Go Green, Go Evil...

(image source)

I was reading an article on Slate this morning that had an interesting take on the green movement. Apparently, an experiment was set up where people played a game where they could choose from two stores to buy products online, one was specifically eco-friendly and the other wasn't. Then the subjects played a seemingly-unrelated game where they were allocated money to share with an anonymous person, as much or as little as they wanted. The "eco-friendly" subjects shared less money than their counterparts. They were also more likely to cheat and steal in another money-related game.

So what's the deal??

"Several studies propose that the state of our self-image can directly influence our choices from moment to moment. When people have the chance to demonstrate their goodness, even in the most token of ways, they then feel free to relax their ethical standards."

The article goes on to state that a possible reason for this is that we see ourselves as earning "moral credits" on doing good for the planet, that allows us later to slack on other things.

I like that the end of the article the author mentions how we should be making these acts of greenness habitual and routine, and that if we do, we won't be as tempted to bask in the light of our halos.

Interesting food for thought.

Reduce, Reuse, Re-psychos

Just a little reminder that we need to keep our sense of humor even when we're militant about going green. Plus, you get to see what No Impact Man looks like!

Great, I Can't Even Eat Chocolate Anymore

I was perusing MSN.com this morning, and found this article about eco-guilt-free chocolate.

The article states that most of the people creating the non-fair-trade version of the delicious food are mainly

"West African tikes who fritter away their days in the hot sun extracting seeds (not beans) from gooey cacao fruit. The Ivory Coast supplies almost half of the world’s cocoa, and it is estimated that up to 6 percent of its child workers are victims of human trafficking or slavery."

With the amount of chocolate I eat, I probably keep hundreds of child slaves busy in the hot sun.


The article does go on to list some fair trade cocoa companies, as well as telling us to check chocolate's packaging for the TransFair USA’s Fair Trade logo. Unfortunately, when I went to their site and entered my zip code to find stores near me that sell fair trade products, the search produced zero results.

I'm really going to have to do some more research on this. And maybe look into carob as an alternative. A life without chocolate? The future's looking bleak.

Drill Baby Drill

Ummm....

How exactly does that help us decrease our dependence on petroleum?

Maybe someone else can make sense of that, but right now, my brain hurts.

In case you want to actually try and un-tease the tangles in the webs, the New York Times posts the candidates side-by-side on the issues. Here they are on the issue of energy.

Here's Mc'Cain's energy page of his website.

And here's Obama's.

Water Waste Use

Picture courtesy of Associated Content

Let's talk water reduction, shall we?

Think you're already saving water? There are many places in your daily routine where you can reduce even more the amount of water you use in order to conserve our precious and limited resource.

This chart, from the Southern Nevada Water Authority, shows the amount of water used indoors in residences:


You can see that toilets, washing machines, and showers take up most of the chart.

Starting at the beginning of the day, when you hop in the shower, try and stay in only a few minutes, or at least cut down the amount of time you spend in the shower. Estimates show that even a one-or-two-minute reduction can save up to 700 gallons per month! You can also purchase a low-flow shower head to reduce the amount of water used each time you shower. Oh, and for those of you who prefer baths to showers? You use 15-25 gallons of hot water for a bath, but less than 10 gallons during a 5-minute shower. And with a low-flow shower head, it's even less.

Another thing you can buy that has low-flow options is a toilet. Or, if you're not ready to replace the one you've got, you can simply put a brick or full gallon jug of water into the tank in order to keep the tank from filling completely with water. In Elizabeth Roger's and Thomas M. Kostigen's The Green Book, they state that one flush equals about 4.5 gallons of water, which is equivalent to the amount of water "the average person in Africa uses for a whole day of drinking, cooking, bathing and cleaning." Think about that the next time you flush!

Something else you can do when it comes to using the facilities is to remember the old adage "If it's yellow, let it mellow." Sounds gross, I know, but think about how often you flush when there is simply a tiny bit of pee in the toilet. I'm sure you can think of times when it's pretty unnecessary.

As for washing clothes, I'm not suggesting you find the nearest river and beat your shirts and pants on a rock, but there are still ways to conserve water in the laundry room. Only wash full loads, for one. If you wash a bunch of small loads, you're wasting a lot more water and energy with all those extra wash and rinse cycles than if you save up and do one big one. (Plus, wash the clothes in cold water, and you'll save even more energy. Most detergents nowadays work really well in cold water.) It's also time to rethink how often you need to wash articles of clothing. Sure, underwear and socks need to be washed every time they're worn (although some people claim otherwise). But what about that shirt that you wore with an undershirt underneath? It barely touched your skin, do you really need to launder it? Try getting at least a couple of wearings out of each article of clothing, and you'll reduce your water use even more. Plus, you'll spend less time doing laundry, so it's win-win.

