Another day, another broken gadget. Â Plastic-free rule #1 when something breaks is to try and fix it instead of replacing it. But that’s not always easy since so many appliances are built to be tossed instead of repaired. Â Well Easy Schmeasy. Â Fixing things is fun. Â Saves money. Â Makes you feel like a Super Hero […]
Queen Helene’s hugely popular mint julep masque is widely considered to be a safe product. I mean, it’s found in all the health food stores, so it must be okay, right? Or is it? And is there any actual mint in it? I’ve had this same plastic tube of the stuff sitting in my bathroom […]
Last Fall, Rodale.com’s Dana Blinder contacted me about plastic-free gardening. What she didn’t know was that I had already failed miserably in the gardening department several times and wasn’t sure gardening was my thing. That’s when we came up with a brilliant idea. Rodale would teach me how to grow an organic garden, and I would […]
What is an LCD monitor made of? And what do you do if it breaks? I learned the answers to these questions the hard way. The Stupid Thing I Did Laptop monitors break easily, as I discovered a couple of months ago after closing the lid down on a couple of earbuds I had left […]
Back in January, I posted on my Facebook profile: The foam pads (read: plastic) on my headphones are wearing out. Motivation to learn to crochet because I hate round knitting. Well, this weekend, April 23, I finally summoned up the motivation to learn enough crochet basics to fix my headphones. See, even though I use […]
Wouldn’t it be nice if restaurant servers asked if you wanted a straw before sticking one in your drink automatically? Right now, it’s up to us to refuse those straws ahead of time. And sometimes, we have to ask more than once for our request to be remembered and fulfilled. That’s one of the reasons […]
Hacking cough, running nose, body aches and chills… these are just a few of the souvenirs I brought home from my trip to Florida last week. Fun times. So, anyway, I thought I would recap some of my favorite plastic-free cold remedies. Vegetarian hot & sour soup in stainless steel tiffin When I have a […]
Until now, all Klean Kanteen stainless steel water bottles came with plastic caps: either 100% plastic or stainless with a hard plastic top. But I’m happy to let you know about the new Reflect bottle, which is completely plastic-free. Two years ago, shopping with my friend Ruchi for a new Klean Kanteen to replace the […]
Molly de Vries lives just across the bay from me in Marin County and is the owner of Ambatalia, a company producing beautiful cloth to-go bags, napkins, and other reusables. Her story is inspiring. Please enjoy her story in her own words. My name is Molly de Vries, owner of Ambatalia, textiles for a non-disposable life, and […]
Dear Toshiba Satellite S105 Laptop Computer: I’m sorry I never gave you a better name in the 9 years that we were together. I was so sad last week when I traded you in at CeX in Berkeley for a bigger, faster, more powerful computer. For a second, I thought I might jump across the […]