Fusing Plastic Bags

Etsy Labs has this handy tutorial on a reuse option for those stupid plastic bags you're always getting stuck with; ironing them together and then sewing them into reusable totes or other handy items. God knows if the fumes will kill you, but the person who did the tutorial seems to have survived.

When I was deciding to make this post, I almost didn't do it because I felt like I didn't have enough to say on the subject. Ridiculous! It's a link I'm sharing, I don't need to write a novel in favor of it. It's a cute idea, check it out.

Good Packaging and Bad Packaging

One of the things you become more conscious of when you're going green is all that packaging. Plastic, aluminum, the dreaded styrofoam, packaging is everywhere and it's incredibly hard to avoid. Sure, you can buy some things second-hand, and you can pick the less packaged option, but sooner or later you're going to be stuck with some useless plastic junk that you'll be hoping you can at least recycle.

I'm expanding my tupperware collection by saving pasta tubs, deli containers and other food storage, and finding other ways to reuse various packaging (shoe boxes become office storage, etc), but some stuff, like the dreaded clamshells on electronics, steadfastly refuse to be useful.

As I've been paying more attention to packaging, I've been noticing the things, big and small, that companies can do to improve their packaging. It's remarkable what a small effort can make a difference, and how many companies refuse to take even the smallest effort. Take a look at a good example and a bad example:

First we have our bad example, from Motorola. My mother bought this wireless headset and charger recently and was dismayed by the ridiculous excess of packaging that it comes with. I don't know if you can get a sense of scale there, but this thing was easily a foot wide and slightly more than a foot tall to hold three fairly small objects which you can see there. There's easily twice, probably three times as much packaging as is needed here. Plus it's that useless, irritating clamshell stuff that's impossible to open and totally unreusable. Boo, Motorola.


Next, some good packaging via Nancy's Organic Yogurt (which, by the way, is very tasty). It's a bit blurry, so you may not be able to read it, but on the side it says, "I am reusing this container for:" with several lines to write on. Underneath it notes that the packaging is sturdy and eminently reusable. The message is cheery and charming, not preachy or pushy, and while I doubt many people actually write their intended use on the container, but it's a gentle little push in the direction of reusing containers that might help people to start thinking about all the packaging they throw away. It costs Nancy's nothing extra to print this little missive on the container, and it might encourage a few more reusers. These containers are a great size for leftovers, or storing crayons, thread or crafting supplies.


Motorola would probably save money by designing a smaller package, but they don't because someone in marketing told them a giant package was a good idea. I know that Nancy's has fewer marketing concerns (and the demographics for organic yogurt are probably significantly different than the demographics for wireless headsets anyway), but you have to wonder what the tipping point is. How many customers need to complain about excessive packaging? How many marketing studies does it take to change the way a company does business? What should the so-called "greenfluencers" do to help push them in the right direction? I don't have the answers to any of these questions, but I'm certainly looking.

Girly and Green

I'm back from my trip to New York, which was lovely. The visit was in honor of my cousin's wedding shower and she has been showered, wined and dined within an inch of her life. Because I'm helping my cousin with some of her wedding preparations, and because weddings and showers are so full of feminine frippery, it's got me thinking about things girly.

I've always had a sort of conflicted relationship with girlyness. I'm too much of a practical, low-maintenance woman to be a real girly-girl, but too much in love with things like perfume and body products to be a tomboy. My cousins, especially the one getting married, are much girlier than me. She's not fussy or high-maintenance, but she owns real make-up brushes and a lot of really nice shoes and other things that we think of as being girly.

That's the crux of it, really. Almost everything that's part and parcel of being girly involves stuff. We are bombarded with products that we should have in order to be feminine. We need manicures and exfoliants, high heels and perfume, lingerie and hairspray. This is what it is to be female, buying a lot of stuff to maintain our appearance.

If you think I'm judging you, don't. I'm judging me. Today I used a cleanser that costs as much as a nice meal in a restaurant, and you know, I really like it. Still, I would like to find a way to invest in myself and enjoy feeling feminine without buying so much stuff.

Part of my problem, of course, is that I'm a binger when it comes to girly products. I go for months without doing much more than washing my body, hair and face with whatever I have on hand, then go to the store and drop a couple of hundred bucks on deliriously wonderful smelling concoctions. It's not in the least bit sensible or rational. I've been shopping green in the beauty product industry for a while, though I definitely haven't been thorough about it, and buying green products I really don't need is a little ridiculous.

So, here's my dilemma. How can I get the level of girly that makes me happy, without getting the level of girly that makes me feel ridiculous, and how can I do it as sustainably as possible. In considering this, I've drawn up a few guidelines on how to get my girly fix as guiltlessly as possible.