Another appliance to use only when full is the dishwasher. This reduces water consumption as well, even more than washing dishes by hand.

Just changing little parts of your daily routine can add up to a saving a lot of water. Try to be a little more mindful of how you use and waste water, and you'll see you can save in many areas of your home and life.

Phasing Out Plastic

Photo from The Soft Landing

The chemical bishphenol A (BPA) is known to act like a female sex hormone, and is linked to prostate and breast cancer, higher rates of miscarriage, immune system dysfunction, testicular abnormalities in boys and puberty in girls younger than eight years old. ( Source: Environmental Working Group )

Enviroblog states, "It's a hormone disruptor that can be found in almost everybody, and animal studies have linked it to breast and prostate cancer, and infertility."

Why should we care? Because it's in many of the plastics we use every day. Yikes!

It's said that many of the plastics we use, such as water bottles and baby bottles, as well as plastic liners in cans, are leaching this lovely chemical into our food and water, especially when they are heated.

So what can we do?

Well, to start, we can stop heating our food in plastic containers when we stick it in the microwave. We can look for alternative water containers (many suggest Kleen Kanteen and the like, but there are plenty of less expensive alternatives, like Snapple bottles, etc.). As our plastic food containers wear out, we can replace them with glass, like the Mason jar below containing my sugar. I bought a bunch of them at Goodwill (and I think they were brand new) for 99¢.



I'm not suggesting that we throw out all our plastic and restock our entire Tupperware cupboards with non-plastic alternatives.That would be wasteful and expensive. I'm simply suggesting that the next time you need a new container of some sort, look for non-plastic options you already have, or opt to buy something made of glass or other durable material.

There are also companies who are now making BPA-free plastic, like CamelBak and Nalgene, but keep in mind that it's still plastic and will take much more time to break down than other, more natural alternatives.

Basically, as with most of my green tips, just be more aware of what you and your family are using and ingesting.

Unless, of course, you don't mind if your eight-year-old girl or boy starts growing boobs.

GreenCraft Magazine

A co-worker let me know about a cool magazine that is coming out in 2009. It's all about repurposing trash and other old "useless" items. I am very excited to read about all the creative ideas for turning my clutter into homemade crafts. You can read more about it here and here.

In their words, the magazine will "provide ideas for repurposing trash to treasure by showcasing projects where waste is repurposed into ecologically chic creations."

I can't wait!

Repurposing

Repurpose: transitive verb : to give a new purpose or use to

Today's tip is about reusing what you already have, but in a different way. Instead of running out to Organized Living or Bed Bath & Beyond to buy those pretty new organization boxes, buckets, and whatnot, try using some of the "junk" you already have lying around. We just happen to have a lot of beer cartons that come through the house. They get repurposed into drawers organizers and pen holders.

You've seen my rolling pin:



Instead of buying new Tupperware, try containers that used to house something else. This coffee jar stores rice now.


Instead of buying a pretty new container for my homemade deodorant, I use an old teacup I had lying around.


And instead of buying new plastic bottles for my no 'poo concoctions, I use old dish soap and body wash bottles.

The silver cup is an old toothbrush holder that I keep my baking soda in, and the pump bottle on the middle shelf is an old soap dispenser that I keep my OCM mixture in.

Instead of buying plastic makeup organizers (I already do have a couple) I simply use glasses to keep most of my beauty products in.



My favorite way to repurpose, of course, is to turn plastic bags into purses by "plarning":


You can also just iron plastic bags together (between wax paper) to create a sheet of pliable plastic you could use as a waterproof lining, gift wrap, tablecloth....

Here are some cool repurposing ideas from apartmentherapy.com:





The possibilities are endless!

Of course, I know people repurpose old stuff all the time; these are just a few ideas. I would love to hear how other people use old things in new ways. I'm always looking for new ideas!

Using Less... Soap?

This tip of the day all started at work. Cinnamon Carl always teases me about all the things I'm doing to "go green." He also claims that he is going to counteract everything I do with something un-eco-friendly. (I hope he's joking.) Mrs. Rizzo thought that was hysterical and prompted me to continue telling him all my ways of greening myself. And so, the Green Tip of the Day was born. (Don't worry, I've already offset Carl's determined counteractions by having some of my co-workers switch to the Diva Cup and ask for my homemade deodorant sample!)

