Rags. In our home we must have 20 or more "rags". They weren't always rags. At one time they were brand new towels that matched our kitchen. Now they're faded, fringed and holey.
Why so many rags? We've almost stopped using napkins and paper towels in our home. Giving them up was probably the easiest environmentally-friendly change we've made. (Giving up meat was probably the hardest.)
We've had the same roll of paper towels for at least 6 months. I was going to write the date on the inside of the roll when we first opened it just to see how long it took us to use it. Why don't you write the date on your next paper towel roll and see how long it takes your family. Then, look around for some rags.
At dinner, our kids ask "Who has the napkin?" The napkin. Our dinner guests our shocked that we eat dinner with one or two ratty rags. After dinner, if it's dirty, we throw it in the laundry. If not, we hang it up. (I'm amazed at how many families don't do this. It's all over the web. Just search Google for "napkins rags environment trees paper" and 674 results appear.)
When we buy napkins and paper towels, we always buy recycled. Our grocery stores only carry Seventh Generation (a great company).
According to the Seventh Generation web site: If every household in the U.S. replaced JUST ONE 250 count package of virgin fiber napkins with 100% recycled ones, we could save: - 1 million trees - 2.7 million cubic feet of landfill space, equal to over 4,000 full garbage trucks - 380 million gallons of water, a year’s supply for 2,900 families of four - and avoid 64,000 pounds of pollution!
Last week my Nerdy Books partner and I had a booth at a local business expo. The expo gave each vendor a free coffee ticket so I rushed down to grab a cup. (My friend ran the catering booth so I knew the coffee would be good.)
I was so mad at her when I saw this pile of styrofoam cups sitting next to the free coffee. I told her that I just couldn't drink out of styrofoam. (I only have a couple of steadfast, environmental convictions, and that's one of them.)
After apologizing profusely, my friend told me that several of the vendors were giving away free, ceramic coffee mugs. I grabbed a couple (after listening to the sales pitch), poured our coffee, then carefully walked through the expo hall and up the stairs carrying two cups of hot coffee with no lids. Just imagine if the other 500 people getting free coffee had done the same thing. There'd be no styrofoam in the landfill and no ceramic mugs left in the expo hall.POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 6:49 PM 6 comments
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 10:26 AM 0 comments
Photo: Emmanuel Vialet / Still Pictures
A friend of mine recently visited his son in Guatamala. He called me when he got back and said, "I thought of you while I was there. Plastic bags and bottles were everywhere. It was disgusting. They have a very poor sanitation system."
He probably thought of me because for several years now I've been preaching about the proliferation of garbage bags to anyone who will listen.
For the past two Christmases, my family has given all of our family and friends cloth bags with cute pictures drawn and painted by my kids. We also gave them a letter explaining our reasons for the gift and environmental changes we've made over the past year. (We figure if we've made 10 or 20, they could use our bags...)
Considering our kids were 3 and 5 when we started making the bags, the artwork turned out pretty cute. The first year our bags read: Save our trees, please. The second year: Save the earth. Any suggestions for this year?
We now have about 12 cloth bags lying around the house and in the trunks of our cars. I also bought this giant, plastic tote thing that folds out into a "box" about 2' x 2' . (That one really freaks out the bagger at Shoprite.) Our family's rules of thumb are if you can carry it in your hand(s), say no to a bag. If you can't carry it in your hands, carry it in your own bag.
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 10:00 AM 20 comments
I can't believe I used to throw away baggies. Even those heavy-duty, 2-quart, freezer bags that are almost as thick as Tupperware.Not anymore. Unless a baggy has a hole in it (a BIG hole), I wash it, let it dry and use it again. And again. And again. My husband on the other hand, is not so picky. He throws away any baggy with rotted, moldy food in it and then I fish it out of the garbage, hold my breath, dump the contents, turn it inside out, and wash it like I would a nasty dish. (If you've ever changed a diaper, this is nothing!) I figure it takes me about 2 or 3 minutes to keep this baggy out of a landfill where it may take 300 years to break down, if ever.
It all started when I read that Americans throw away 1 MILLION BAGGIES A DAY! I believe it. Have you ever seen a kid's lunch? Most of their "food" is fluorescent blue or orange and crammed into 2 or 3 baggies. At that rate, that one kid throws away 360 to 540 baggies during a school year. Let's say 25% of kids bring their lunch. That amounts to 36,000 to 54,000 baggies in our little school alone. (I love math.)