1) Not All Girly Choices Are Created Equal
On the scale of things, a pair of earrings or a new top is a better choice than a new moisturizer. The moisturizer gets used up rapidly and can't be purchased second-hand. If I want an indulgence, the best choices are second-hand goods with a good long life in them, and the worst are perishable or single use items.

2) Buy Green and Local
My Whole Foods sells some locally made all-natural soap that is absolutely addictive, soap is a must-have item so I can buy it guiltlessly, and by buying this local stuff I can improve the "value" of the purchase even more.

3) Don't Shop Idly
I'm not a huge clothes or shoes shopper, but idle purchases of body products are a terrible weakness of mine. I need to eliminate "just to look" visits to the Lush.com site and just purchase items I "need" when I need them. Casual shopping is a killer, and should be avoided.

4) Research; Buy Ethical, Quality Products
This is sort of a corollary to #3, because forcing yourself to buy well-researched products only will eliminate a lot of instant gratification spending. It will also help me avoid greenwashed products, with which the beauty industry is rife.

5) DIY Where Possible
The cucumber plant growing on my porch is great for a variety of facial uses, and any idiot with some oil and a bag of sugar can make an exfoliant. I've been experimenting with some home-made facial cleansers and I need to do more of that. Making my own allows me to eliminate a lot of waste and unnecessary packaging, plus it will be fresher and less chemical than store-bought alternatives.

None of this is likely to resolve my internal conflict about being girly. I'm still going to be that girl who vacillates between wanting to grab up all the makeup, perfume, body products and such that I can find, and wanting to just wear t-shirts from vintage stores and be comfortable smelling of nothing but inexpensive soap. I'm still never going to be sure where my genuine interest in moisturizer ends and the overwhelming pressure of marketing begins, and I'm still going to struggle with practicality versus pleasure and comfort versus beauty. Nonetheless, I think the effort is worth it. My inner feminist and my inner femme may not be able to see eye to eye, but at the very least I hope to get them on speaking terms.

Photo Credit: Miss Pupik on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

My Change Kit

I didn't mention this earlier, because I wanted to wait until I had received my booty, but earlier in this month I won a contest over at Tree Hugging Family! This is awesome, because I never, ever win things, and double awesome because I won this pretty fricken' sweet Change Starter Kit from the very nice people at RockLovePeace. It just arrived today, and I took a couple of pictures to inspire my readers.

Here's the box as it arrived to me, isn't it cute?:


And here it is all unpacked:

The whole package is quite adorable. The bag is definitely the best bit, it's very soft and roomy and has a nice long handle for wearing over the shoulder. The little journal is cute as can be, although I'm not sure how much I would use a physical journal since almost all my writing is online.

Overall it's a nice little package, and I really like the thoughtful way it's put together. It's a good sort of gift for someone who might be interested in affecting climate change and living green, but wanted some inspiration for their journey. It's positively the most earnest and good-hearted kind of gift I've ever seen, and I hope these guys do well with them.

On a side note, I'll be heading off on vacation starting this Wednesday and not returning until the following Wednesday, so expect a brief silence from this corner of the world. My cousin's bridal shower is this coming weekend so I'll be flying back east to see her and the rest of the family. I'm supremely excited about this, because I love my family and don't get to see them enough, but also because I'll be staying at my grandparents place in Dutchess County (I'm not misspelling that, it's really Dutchess and not Duchess). They have some beautiful, largely untouched land with a lake that is utter paradise. My mother just got home from a visit there recently, and brought back this picture. It's hard to do the place justice, but this comes pretty close.

Conscientious Doesn't Mean Inflexible

The cool folks over at Veg*n Cooking and Other Musings have an extremely thoughtful piece on "greenfluencers" and why it's important to keep the lines of communications open with corporations instead of just dismissing them as evil. The idea of standing strongly for an ideal without adopting an adversarial stance is one I advocate passionately. The old adage about catching more flies with honey may be a cliché but it's true, open and friendly communication about ideas is the way you really change minds.

"It irks the hell out of me to read environmentalists complaining about greenwashing while they have the ear of the corporations. THEY'RE FINALLY LISTENING TO YOU and all you can do is play right into that stereotype that environmentalists are unreasonable idealogues who get a sincere kick out of being able to find something wrong with anything. Yet, our camp needs them too; any camp does.

It is just unfortunate to me that with all the emphasis on environmental problems and social injustice, we sometimes forget how we, too, are tied to this system whether we like it or not. Few, if any, of us are prepared for a collapse of the economy, the political system, or the environment - let alone any combination of the two (or three). So, while consumption has been bad for all these sytems on the whole, it is also part of the system which sustains us. To cease consumption as the most ardent environmentalists would have it, leads to an inescapable market crash in a growth economy (which is pretty much the whole world now). Then, of course, there would be political consequences, and who knows where we come out on the other side of all that?"