Since I was sending my co-workers e-mails with my tips that a lot of times would link to my blog, I figured I'd just start writing the tips on my blog and simply have them come here.

So for today's tip, I am talking about using less (specifically, soap). That's what going green is really about, living sustainably on what we have, and buying less of what we need and re-thinking what we don't. Plus, as was pointed out in this article, many of the chemicals and ingredients that are in our soaps, body washes, and other cleansing products are harming sea life and other species.

I'm not saying that I think people should give up soap, although there are some people who swear by it. I myself have cut down a lot in this area, already going the no 'poo route as well as the oil-cleansing method.

I've heard that you really don't need soap, just a good scrub-down with a loofah or washcloth. I do still soap up the pits and the nether regions, but as for the limbs, all they get is a good loofahing. (Here's some info on growing your own loofah!) The feet just get baking soda. (I tried using baking soda on the underarms, but it seemed a little too harsh on delicate skin.)

I found this soap in my local Mexican market, and it contains only neutral soap base, glycerine, and perfume.

Nice and mild, without all the harsh ingredients. And it lasts a long time, since I only use a tiny bit in the shower.

I did go out and purposely buy some hand-washing soap recently, but that was in order to use less in the long run. You see, these are those foaming kind of soap dispensers, which automatically turn your soap and water concoction into a nice foam, therefore using less soap with each pump. And since you only have to fill these dispensers about a fourth of the way with soap, you're using less that way, too.

These were on sale for a dollar at Target, so I got one for each sink.



I figure that not only will we use less soap this way, we'll eventually save more plastic, since we won't have to buy refill soap as often. (I would buy bar soap for the sinks, but with boys, well, the bars would just end up dirty, gloppy messes.)

There are some companies like Lush that use very little packaging, and even have things like solid shampoo bars, which are supposed to last a very long time. They also eliminate the need for plastic bottles.

To answer your question, no, I don't stink. At least no one has told me that I do, and the people I hang out with would definitely say something. (The boys wouldn't even come near me when I hennaed my hair because of the stench.)

Seriously, give it a shot. Try just rinsing with water the next time you're in the shower, except for any bits you can't imagine not coming in contact with soap.

I promise I won't call you a dirty hippy.

Maybe my thumb's not so black after all...

I hope I didn't jinx myself by the title, but I actually have things growing in the back yard that aren't weeds!

In trying to make less of an impact on the earth and move towards a more sustainable lifestyle, I thought I'd try my hand at growing my own food. Not that I think I can completely supply the family with fruits and veggies year round. Plus, I've been known to kill more plants than I've saved. But I have to start somewhere, right? So I bought a small, really random assortment of plants a couple of weeks ago. It seems like these are the most likely to survive out here, as they were really the only selections. I got two tomato plants, one cherry and one Roma, a green bell pepper, lemon balm, and a watermelon plant. I know, random. But amazingly, they've been growing.

Here are the cherry tomatoes on their merry way:


You'll notice the brown leaves. I read after the fact that you shouldn't water the leaves of tomatoes. The leaves higher up are fine.

The watermelon is coming along too, producing longer tendrils each day.

The watermelon originally had only three little leaves. I'm so proud of my babies!

These ants, however, do not share my joy.

If you look closely, you'll see they're carrying their larvae away from the "flood" that descended upon their home. I left them scurrying for cover en masse on the fence.

The Roma and bell pepper haven't really done much yet, but at least they're still green. That's a success in itself.

I realize this is nothing compared to most gardeners, but I'm happy that in my little desert back yard, I finally have a bit of green. It makes the dream of being more sustainable a possibility rather than just a dream.

Green thumb image from KGW Going Green.

Goin' Green, Diva Style

***Warning*** Men, avert your eyes and click onto another blog. (Except for my friend Charles. He has to read this.)

Seriously.

Okay, you've been warned.

I have a confession to make.

I. am. in. love.

And not just with my boyfriend.

(Sorry, honey.)

He's very understanding, but he does not want to hear about it.

Ever.

He won't even read this post because it would cause him physical pain.

The new love of my life is Ms. Diva.


I found her on Crunchy Chicken's blog. Crunchy actually challenged us to fall in love with her. For me it was no challenge; I was head over heels.