The other day I pulled out one of those 1 quart, heavy-duty freezer bags to hold my daughter's sandwich. I looked at her and said, "Do you think you could go a whole year with this one baggy?". As usual, she rolled her eyes, then she said, "Sure." She's pretty cool.
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 9:20 AM 6 comments
Here's a little known fact:That's a total of 306 billion! And that's only in America. Numbers like that just blow my mind. First of all, who's doing the counting? Secondly, how many of those do we throw away without even using? (Today's trivia: Do you know how long it takes to count to a billion if you count a number every second? Take a guess. I'll tell you a few blogs from now!)
I have a strategy that I think would cut that 306 billion number in half. (Or, if I'm the only one doing it, reduce the number by at least 1000 over the course of a year.)
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 9:45 AM 0 comments
I've been purchasing organic, cage-free, free-range eggs packed in recycled cardboard for a couple of years now. For about twice the price of eggs layed by chickens crammed into tiny pens being pecked to death by confused, insane chickens, I got a little peace of mind.That is, until I looked into the USDA's requirements for "free-range" poultry at www.eco-label.org. Basically, the label means absolutely nothing. There are no standards and there is no verification. If you need more proof, read an article by Karen Davis, PhD who visited the farm that produces "The Happy Hen Organic Fertile Brown Eggs". Pretty depressing.
Just last week, I picked up my daughter from school, then followed the "Free-Range Brown Eggs 1/4 mile" sign that I've driven past for about 2 years. When we got to the farm, there was no question whether or not these chickens were free-range - there were about 50 happy chickens running around about an acre of yard. The 12 or 13 pigs were also free-range (and fat, I might add). My daughter didn't want to leave.
Not only were the eggs about a dollar cheaper than Shop-Rite's unregulated, free-range eggs trucked in from half-way across America, they were stored in a variety of egg cartons. This place also reuses those unrecyclable styrofoam egg cartons. Cool.
If you're lucky enough to live in the boonies like me, try to find a farm that sells free-range eggs. It's environmentally-friendly and keeps the local farmer in business. And don't forget to save your old egg cartons!
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 1:17 PM 1 comments
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 9:30 AM 3 comments
Until I started writing the "Just the tips, man for the Enviroment" ebook, I knew very little about recycling bottles, plastic, cans, paper, etc. I just threw everything in the green can provided by our town and took it to the curb.About a month ago, I finally read the back of our recycling pick-up schedule and realized that our town only recycles #1, #2 and #6 plastic. And, they expect you to remove the label from cans, separate dark-colored glass from light, bundle newspaper in stacks less that 12" high... Geez, I've been throwing anything that's plastic and broken (or empty) into the same can as my every color imaginable bottles for several years. I'm guessing it cost our town a lot of money to have some poor soul pick through my "garbage" to find the stuff that is truly recyclable. So, to not repeat my mistakes: I haven't done that last step (yet) but I have found a friend (babysitter) whose curbside pick-up takes cereal boxes. Ours doesn't. Twice a month, I haul them over to her house and set them out. It's a pain but it prevents 100 or so boxes from going into the landfill every month.
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 4:59 PM 0 comments
I'm passionate about the environment. Ok, I'm obsessed. Just ask my family and friends. (Those few who are left since my passion began about 5 years ago...)In 2002, I read "One makes a difference" by Julia Butterfly. She's the woman who sat in a giant redwood, 180 feet above the ground, for over 2 years. I feel like one book made a difference. After reading her book, I changed my ways. I stopped using shopping bags (as much as possible), started washing my aluminum foil, reused baggies, installed a low-flow shower head, built a compost bin and got rid of my gas guzzling van.
In January 2004, I started writing my first non-software related tip book. I hope to finish the "Just the tips, man for the Environment" ebook by the beginning of 2005. The ebook will be full of things you can do to reduce your impact on the environment. There are almost 300 million people living in the United States (over 6 billion in the world) and if each person did his share, we'd save millions of trees, have cleaner water, reduce pollution and so on. I've talked to plenty of people who want to do something but are not sure what they can do that will actually make a difference. That's the reason for this blog and for the ebook.
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 1:16 PM 3 comments