This blog is one of the newest additions to my RSS reader, and I am really enjoying it. Take a minute to read the full post, it's worth it.

Blooming in June

My little garden is going nicely. I'm feeling pretty confident about it these days. It looks like I might have killed my sage plant, but everything else is very happy (I think I over-watered the poor little desert plant, but really I'm not sure I use sage enough to justify a plant). Here you can see my very first tomato! There are more pictures over on my Flickr, for the deeply curious. You can see blooming cucumbers, tomatoes, snap peas and herbs.

I'm feeling pretty confident about my gardening skills at this point (new as they are), other than the sage I seem to have a green enough thumb to keep things going. I wish I could claim some kind of special brilliance, but the truth is it's pretty easy. We'll see what kind of yield I get from my fruit-bearing plants, that's the real test of my mad watering and fertilizing skills. Some little creature has been nibbling on my tomato leaves, so I need to pick up some garlic oil to spray on the leaves (a recommended organic pest-deterrent).

Gardening remains a satisfying hobby, I've used the herbs a bit and I'm eager to use the veggies once they start growing. Once the weather chills off I'll probably try planting a few root vegetables, fortunately year-round growing really is a reasonable possibility here. I'm considering investing in a nice big planter that I can use to plant multiple veggies, pots are fine but they're not really the most efficient use of space, and provided the summer crop comes out well I think a small investment will be justified.

Other greening processes traipse along slowly. I'm trying to remember to bring my chico bags with me where I go so that I can reduce the flood of disposable bags into my house. I'm transitioning household products, replacing things with green alternatives and trying to eliminate single use and disposable items. Too much of the transition seems to require purchases! Cloth produce bags to replace disposables, tupperware to replace ziploc bags, a new lamp for the bedroom (our current one, aside from being a bit unsexy, won't fit CFLs), etc, etc. My plan to finish giving the bedroom its mini-makeover was stalled until I have a little more cash on hand. Patience is not my virtue, but green living requires a great deal of patience and focus. An extra incentive for self-improvement is an unexpected benefit of green living. Hurrah!

Things I Like: Earth Shoes

Like many women my age, I have a sort of knee-jerk fear of being identified as a feminist. Somewhere along the way the word feminist became conflated with "man-hater" and "female supremacist," and we children of the bra-burners began to fear being identified with that foaming, frothing at the mouth group. Nevertheless I am a feminist, in the sense that I think the fight for equality is a worthy one and until the day that women across the world have the same full freedom of choice, expression and opportunity that men do, the fight will not be over.

You might wonder why the heck I'm getting so heavy in a post that is ostensibly about shoes, but there is a point! You see, I'm about to talk about high heels. Yes, those delicate, frothy lovely creations that extend the line of the leg, making us look taller, more elegant, sexier. I won't lie to you, I own heels, and though I don't wear them every day, I am inclined to grab them when I'm dressing up. But you know what? Heels are terrible. They're one of the worst (external) things women do to their bodies every day. They're not as extreme as plastic surgery, but in many ways they're more insidious because they're so commonplace, so accepted as part of the feminine wardrobe. Western women will react in shock when shown pictures of foot-binding, and yet we voluntarily stuff our feet into uncomfortable heels that shorten the tendons in our calves, beat up our toes and leave our backs aching.

High heels aren't very green either, they make us less willing to walk long distances, they force us to put stress on smaller points, wearing the shoes out more quickly, and they leave us to buy lotions and potions to ease our poor aching feet, full of chemicals and packaged in dubiously recyclable containers. It's all a nasty, endless cycle, and we keep choosing to go round again and again.

Earlier this year, in the search for a good pair of walking shoes, I found Earth Shoes, and saw the light. I've known high heels were bad for me since I was a teenager, but there's nothing like the experience of truly comfortable shoes to make you understand what you've been doing to yourself. Earth Shoes are designed with a dropped heel, the front of the foot is positioned higher than the back. The result? Your calf is stretched out, your posture is improved, and you get a slightly better workout when you walk from walking on a perpetual 3.7% incline.

I had taken it for granted that being on my feet all day equaled lower back pain, but with Earth Shoes that's disappeared. My feet are comfortable, my back is comfortable, and my calves get a great workout. I can't imagine why I would settle for less. So I've made a commitment. I'm not buying another pair of heels again, why torture myself to look a little bit taller?

Oh and by the way, Earth Shoes, as the name might suggest, are very eco-friendly. They come packaged in recycled and recyclable materials printed with soy ink, they use 100% water-based adhesives, they pay their factory workers a good living wage and engage in careful oversight of their overseas factories. They also give money to Earth Share and (according to their website) are seeking further ways to reduce their environmental impact. Not bad for a pair of shoes, right?

Photo Credit: Earth Shoes - Elara, photo from Zappos.