Archive for August, 2007

Weekend Discussion Question: The Crazy, The Weird, & The Just Plain Useless

I’m getting ready to pack up and leave for Anaheim, CA. By the time you read this, I should already be there. Please send me some nice thoughts on Monday as I am doing my little experiment to see just how much punishment an insufficiently trained body can endure during a half marathon. [...]

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Store Report: Berkeley Bowl (a response to my letter)

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ve seen me mention Berkeley Bowl quite a few times. Besides the farmers markets and CSAs, it’s the place to go in the East Bay for produce and bulk foods. A huge store, it caters to those looking for organic, local foods, as well those desiring [...]

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Reducing Plastic Waste In The Workplace

In addition to blogging about plastic, knitting animals from grocery bags, and training for a half marathon (okay, that one is kind of a fib), I have an actual job in an office. I run the accounting department of a small home care agency in the Bay Area. (What, you couldn’t guess I’m an accountant [...]

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A House Full of Plastic

Beth, for someone trumpeting about giving up plastic, you sure have a lot of plastic in your house. Just look at this. What gives?

Several times in the past few weeks, I’ve brought something to the office in a plastic container and received the response, “Beth! That’s plastic! I thought you were [...]

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Uh oh! Rethinking Jar Lids

After all my hoopla about using hydrogen peroxide to clean the inside of tomato sauce jar lids, I’m now having second thoughts. Sorry to get prematurely excited.
A few days ago, after “bleaching” the tomato stains out of a couple of lids with hydrogen peroxide, I noticed that the smell was not completely gone. [...]

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Week 10 Results: 5.6 oz of plastic

04/14/2008 Update: If you’ve reached this page because you want to know how to recycle Brita filter cartridges in North America, please visit http://www.takebackthefilter.org for more information about the campaign to urge Clorox (owner of Brita in North America) to develop a take-back recycling program for these cartridges!
In solidarity with my guy Michael, who [...]

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Weekend Discussion Question

For which plastic item are you having the hardest time finding an alternative?
My biggest challenge at the moment is to find a replacement for our Brita faucet filter. We are on our last plastic cartridge. Recall my unsatisfying e-mail exchange with Brita. Their cartridges are recyclable in Europe but not in the [...]

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Finally! How to clean pasta sauce jar lids Plus a handy cleaning tool I found

8/28/07 Update: It turns out that cleaning pasta sauce jar lids with hydrogen peroxide is not such a good idea. H202 eats through the coating inside the jar lid. Read more here.
Pasta sauce jars would be a great replacement for plastic food storage containers, if it weren’t for the tomato stain and [...]

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Plastic-Free Shaving, Part 1

Do I look like an antique to you? I must have been twelve or thirteen years old the first time I shaved my legs. I used my dad’s safety razor, just like the one in the picture. But times have changed, and you can’t buy these at the drugstore anymore. I [...]

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Direct Action, Part 2: Temescal Farmer’s Market, Revisited

It’s me and Tina, the fake plastic fish, after lying awake for hours Saturday night, stumbling out of bed at 6am, and lugging a card table and folding chair on a mini hand truck half a mile down the street to the Temescal Farmer’s Market. We are located in a great spot in the [...]

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