Back in September, I wrote about the plastic AT&T Yellow Pages bag that showed up on my doorstep unsolicited. Here’s the update. I called the Yellow Pages, found out to whom I should write, and sent this letter (PDF file). Not long afterwards, I actually received a telephone call from Jim Troup, the head of […]
I thought I’d start a new weekly recipe post here. I’m realizing that each week when I post my plastic tally, you get to see what foods I consumed that were packaged in plastic, but you don’t get to see all the delicious things I got to have that weren’t. So these posts will focus […]
Knitting is a nice, eco-friendly hobby, right? Well, maybe. But it depends on the tools we choose and the materials we use. (Hey, that rhymes.) For a long time, I’ve been opting for natural fibers over acrylic and other synthetic yarns. But it wasn’t until I decided to knit a hat for one of my […]
Here are my friend Nancy, a poor seagull, and I at the Oakland plastic bag ban press conference on the steps of City Hall this morning. (I’ve got to do something about my hair soon! I’m starting to look like one of the Partridge Family boys.) It was a beautiful, sunny day: a reprieve from […]
On January 2, I reported about my broken plastic hairdryer and how I was hoping to fix it during my visit to my electronics technician (not “electrician,” there’s a difference I’m told) dad in Hawaii. Well, I’m happy to report that it’s fixed. He was able to figure out what part was bad and knew […]
I jotted these words in my notebook on the plane yesterday flying home from O‘ahu as Diamond Head receded in the distance, clouds and water took over the view, and a lump started to form in my throat. My mom and dad lived in Waikiki in the early 60’s, my dad working for the phone […]
Paradise… Plastic… Paradise… Plastic… Paradise… Plastic… Paradise… Plastic… Paradise… Plastic… Yep, even I ended up using plastic in paradise. I tried so hard all day to avoid it. My folks are fast food people, and on a road trip, McDonald’s is the “restaurant” of choice. I filled up my Klean Kanteen with water all day. […]
The holiday season has been over for several weeks now. And for several weeks, I’ve been contemplating the complaint we seem to hear every year from social critics bemoaning the rampant materialism of our culture. People, they say, care more about buying new things than they do about caring for each other and the planet. […]
I was surprised how easily the kitties went into the box two weeks ago. The blue plastic box that I got from a very nice person on Freecycle. They were so quiet in there, I had to check a couple of times to make sure I hadn’t imagined putting them in. Good thing they get […]
Request for European Brita users to send samples of their Brita cartridges for the Take Back the Filter campaign. http://takebackthefilter.org.