Returning from Earth Resource Foundation’s “No Plastic Left Behind” conference this weekend, it occurs to me that Fake Plastic Fish is lonely. Look at her swimming by herself in a big polluted fish pond. In the beginning, the only other plastic-free bloggers she knew of were Plasticless.com and Vancouver’s Plastic-Free in 2007. But that gal […]
Do you ever feel like a disembodied head? I do. There’s just so much information to know, so much to learn about our planet and how to care for it, and the Internet makes obtaining that information faster and easier than ever. I’m subscribed to a multitude of e-newsletters, all from worthwhile organizations: 350.org Al […]
Vajrapani Institute is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery nestled in the Santa Cruz mountains. Care for the earth and all its creatures is one of its core practices, to the extent that the members try as much as possible to avoid killing even insects. This is where I spent the weekend, sitting in silence, listening to […]
I’d never heard of Amish Friendship Bread, apparently the chain letter of baking, before receiving this bag of starter from my co-worker Jo Anne last week. For those of you who are as ignorant as I was, it’s a yeast starter that each person nurtures and “feeds” (adding flour, sugar, and milk on days 6 […]
Sorry for the quality of the photos. For some reason, my camera and the sun would not cooperate last week when I took these. Anyway, here’s my very little front yard garden grown almost entirely without plastic. Yep. Little. And late. Because I didn’t get started until June. But it is what it is, and […]
Walk into the local drug store (this happens to be Walgreens on Powell Street in San Francisco) in September, and this is what you find: We know this. It’s not news that Halloween has become a big plastic party. And it wasn’t so different when I was a kid in the 70’s. Plastic-wrapped candy in […]
Yesterday, Allie wrote about the problem of keeping hydrated while traveling. Not realizing she could carry her Kleen Kanteen through security, she ended up purchasing bottled water. And apparently, she is far from alone. A couple of days ago, USA Today published an article about the environmental issues around bottled water production and waste that […]
The following is a guest post by Allie of The Greenists (formerly Allie’s Answers). While I’m certainly not in the Fake Plastic Fish tier of plastic reduction, I do a pretty decent job limiting the amount of plastic that comes into our home. But on our recent vacation in Washington State, I realized that it’s a lot […]
Please don’t let me interrupt the conversation happening on the previous post. I’ve been reading your comments, even though I don’t really have time to respond right now. But I just had to jump in and tell you about a wonderful gift that the Take Back The Filter campaign received today. First, have you seen […]
Why would anyone have to learn to sleep? The body does it naturally. When the lights go down, melatonin kicks in and we get sleepy. Then, we go to bed, right? Except, in this day and age with computers and artificial light, melatonin doesn’t necessarily kick in. And when you’ve got genes like mine (father, […]