a challenge after my own heart

POW! you can only imagine my excitement when i got an email from the brooklyn green team today announcing their new "bring your own mug" challenge. since i started the plastic diet in june, bringing my own mug is the single most EASY and AMAZING change i have made. no longer do i feel guilty about drinking coffee and then throwing out the cup! (no longer do i drink coffee [at least this week], but that's a different story.)

read on for details about the brooklyn green team's challenge.

oh and in case you think i'm lame for posting 2 re-posts in a row.. it's called "re-using" one of the super important but oft-overlooked of the three r's!

"Why did they even buy me? I sit here on a dark crowded shelf day after day. And then….for a moment, I think my life is going to change. They open the cabinet, our eyes meet. Their gentle hand grazes against my aluminum body. At last! Today is the day they are going to proudly walk me down the street as I carefully hold and keep warm a most precious commodity - the morning coffee. But no, they move right past me and reach for the cereal. Maybe tomorrow"

-Your Travel Mug, 2008

Does your travel mug feel this way? Neglected? Passed over for a wasteful, disposable, one time only headed for the landfill paper cup? Don't let this happen. Because the Brooklyn Green Team in partnership with GreenEdge Collaborative NYC has a new challenge for you and your mug!

THE BRING YOUR OWN MUG CHALLENGE!

Sign Up email brooklyngreen@gmail.com and write I Shower Fast! Include your first and last name and zip. Please pass on to friends and make the impact stronger.

THE FACTS

Today, there is no way to compost or recycle the billions of disposable coffee cups used in the U.S. each year. That's because cups are lined with a petroleum-based plastic (polyethylene) to prevent leaking.

Most disposable coffee cups have a life of only 5 minutes before they are tossed in the trash. In a single week, the average coffee joint goes through 4,000 cups and plastic lids!

Every year, Americans drink more than 100 billion cups of coffee. Of those, 14.4 billion are served in disposable paper cups— enough to wrap the earth 55 times if placed end-to-end!

LEARN

The Biodegradable Cup – a step in the right direction, but will you really compost it when done?

Environmental Defense Fund's Starbucks Paper Project

Thoughts from a strickly-paper blog
Disposable Cups vs. Reusable Mugs from Triplepundit.com
Cups and Other Coffee Packaging Hard on Environment, says study from Packaging Digest

TOOLS

Use a travel mug. Often made of stainless steel, these beauties will keep your coffee or tea hotter longer than a dispoable cup.

Suggest that stores offer a discount when you bring your own. Patronage stores that already offer this. If you buy coffee five days a week, and use your travel mug, you save 260 cups per year!

If you love the SIGG water bottle, which you can find at 3rLiving on 5th Ave in Park Slope or Go Green on Atlantic, you should try their NEW Thermal Bottle. It keeps your hot beverages hot longer than just about any bottle on the market.

If you like to make your own coffee at home check out this Travel Mug Coffee Press. It is 100% spill proof.

For you tea lovers try a mug w/built in strainer!

Did You Know? Starbucks conducted a waste audit in 2003 and found that 589,800 pounds of paper were saved from landfills thanks to 13.5 million people who brought their own mugs!

Can we Solve the Climate Crisis? YES WE CAN! One Sip at a Time!

POW. YOU'VE BEEN GREENED!

Brooklyn Green Team

WWMD

loved this post from Ideal Bite today! just say NO to plastic holiday decorations! look for plastic alternatives for your holiday parties-- use REAL glasses & REAL mistletoe. what else can we do to have a greener holiday season? xoxo

It's that time of the year again: What would Martha Stewart do?

The Bite

She'd leave the tacky PVC holiday yard decorations at Kmart. Bring in the cheer with natural pieces (such as wreaths and snowmen) instead. How's that for a good thing?

The Benefits

• Saving for attorney back pay. Those plastic Santa scenes can cost upwards of $150, way more than a real snowman.
• Homemaking with less plastic. PVC used for outdoor decorations degrades after long sun exposure and seeps into groundwater.
• More space for back copies of Living. Pinecones and snow can go right back to where they came from: nature.

Personally Speaking

Jen just dumps her decorations in her compost pile when she's done with them, saving the cornucopia for the chickens. Try that with a plastic reindeer.

Wanna Try?

Autumn:

• Make a scarecrow
• Set out cornstalks and pumpkins

Thanksgiving:

• Set out gourds
• Make a cornucopia

Christmas:

• Make a garland
• Craft a pinecone wreath
• Build a snowman

hey you ding dongs, these are recycleable!

That's what my friend Lisa shouted yesterday as she fished plastic bottles out of the garbage can.
It was someone's last day, so we celebrated with coconut chai from Bonobos.
I love my work because we eat together which is pretty efficient in terms of waste.
But 30 plastic bottles of chai kind of kills me!



