she rules until the end of time
by Stace on February 7th, 2010
filed under this crying earth
with every breath and all the choices that we make, we are only passing through on her way… – Within Temptation, “Mother Earth”
Part three of three (for now) posts about how to make small changes in our daily lives to live greener, happier, healthier lives for each of us and the earth as well. Tonight: People Towels. My friend Jen & I share this crusade. For me, it started about a year ago, when I started UCB (the same time I first met Jen). In between psych classes, she pointed out a sticker stuck to a paper towel dispenser in a restroom on campus. They’re everywhere, I’ve since discovered. They say “these used to be trees!” and are just kind of a friendly, pro-active reminder. A lot of people write snarky comments on them about the fact that they’re paper stickers, but… I for one still think it’s a good reminder. Use with caution, right?
Jen did me one better. Rather than just remembering and being conscious, she decided to find the website (I think it’s actually printed on the sticker) that manufactures them and got us a ton to plaster everywhere, as had already been done on campus. Sweet! This week, though, she posted something on her Facebook that’s even better, and no trees were harmed in the making of such an earth-conscious product. In fact, they take pride in saying so. Check out the cute “this is not a tree” option – arguably my fave, but then again, I’m a sucker for a pretty daisy, too. Maybe I should get myself a little three pack so it’ll be easier to always have a clean one ready? I like the “change is at hand” on this one, too.
The cool thing about this is that it’s more efficient than paper towels or air hand dryers (which I personally don’t love). According to PeopleTowels.com, if you switch for a year, you save a quarter of a tree, reduce landfill waste by 23 pounds, and conserve 250 gallons of water. Wow! (I have to admit, I’m wondering if they’ve factored in the necessary water, energy, detergent, etc of laundering these…?)
Either way, the use of paper towels has a staggering impact on our environment. A few scary facts about paper towel consumption:
* To make one ton of paper towels, 17 trees and 20,000 gallons of water are polluted.
* Every day, over 3,000 tons of paper towel waste is produced in the US alone.
* Decomposing paper towels produce methane gas, a leading cause of global warming.
* The average person uses 2,400 – 3,000 paper towels at work, in a given year.
So, what are our other options? Even recycled paper towels still produce 100% greater impact, of course, than People Towels, since these are the kind we keep and maintain ourselves. Interestingly, the Japanese have been using this concept for decades – most public restroom facilities in Japan don’t stock paper towels – if you don’t have your own, you’re SOL.
New Year’s resolution to try to find small changes to make to live greener? Or just like the idea of having a 21st century “hanky” that’s cute and good for the environment? I think it’s cool. I’m getting mine soon!
a new beginning always starts at the end… once you will know, my dear, you dont have to fear …
call her green and the winters cannot fade her
by Stace on February 5th, 2010
filed under this crying earth
just a little green, like the nights when the northern lights perform… there’ll be icicles and birthday clothes… – Joni Mitchell, “Little Green”
Today is day two (of three) of my eco-related posts. It doesn’t mean, of course, that I won’t ever do it again. It just means that I had three specific topics on my mind lately. If you missed yesterday, be sure to check out my one-woman anti-bottled-water crusade. Today, however, let’s talk about something a little less “lecture-y” and a lot more fun: Lush. Specifically, their line of amazing solid shampoos have had me raving about this company since August. (And I was already a fan!)
Let me back up a minute here. Lush was a store my cousin Talia and I always walked past on our way to and from our parking spot on Colorado in Pasadena (our favorite LA shopping haunt). We always meant to stop in, but were inevitably rushing to beat Lovely Rita to the car, and had to skip it. In August 2008, however, Delores and I spent the better part of the week in LA at Talia’s, and we finally stopped in Lush for the first time. As they say, the rest is history…it was love at first sniff, really. Such a great place, such cool products that are made fresh in small batches – we wanted to try everything! Fast forward to August of last year, when Layla and I were in Vancouver on holiday. Layla’s personal crusade is anti-palm oil. She’s a huge animal-lover, and she taught me to read labels and do my best to avoid it when possible. Basically, parts of the rainforest are being flat out bulldozed to make room for palm trees – as a result, not only is the rainforest itself being destroyed, but the orangutans that call it home are…well, homeless. Quite literally. I can’t really stand for that. Thankfully, Lush agrees. They decided to stop using it in their soaps, which makes Layla and I both happy. Read more about their position on it all here.
