Dear Lotus Foods: My husband and I used our old rice cooker a lot. Â We used it so much, that we burned out the fuse and had to replace it. Â I was pretty stoked about being able to fix our appliance and make it last longer instead of tossing it out. Â So recently, when the […]
Dr. Marcus Eriksen of 5 Gyres, an organization dedicated to researching ocean plastic pollution, has said, “If you want to clean the gyre, clean your beach.” He meant it literally, since “if we stop adding more plastic to the ocean, in time the gyres will kick out the plastic pollution they currently hold.” Â But I […]
Happy Earth Day everyone. Â It’s been a busy weekend, what with the plastic sea monster out and about. Â I spent several evenings at home braiding plastic bags into a new doo. Â What do you think? Â At San Francisco’s Earth Day Festival on 4/20 (probably around 4:20pm), a somewhat wobbly-looking guy with an equally impressive head […]
Hey, remember my rant last spring about the plastic Turtleback cup holder meant to be used at the beach? And how I thought it was so ironic to name a product for a sea animal that is routinely harmed by ocean plastic pollution? A bunch of green bloggers created quite a stir on Turtleback’s Facebook […]
01/29/2013 Update: Richard Branson responds to my letter on his blog today: Plastic On Our Airlines. Dear Richard Branson & David Cush, This letter serves two purposes.  First, to express my sincere gratitude for all you have done to make Virgin America the only airline I can fly without crying the whole time, and second, […]
Stop what you’re doing for a second. Â I want you to start a petition. Â Or at least sign one. Today is Blog Action Day, an annual event when bloggers all over the world band together to write posts on the same theme. Â And this year’s theme is “The Power of We.” Â It’s one thing for […]
Last week, I received an email from a new Starbucks employee who was shocked by the amount of waste she sees at the store everyday. Many of us do our individual part by bringing our reusable mugs for coffee, but it turns out that, according to this employee (who wants to remain anonymous to keep […]
Would you believe there is a company not only producing plastic products for the beach, but actually promoting them using a photo of an ocean wave sweeping one of their plastic gizmos, filled with a disposable plastic cup, towards the sea? I wasn’t planning on posting a rant today, as I’m leaving in a few […]
Six years ago, Michael and I got a notice that a Trader Joe’s grocery store was going to be opening down the street from our house. This was back before I had woken up to the problems with plastic, and the news thrilled me. I had visions of all the fresh salads I was going […]
It’s frustrating when electronic gadgets break, and not just because you have to go through the hassle of fixing or replacing them but because in doing so, a lot of waste is created. So when the headphone jack on my phone stopped working intermittently, I put off doing anything about it for several months. But […]