Who is she? She is a robust, medical-grade piece of silicone that replaces all your other menstrual products forever.

What do I love about her? Let me count the ways...

* She is independent and knows how to take care of everything on her own.
Say goodbye to having to buy any more paper or plastic products again.

* She loves the environment.
Since you won't have to buy disposable items anymore, you won't be adding to landfills or anywhere else those things end up.

* She is accommodating.
She comes in two different sizes so that every woman can experience the Diva. (She says to pick according to your age, but I would go by whether you've had children or not.)

* She isn't demanding.
You only have to see her twice a day. And even then, she doesn't ask much. Simply that you rinse her out and wash her off. That's all she'll ever want or need.

* She packs light.
She's very small and brings her own suitcase pretty little bag on vacation.

* She's dependable.
You never have to worry about leaks.

* She's easy. (And she doesn't mind if you call her that.)
Some people say she takes a little getting-used to, but really, she's super simple.

I won't go so far as to say she's cheap, although she wouldn't mind that, either. She's around $30. But when you think of how much you spend on disposables, she'll more than pay for herself within a couple of months. So yeah, Miz Thang's cheap, too.


I plan on having a life-long love affair with Ms. Diva, and I encourage all other women to do so too. Just click here. She's waiting for you.

Trust me, your husbands won't mind.

Just don't sing all her praises to them ad nauseam. It might make them jealous.

Or queasy.

For more ideas to fall in love with, head on over to Rocks in My Dryer.

"We've bitch-slapped the planet"

That was a quote from the article, "Plastic Ocean" featured in Best Life Magazine last October. The author interviews Captain Charles Moore about how he found a trail of plastic in the ocean that went on for hundreds of miles. It's called the Eastern Garbage Patch, and it's located in the North Pacific subtropical gyre, which is an area of the ocean that is very calm. In it he found everything from plastic bags to traffic cones to motor-oil jugs. And there are similar areas in the South Pacific as well as the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Put together, these areas cover 40 percent of the oceans, which correspond to a quarter of the earth's surface. Therefore, in Moore's words, "25 percent of our planet is a toilet that never flushes." Lovely.

After doing more research in the area, Moore found something even more disturbing: minuscule pieces of plastic that, by weight, were six times more prevalent than plankton. All the easier to ingest...

Another article describing these microplastics is "Scrubbing Out Sea Life" which discusses the exfoliating plastic microbeads in many body washes nowadays. The director of external relations in beauty care at Procter & Gamble (one of the main producers of these body washes), says that the total volume of the microbeads is too small to have an impact. He says that most of them will be removed during sewage treatment. But the article goes on to state that sewage treatment systems are not designed to remove microplastic, meaning they are likely to remain in the water.

The Best Life article goes on to describe how these plastics contain chemicals fount to disrupt the endocrine system by mimicking estrogen. There have been discoveries of male fish and seagulls that have grown female sex organs. The chemicals have been linked to enlarged breasts in men, and prostate cancer in rats. So not only are we screwing ocean life (one animal dissected contained 1,603 pieces of plastic) but we're also screwing ourselves.

Not a nice way to start a Monday morning, I realize, but I thought it was time to put the word out. I thought I was doing so well by recycling all the plastic that I buy, but it turns out only three to five percent of plastics are recycled in any way. The rest, well, they end up all over the place, including around the "waist" of this poor sea turtle. Lots end up in our landfills, of course, and on street corners, trapped by fences, hanging in trees.... The great thing about plastic bags and the like that are left lying around is that they collect rainwater, making them the perfect breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitos. But don't try burning your old plastics in an effort to remove them from the earth: burning plastic releases extremely toxic fumes.

So what the hell do we do? Make like ostriches and bury our heads? (If it kept me from ingesting plastic from the atmosphere, I just might.) Rather, simply consider trying to buy things that aren't made of plastic, or buying less overall. Considering that each of us throws away around 185 pounds of plastic per year, don't you think it's about time we took a good hard look at what we're buying?

For more info and tips on how to reduce plastic waste, visit Life Less Plastic, Fake Plastic Fish, Avoiding Plastic and PlasticLess.

That concludes my soap-box rant public service announcement for the day. Carry on.

(Unless of course you'd like to enlighten us and comment on how you've reduced your plastic waste.)

I'm Rich! A Shift in Perspective

So I've been looking at a lot of "green" blogs lately, trying to get tips on how to live a little greener, reduce my carbon footprint, live sustainably, etc. At times I see some of them suggesting things that would be great, but are pretty costly, and I start to feel sorry for myself.