The Vancouver Lush excursion was the beginning of a lifelong relationship – between me and their glorious shampoos. I had read lots about this “solid shampoo” they sell, but I just kept telling myself, I’m just not that crunchy granola! I can’t get down with this! And yet…there I was, every time, sniffing them, curious. I decided I was on vacation, I was going to splurge and give it a shot. Hell, what’s the worst that could happen, right? So I don’t like it? I lose maybe ten bucks tops, and get over it. So I brought Seanik back to the hotel with us. All I can say is I’m slowly using up the liquid shampoos in my bathroom, and I see absolutely no reason to ever buy it again. This solid shampoo is brilliant! I guess I was thinking that it wouldn’t lather very well, that it wouldn’t have the necessary SLS to really get sudsy and amazing, which is what makes most of us feel like our hair is clean. (Burt’s Bees, for example, doesn’t use SLS in a lot of their shampoos…I think that’s great, but it’s not for me. It’s all too soon after washing with these kinds of products that my hair feels greasy. I personally just want a little more lather so the clean feeling lasts longer. Again, I’m a big believer that these are personal choices, and every little bit helps!)
Since then, Seanik has become my staple. It’s the one I keep coming back to – the seaweed really is quite softening, and the sea salt gives my hair an amazing beachy volume, especially if I let it airdry – that’s thanks in part to my wavy texture, I know, but this is a rare feat nonetheless. Plus, the smell is to die for. Of course, I wanted to check out the other varieties…Ultimate Shine was next, and while it lives up to its name, it’s a little boring for me in comparison. Definitely a good starter solid for anyone who’s not sure – I’ve given this one to my dad to check out. (He wasn’t skeptical, but wasn’t ready to buy his own just yet, either. He loved it.) Up next: Godiva. As gorgeous-smelling as it sounds, and there are actual chunks of cocoa and shea butters in it that kind of soften in the heat, which act as conditioners while still effectively cleaning your hair.
By November, I’d gotten Emma curious enough to try one, too. She used my Seanik while we were staying in Palo Alto for the big game, and when we stopped at Lush on the way home, she asked for a sample of Trichomania, their coconut-y solid that’s not a “puck” like the others. (A few of them, actually, are made more like their big slabs of soap, sold by weight rather than by piece.) She’s a fan – she used up the sample and went back for a real slice, and is still loving it. (Though I should be honest here and tell you that she’s not crazy about American Cream, the delicious smelling conditioner she bought to go with it – she uses it to perfume her hair when going out instead of relying on it to be much of a detangling, effective conditioner.)
My brother has always had issues with an itchy scalp. I raved about the bars to him, and eventually we convinced him to try one, and bought him Soak and Float. A lot of people are turned off by the smell (it literally smells like a campfire), but I’m pretty sure that anyone who’s had these issues is used to the tar-based products used to combat itchy scalp. I haven’t asked him what he thinks, but I’m sure he’s loving it…I believe in this product!
For Christmas, I got Jumping Juniper which is a lemony gin & tonic for my head. I love the smell, and it’s a shine-booster. I also got Irresistible Bliss, but haven’t had a chance to try it yet. At the end of the day, though, I believe I’ll love it too. The point is, there are a ton of options to choose from, so I’m confident everyone can find one they like. (For my money, I still think Seanik will always be the one for me!)
So, now that I’ve basically been a one-woman ad for Lush, why should you give these solid shampoos a try? Well, as far as the earth is concerned, you’re doing it a favor! The story is cool: back when Lush first started, they actually couldn’t afford bottles, so they thought that maybe they’d take a stand against packaging and preservatives and make the good stuff in solid form. And voila! The puck was born. According to Lush, the majority of liquid shampoos available on the market are mostly made up of water, surfactants and other chemicals, fragrance, preservatives and plastic bottle and a lid. That’s a whole lot of junk I don’t need! Also, the pucks are very concentrated. You can get between 80-100 washes from one bar, making it the equivalent of 2-3 6.75oz liquid shampoo bottles. So, for every solid shampoo bar Lush sells, they’re preventing about 2.65oz of plastic from being introduced into the environment. Good enough for me!!
Nope, I don’t make a commission. I just love this product, and I honestly believe everyone will. This is an easy switch to greener living, and I think you’ll like it as well (or better!) than what you’ve already been using. Come on, you know you wanna try it!! If you’re not ready to commit, ask your local Lush for a sample – they’re happy to oblige! (This goes for most, if not all products, not just the pucks with which I’m so smitten.)
just a little green, like the color when the spring is born… there’ll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow…
we've got three Rs we're gonna talk about today
by Stace on February 4th, 2010
filed under this crying earth
if you’re going to the market to buy some juice, you’ve got to bring your own bags and you learn to reduce your waste… – Jack Johnson, “The Three Rs”
I’ve been wanting to indulge my tree-hugger side for days, but other topics have kept me from doing so. As such, I now have three things I want to talk about, all of them having to do with small ways we can make changes that are awesome and more eco-friendly. After all, it really is the small things we can each do in our daily lives that add up to big changes globally. I admit, these are not going to be new topics for some of you (certainly anyone that knows me), but one is even new to me, thanks to a fellow tree-huggin’ UCB psych major (thanks Jen)! I hope they’ll inspire you to consider the minor adjustments that can be made to your own life. Tonight, I’ll confine the post to plastic and water. The other topics will follow shortly, but it’s probably too much information for one day!
