April 9, 2010
Buying Less Plastic = Spending Less Money
How to save money by buying less plastic. Shop bulk bins. Buy whole foods. Make homemade cleaners instead of buying expensive green ones. Say no to bottled water.
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Category Archives: Interviews and Guest Posts
March 10, 2010
It’s About Community: A Conversation with Annie Leonard
Do you know your neighbors? Annie Leonard, creator of the viral video The Story of Stuff thinks you should. In fact, she thinks it’s the number one thing we can do to take back our power as citizens and solve our environmental problems. In this interview, she explains why, and insists that all of us […]
December 29, 2009
Can a “Buy Nothing New” Pledge Help Reduce Plastic Consumption?
The following is a guest post from Katy Wolk-Stanley, author of The Non-Consumer Advocate blog. In keeping with last week’s posts about clutter and stuff, Katy’s post illustrates the relationship between plastic consumption and consumerism. Enjoy! My name is Katy Wolk-Stanley and I am a die-hard member of The Compact, (a worldwide buy nothing new […]
November 10, 2009
Three Trashy Women
I’ve been meeting just the trashiest people in the last couple of weeks. Um… trashy in a good way. Trashy Beachkeeper I met Sara Bayles after the Blogger Beach Cleanup on October 24. You know, the one I missed. Sara’s blog, The Daily Ocean, tracks her goal of collecting trash on the beach in Santa […]
November 3, 2009
Dianna Cohen: Getting the Message from Her Own Art
Dianna Cohen is a painter, but she doesn’t use a paint brush. Trained at UCLA, she gave up the brush for materials most people consider trash: bags, boxes, little pieces of plastic. This year, she helped to found the Plastic Pollution Coalition. After twenty years, she finally started to get the messages from her own […]
October 27, 2009
Jackson Browne: Defiant About Bottled Water
Jackson Browne doesn’t appreciate the bottled water industry pumping millions of dollars into advertising to convince us that bottled water is better than tap water. He also happened to be sitting right behind me during the screening of Tapped Friday night at UCLA, one of the events organized by the new Plastic Pollution Coalition this […]
September 24, 2009
A Tale of Two Plastic Laundry Baskets
I received the coolest email this morning from Fake Plastic Fish reader Ellen Simpson, who was inspired by this blog to figure out a way to repair her old plastic laundry basket instead of trashing it and buying a new one. She, in turn, inspired me to fix my own broken plastic laundry basket this […]
September 3, 2009
No Impact Man teaches me to suck eggs.
In May of 2007, I listened to a radio program that changed my life. The show was To The Best Of Our Knowledge’s Going Green episode, and the interviewee was Colin Beavan, self-described No Impact Man. His efforts to live sustainably caught my imagination. He and his family were attempting to live for one year […]
August 28, 2009
Music Festival Dilemma – Drinking Wine Without Plastic
Remember last year when I blogged about my difficulties filling up my Klean Kanteen at San Francisco’s Outside Lands Music Festival? If you haven’t read the post, be sure and check it out. It’s pretty outrageous. Well, this year, Outside Lands is supposedly making a big change. They’ve announced they will provide water refill stations […]
August 27, 2009
Personal Changes Do Make A Difference: An Interview with Diane MacEachern of Big Green Purse
Yesterday, I asked whether personal changes at the individual level can truly change the world. Today, I’m happy to share with you an interview with a woman I have truly grown to admire and who believes that shifting our personal spending towards greener products not only makes a difference but is actually more effective than […]