Municipal bylaws mandating discounts for customers who bring their own cup and fees for those who opt for a to-go cup would greatly reduce waste sent to landfill.
Rants
I Am not Extreme, Consumerism Is
A woman rides her bike to the farmers’ market to buy locally grown fresh fruit and vegetables. After carefully selecting some apples, oranges, avocados, potatoes and kale, all grown on small farms without the use of synthetic pesticides, she places them in her homemade cloth produce bags. Before she hops back on her bike, she […]
Take Action on Climate Change to Cope with Your Grief
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” — William James To live without hope is to cease to live.” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky You have to show them that there’s a better way. You need to inspire them like you inspired me! You need to give them hope.” — Barry, Sausage Party […]
Kitchen Gadgets You Didn’t Know You Already Own
A flimsy plastic kitchen gadget that should not exist inspired this post: the Evriholder Avo Saver Avocado Holder. Shaped like one half of an avocado, with a round indentation for the seed and an adjustable rubber strap, this gadget buckles in the half avocado you didn’t eat so you can store it in the refrigerator and […]
Please Do not Turn Zero Waste into Another Consumer Lifestyle
Every day, companies contact me about a “fantastic opportunity to collaborate” and peddle their wares for them on here, wares that apparently no zero waster can live without. I can’t possibly respond to all the messages I get, so I generally ignore these pitches—even for products and services I might like. But when I do […]
A Brief History of Recycling
“You must recycle everything.” That’s what I sometimes hear when people learn that I don’t generate any trash. In reality, I rarely recycle because I rarely buy anything in a package that I could put into a recycling bin. I bring my own packaging with me when I shop at the farmers’ market and bulk […]
9 Items Banned from My Kitchen and How I Replaced Them
In 2011, my daughter MK and I decided we would try to live without plastic. Because I’ve been at this for a while, I take for granted many of the early changes we made back then to wean ourselves off of the stuff. But with all the welcome press lately on the plastic pollution crisis […]
Welcome to the Church of Zero Waste
I was raised in a devout Catholic household, although we kids could skip mass if we felt sick enough to warrant a trip to the ER. I attended Catholic school from kindergarten all the way through the end of high school (I did love my kilt). We knelt around the living room regularly to say […]
Someone Tell Me How I’m Missing Out
If you read environmental news, you may have stumbled across articles within the last week or so on a new type of edible straw. This article from Fast Company contains some unfortunate wording about these alternatives to wasteful, single-use, ocean-polluting plastic straws: It’s not about the consumer sacrificing anymore, it’s about the consumer having fun and […]