My biggest personal environmental crusade: the evil of plastic. Brace yourself, here come the scary stats…but please don’t skim over this part, this is why I boycott plastic whenever possible. First of all, there’s a land mass of garbage off the California coast…and it’s more than 2x the size of Texas!! And 90% of it is plastic! I know you probably already know about the horror of plastic bags. Either way, the harsh truth is, well, actually brutal:
*It takes 1000 years for a plastic bag to decompose.
*1,460 Plastic bags are used each year by an average U.S. family.
*12 million Barrels of oil are used to make the plastic bags each year for just U.S. consumption.
*Less than 1% of all plastic bags get recycled in the U.S.
*88.5 billion plastic bags were consumed in the U.S. last year alone.
*A million plastic bags are used every minute, worldwide, and the number is rising.
*Roughly 60–80% of all marine debris, and 90% of floating debris is plastic.
*Plastic resin polymers are so durable that it can take hundreds of years for plastics to break down at sea, and some may never truly biodegrade in the marine environment.
*Each year, the State of California spends approximately $25 million to landfill discarded plastic bags.
*The City of San Francisco alone, estimates dealing with plastic bag litter costs about 17 cents per bag, totaling $8.5 million annually.
*As the annual consumption in LA County is an estimated 6 billion plastic bags.
*Plastic bags (which resemble jellyfish or sponges) are mistaken for food or prey by seabirds, marine mammals, fish, and sea turtles.
*More then 1 million seabirds, 100,000 marine mammals, and countless fish die annually through ingestion of and entanglement in marine debris, including plastic bags.
Good enough reason to carry your own bags, isn’t it? Or at the very least, to insist on paper. But what about other kinds of plastics? Specifically, the kind we drink from. Bottled water is a freaking craze these days, so what’s a 21st century girl to do? First, I swore off it. I bought a couple Nalgene bottles to reuse. Then, of course, the scare over BPA in plastics. To be safe, I did some research and discovered (thanks in part to Jason Mraz’s recommendation) Sigg, which is what I’ve been using ever since. (Though I also own this awesome CamelBak insulated bottle that Jen recommended for its ability to keep my water cold all day.)
This leads me to the great water debate: bottled, or tap? (Read this for the details, if you aren’t yet convinced.) For me, bottled water is consumed in cases of emergency only. And even then, I go to pretty great lengths to find water that’s bottled in glass, rather than plastic. It used to be that you could find at least one of these options (Perrier, Pellegrino, Panna, Voss) in a typical convenience store. Lately, though, it’s gotten scary…these companies are starting to produce… you guessed it: plastic! WTF? This needs to stop. I don’t know where to begin to appeal to their sense of responsibility in preserving the environment. I will look into it, though admittedly probably not until after graduation. (It’s not that far away!) What I can do, though, is appeal to the management of the restaurant where I work to switch from Fiji (plastic) bottled water to a earth-friendlier option like Panna, which is the flat counterpart to the Pellegrino we already serve as a sparkling selection. (By the way, Fiji-lovers… did you know that a third of Fijians do not have access to clean drinking water? It’s true: read more here.) Even better, we’re doing away with plastic-bottled water altogether, and switching to an aerated tap system for flat water, and we’ll still carry Pellegrino for guests who prefer sparkling water. Excellent.
Listen, I get that a lot of people like the convenience of bottled water. It’s everywhere, and I think it’s ridiculous. But it’s a personal choice, and though it kills me, I have to respect the rights of others to choose to continue drinking it. People say, “I recycle!” I’m sorry, but it doesn’t matter. It’s simple economics: supply and demand, right? Even if you personally recycle every bottle after you’ve consumed the water, the fact is, most people don’t. More importantly, just by buying this product, you’re helping to continually demand the supply. This is why I boycott. Because even if one person recycles, it’s just not enough until the production of bottled water slows, or even stops.
So why do I insist on glass? As green guru Debra Lynn Dadd says, “Glass is made from sand, an abundant resource. It is melted down and formed into bottles. It is safe to drink from. The drawbacks are it is heavier to ship, and breaks. At the end of it’s useful life, it can be recycled, melted down, and reformed into a new product.”
I’ll do my best not to judge you if you continue to choose to drink the bottled stuff, but please, at least consider first to try to find the glass bottles at places like Whole Foods or other similar stores. They’re out there if you look. As they say, please, drink responsibly.
recycle, we’ve got to learn to recycle… we’ve got to learn to reduce, reuse, recycle… reduce, reuse, recycle…