I'd love to buy things like all-organic food for my family and our pets, as well as buy hand-made or all-natural clothing, soaps, and beauty products. (I realize a lot of these things I could make myself, but I'm super lazy, don't have a lot of time and am completely incompetent... ) I'd even like to buy things like a compost tumbler and one of those wind-energy converters. (Heck, I'd also like some new solar panels and a Prius, please.)

Even if the most basic of these things were not too expensive, I don't even have a Trader Joe's within 20 miles of me, let alone a health food store. So I would be spending more gas money running around, or more money for shipping if I ordered online.

Plus, my public library is positively miniscule and has a very small amount of money to buy new books, which they only do a couple times a year. So all these new books I've read about on blogs, like Food Not Lawns, The Omnivore's Dilemma, Animal Vegetable Miracle, and Affluenza would have to be bought instead of borrowed. (Are you getting sick of my whining yet?)

Looking at all these blogs, I was getting pretty depressed, and feeling awfully sorry for myself. Then I came across Green Bean Dream's blog.

One of her entries was about wealthy people who were "going green." I started reading about YAWNs, (Young And Wealthy but Normal) and APLS (Affluent Persons Living Sustainably).

I kept thinking, "Well, I'm certainly not wealthy or affluent." But then, further down in the entry, there was a link to the Global Rich List. It's a site that gives you your monetary position in the world compared to the rest of the entire population.

Type in your family's income and you'll find you're probably in the top fifth of the richest people in the world. I'm currently in the top 5%, and I make an average salary. When I taught (yes, I actually took a pay cut from teaching), I was in the top 1%. And that was nowhere near six figures, let alone millions.

It's crazy how most of us think we are making so little, especially when we are living paycheck to paycheck and just "scraping by." But when you consider that we all have clean water, enough food to keep our families from ever going hungry, shelter, and clothing, let alone television, computers, etc., we're amazingly wealthy.

The 2008 Health and Human Services Poverty Guidelines state that a family of four is below the poverty level if their annual household income is less than $21,200. But look how that stacks up against the rest of the world:


A family below the poverty level in the U.S. is still in the top 10% of the richest people in the world!

Thinking about it some more in terms of environmentalism, I realized that the whole point of trying to be more green is to buy less, use what you already have, and waste as little as possible. (I need to take a moment to smack myself on the head.)

I think that's why I enjoy Frugal Fridays so much. I get to read about how so many of you are already living green without doing it because it's the "in" thing to do or because it's in the news and on the movie screens, but simply because that's how you've chosen to lead your lives, and it lines up with your families' values. And most, if not all, of you embrace your circumstances and work with what you have and consider your lives full and rich beyond compare.

So really this is a big "thank you" to all of you who participate each week in Frugal Fridays over at Biblical Womanhood. I love reading about your lives as well as your tips. In a world so full of gloom and doom (especially about the environment), it warms my heart to read about so many families already happily doing their part for the world regardless (and sometimes because of) their circumstances. And it makes me keep a better perspective on my own life and how rich and full it already is.

Blessings to all of you!

Weekend Project: Compost Pile

So I decided it was time to turn our plethora of garden waste into a compost pile. We have a very large yard, most of it wild, and there are always some kinds of garden clippings that are just waiting to be turned into mulch. (In waiting, I mean laying around on the ground in heaps.)

Understandably, Ralph didn't want it out in the open as an eyesore, so it got relegated to the space behind the shed:



I beat back some of the weeds and leveled out the slight slope, then marked it off with tree branches from our tree that fell in a storm last year (just lying around waiting...):




Then I got some hay that we had used to insulate the dog house in the winter:


(I swear, I think the dogs are making their own compost pile in the dog house.)


I put some twiggy branches on top of the hay and then added some green branches from the tree from the front yard (which just got shorn):



I think there's also some ice-plant type of plant in there that was growing under our fence from our neighbor's yard. To this layer, I also added some coffee grounds and egg shells I'd been saving:



At this point, Blue, who had been haphazardly supervising me, came over to investigate the new and delicious smells:



After deciding it was too hot (and being scolded for trying to eat the egg shells), he decided it was best to continue supervising from the shade:



Ralph contributed some fresh-cut grass (which also helped cover up the egg-shell scent):



And I scrounged up some dead leaves and twigs:



A final layer of more grass, and a final tamping down by Blue (note the footprints):



and our compost pile is ready to start it's glorious transformation into mulch. I'm going to have to wait a while before I put any more food in there, at least until it's deep enough to where I can bury it without the dogs investigating.