Oh and listen up, PlasticFreeLA!
Bloomberg is proposing to charge 6 cents for every plastic bag shoppers use at the cash register!
This is super exciting. 6 cents doesn't sound like a lot-- but remember what I said in my last post? 10 cents here, 10 cents there and before you know it-- we have a healthier planet. Well look at what the article says:

"Just a few weeks after Ireland adopted a similar, though much heftier tax in 2002 — charging shoppers 33 cents a bag — plastic bag use dropped 94 percent, and within a year, nearly everyone in that country had purchased reusable cloth bags."

Harnessing the brain for good

I saw a segment of the show 60 Minutes called Harnessing The Power of the Brain in my neuropsych class this week-you should check this out if you have a chance. It is absolutely amazing what we can do with science today. In sum the piece was about neuroscientific research that has figured out ways to connect a person's brain to a computer through electordes so that a person can think something and the computer makes the thing happen (it's a bit more complicated than that...but there is now technology that allows you to use your thoughts to make things happen). This is, in a word, amazing. I watched this 12 minutes story in awe for about 10 minutes until it struck me. We (i.e. man kind) can use science and technology to do the most amazing things and yet we (man kind) can't find a way to do the most basic tasks of recycling, reducing and reusing on a daily basis. We have reached extremes in scientific discovery and yet most people can't even find it in themselves to recycle a plastic water bottle when they are done with it!? Where is the disconnect-where did we go wrong? All of the amazingness we have created will be for naught when we have decimated this planet and we have been choked out by a sea of plastic.
It just goes to show everything looks different, even a 12 minute piece on 60 minutes, when you look at the world through the lens of the plastic diet. We need more people to put on these plastic diet glasses.

another benefit to the plastic-free lifestyle

saving money!

like every time i go to whole foods and i use my own bag:
TEN CENTS off my purchase!

ten cents here, ten cents there.. and before you know it, we'll have a healthier planet :)

Reheating food sans plastic

I don't use Tupperware to store my food that often (I only have two 'official' pieces of Tupperware and some leftover yogurt or frosting containers that also do the job). But I try to reuse glass jars from food I buy and I have a cupboard full of Ball jars I have bought or inherited that I mostly use to keep food in. I don't think I will be buying any more reusable plastic Tupperware or those less-long-lasting Gladware ones they sell now. In fact I don't think I will be buying any more ever. I am cutting that plastic out of my life for good. I don't need it! Plus, there are a lot of health risks related to heating food while it is in plastic (I don't think there is any risk in storing food in plastic just reheating). Okay heating in glass has it's hazards too...glass gets hot—really holds that heat—but I am willing to take the risk and wear oven mitts. In fact since I don't have a microwave glass has really come in handy for reheating food. Check out the picture. Obviously I am not the first one to do this, but I find it fun (and pre-microwave-era-kitchy) every time I reheat leftover food in glass jars using boiling water :) I couldn't/wouldn't want to do that with Tupperware! Sorry Tupperware I know you last a long time (since my mother has had the same set my whole life!) and you are reusable, but you are plastic and you are out! Go glass.

Trick-or-treat, plastic please!

I had fretted about Halloween and plastic encased candy for about a month to no avail. Then I jumped (almost literally) at the chance to go to a friend's Halloween party and pass out candy there. It was a bit of a cop out, as I didn't deal with the plastic problem head on but it meant I would still get to see little gools and goblins and fairies and power rangers and I would not have to buy my own candy, which I could not bring myself to do because it involves soooo much plastic: individually wrapped candy and the plastic bags the individually wrapped candy comes in! I couldn't do it--that is too much plastic. So, I ran away from the problem and let someone else buy the candy! I thought of homemade treats for less than half a second because we all know no one would eat them in this day and age (ahh to live in the 50's and make popcorn balls, cookies, and candy apples for the little tikes). Well, low and behold, the multitude of plastic wrapped candy was only one of the reasons I realized Halloween is not all it used to be :(
First of all giving kids bucket loads of candy just isn't healthy for them. Giving them little boxes of raisins as treats on the other hand will get your house egged, so candy it is I guess.
Second, giving kids individually wrapped anything in plastic isn't good for the environment!
Third, most kids don't even say "trick-or-treat" any more. They just walk up and open their bag and look at you. Or their parents push them at you when any blind man can see the kid is scared, too young to get Halloween, and shouldn't be eating candy anyway.
Fourth, gools and goblins are a think of the past! I was disturbed by a lot of the "little girl" costumes I saw that we revealing and skimpy.
So, over all it was a bit disappointing. In the end I ate a few pieces of candy (I had forgotten that Charleston Chews even existed--yum) but tended toward the Dots in their little paper boxes. And I began planning my strategy for next year...I'm thinking Free Trade chocolate coins that come in those shiny gold metal wrappers....