding and peace between Israelis and Palestinians.  Sami Adwan and Dan Bar-On have worked together to create a booklet that presents the differences in experience and language in historical accounts.  The booklets are used as an educational tool.  There are three columns on each page, one for the Palestinian narrative, one for the Israeli, and also a blank page for the students to complete themselves.  This deconstruction and reconstruction of history is encouraging students to consider and acknowledge the experience of the “other”.   I think growing this type of understanding is an important step in reconciliation and that this is amazing, simple, but groundbreaking work.  For more information on this and other projects check of the website for Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME)  http://www.vispo.com/PRIME/

Step by step

This next series will be about sustainable transport.  I’ll try to go from least to most technical.  My daily commute has inspired me for this first entry.  My commute is twenty minutes by foot.  Since I’m not allowed to drive (or ride in donkey carts for that matter) it’s the best choice for me.  I’m also fortunate to live in a city that’s got a great mix of commercial and residential property so I can do my grocery shopping between work and home.  Of course walking I can’t carry nearly as many groceries, but with so many little markets around it’s no problem to shop almost daily, and therefore there is little need to carry very much at one time.  This is pretty revolutionary for me.  Of course walking is not an option for everyone, due to many factors such as distance from work and general suburban planning.  However it is an incredibly healthy and sustainable way to travel.  An easy way to start would be to substitute one trip in the car on by walking instead.  Now the London Times recently ran an article claiming that this type of substitution is actually worse for carbon emissions.  The basic premise was that the carbon footprint for enough beef to replenish the calories you’d burn on a 3 mile walking trip is worse than the same trip in a car, interesting.  This may actually be true due to the heavily industrialized and highly transport and refrigerator dependant way that many developed countries produce their meat.  However I don’t really buy the, eat less, move less, drive more formula.  In addition to the fact that most of us probably wouldn’t need to “replace” those calories as our diets already contain plenty of energy to maintain our weight.  So give walking as transportation a shot, and try not to eat too much commercially produced beef .  You’ll have to plan ahead a little, but the rewards are great.   

Cool It

According to the US Department of Energy about 90% of the energy used in clothes washing comes from heating up the water. So by using cooler temperatures whenever possible, and great soaps like those mentioned below that disolve well in colder water, you can significantly reduce your energy consumption. You can further reduce your impact by washing full loads. If you happen to be in the market for a new washing machine look for the Energy Star label and compare energy and water consumption among different models. Of course models that use less water also mean that you’ll use less soap, so it’s a double bonus. www1.eere.energy.gov/consumer/tips/laundry.html

Skin Deep

I stumbled upon this website about a month or so ago and think that it has important information for all consumers of health and beauty products.  It is the Cosmetic Safety Database put together by the Environmental Working Group.  They actually test all the products in their database to determine all the trace ingredients that actually end up in the finished product.  While all cosmetics are required to list their ingredients, it is sometimes surprising what ends up on the lab report that isn’t on the package.  Equally interesting to me are the potentially harmful substances that are allowed in soaps, cosmetics, sunscreens, etc.  The database is well organized and easy to search by product or group, and indexed with a 0-10 point scale from low to high hazard.  I must admit that looking at this website helped me make the switch to a fragrance free version of my favorite face soap, as the ingredients in the fragrance put it up in the high hazard zone.  This is a great consumer tool, and especially important for producers and consumers in this age of lengthy supply chains and questionable purity standards.  It’s good to know what’s actually in the products that we use everyday.  www.CosmeticsDatabase.com

Weekly Dose

How can I start my week without my weekly dose of “This American Life” an amazing radio show produced by WBEZ Chicago and available as a free weekly Podcast.   It is also widely distributed by National Public Radio.  The show this last week was about unconditional love, and it was a real tear jerker for me, especially the story of the family who adopted an orphaned boy from Romania.  The mother in that story had an amazing perspective, we should do that which we are capable of, and she felt capable of adoption and lifting a child out of institutionalization.  Anyway, the stories vary every week sometimes funny, sometimes grave, but always stunningly human and implicitly American.  I should admit that I am a huge fan of public radio in general, but this show in particular stands out among the rest for me.  But don’t take my word for it, check it out for yourself at www.thislife.org.

Reuse – Plastic Bags

Day 2 of ideas to reduce the impact of plastic bags on the environment.  Today I will share with you a few handy hints on how to reuse those plastic bags. 

• I find one of the greatest challenges is just keeping them organized and one way to keep them orderly and ready for reuse is to stuff them into an old cardboard tissue box, this way you can pull out one at a time and the rest are nicely contained. 
• Use crumpled bags for packing material instead of foam peanuts
• Use as a trash can liner
• Pack in your backpack or suitcase when travelling to keep your dirty clothes separate
• Use as a paint applicator to add a unique finish to your walls (I did this in my last house and it worked great)
• And of course the most simple idea, take them back to the grocery store with you

And just to encourage your efforts a little bit, here’s a statistic from the Sierra Club:

“In New York City alone, one less grocery bag per person per year would reduce waste by 5 million lbs. and save $250,000 in disposal costs. “