After a long day of composting, we all retired to the house, enjoying a rest after a hard day's work:



Coco decided she needed a rest from the day's events, too. Keeping an eye on every person and every dog and every bird and every insect is very stressful.


Whew! What a day!

Not Buyin' It (or My Beef with Kleen Kanteen™)

[For those of you coming over from Frugal Friday, this is more of a rant than a tip, but it does have to do with spending less and being conscious of how and where you spend your money.]

Most of us are consistently on the lookout for ways to keep ourselves and our families healthy while maintaining at least a fairly-frugal lifestyle. And we try to do so with as low an impact to the environment as we can. So when I started hearing about all the dangers of water-bottle plastics, I was about to jump on the stainless-steel bottle bandwagon.

The new alarm is about BPAs (bisphenol A) in plastics. The ideal bite notes "A 2007 study links BPA to enlarged male breasts, earlier puberty in girls, and cancer." And water bottles and other plastics have recently been found to leach this lovely chemical into the water and foods we consume. In response, there are many new products on the market, such as BPA-free plastic baby bottles as well as glass versions. (Of course, many people agree that breastfeeding is the best option is this case.)

The biggest increase in new product consumption I've noticed, though, is in stainless-steel water bottles for kids and adults. Kleen Kanteen™ and Sigg™ are the big names right now, but I'm sure more will soon follow. It's not that I don't like their products, per se, they seem like they are a good alternative to plastic, and the fact that they are reusable is a great way to cut down our use of plastic, since so much of it isn't recycled anyway. Beth, who writes the blog Fake Plastic Fish, (which I love!) quoted from a report by S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsom, saying,

More than one billion plastic water bottles end up in California’s landfills each year, taking 1000 years to biodegrade and leaking toxic additives such as phthalates into the groundwater.

In addition, just the production of plastic has a huge environmental impact. From the same report:

According to the Container Recycling Institute, supplying the plastic water bottles that American consumers purchase in one year requires more than 47 million gallons of oil, the equivalent of one billion pounds of carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere.

Additionally, water diverted from local aquifers for the bottled water industry can strain surrounding ecosystems.

Furthermore, transporting bottled water by boat, truck and train involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels.

So buying these stainless-steel bottles is a good thing, right? Well, technically, yes. But the fact is, they are charging close to $20 for an item that still has plastic in it. The tops of both Kleen Kanteen and Sigg have plastic stoppers. And while it's definitely better than having the entire thing out made out of plastic, why not just make the entire damn thing out of stainless steel?

And the thing that really gets me steamed is this: Kleen Kanteen used to have stainless steel tops that came standard with their bottles, but now you have to buy those for an extra six dollars! So now in order to be completely up-to-date with the most-safe option out there, I have to spend $26 for myself and each member of my family so that I don't endanger their health either. That's $130 just for water bottles.

It just goes to show how our consumerist culture and the companies that power it are taking the "green movement" and exploiting it for their own good.

You can't just rely on vinegar and baking soda for cleaning like your grandmother did, you have to buy the new-and-improved "green" (a.k.a. most expensive) version of brand-named products that include vinegar and baking soda in their ingredients.

You can't just buy unbleached coffee filters (or god forbid make your own) you have to buy the soy-based, triple-pressed, 100% organic ones.

You can't even just bring your own canvas bags you've had for years to the store, you have to buy the cute ones that sell for $20. (Even the ones that sell for a dollar at most supermarkets aren't necessary if you already have some at home. Even reusing the plastic bags you got from the last shopping trip are fine, although admittedly not very cool.)

And don't even get me started on all the "natural" beauty products! (Another reason I'm no-poo.)

There are plenty of other examples of this and how our culture is using fear to goad us into consuming more (remember the run on plastic and duct tape after 9/11?), but I'm too frustrated to write more right now.

I'll end with trying to exemplify what No Impact Man is often saying: "The best thing you can use is something you already have." If we really are trying to be greener and actually implementing the three R's (Reduce, Reuse, Recyle) that have been drilled into us, then I am going to hop off the consumer bandwagon (until I get sucked up into something else to be scared of). How? Simple.



In regards to the plastic water bottle issue: I have a glass jar of Postum I just finished the other day. Glass jar. Metal lid. No plastic. Voila! Problem solved.