Stack Your Plates To Skip the Plastic Wrap

Did you guys read Super Baby Food? With its 17,000 healthy recipes for maximizing the nutritional value of every morsel your drooling baby eats? The baby equivalent of What To Expect From a Book Chock Full of Guilt Trips for Hormonally Vulnerable Women? Anyhoo, I actually really loved reading Super Baby Food and can heartily recommend it as a curiosity piece. You can read a chapter on grinding seeds and growing your own sprouts and go back to feeding your kid some mushy avocado while you daydream about a decade in which you are able to sleep for more than four consecutive hours. Then read a different book on cutesy food decorations, and go back to feeding your kid some oatios.

But I am totally digressing. This post is about a tricky way to get around plastic wrap and foil. Plastic wrap is fraught with troubles: potential leaching into food, even if it's made from theoretically safer plastics; lack of biodegradability; cutesy holiday patterns. Foil takes a whole lotta energy to produce. So what to do? Use Pyrex and Corningware, 'fo 'sho, but what if you don't have any in the right size and no cash to restock your Tupperware supply with glass and metal tiffins?

Use your *existing* bowls and plates and stack them. Yaron, Super Baby Food author and all-round purveyor of fabulous tips, swears by her particular plates (which I don't have). Whatever. This tip still works just fine for me. Salad plate on top of bowl? Check. Soup bowl on top of cereal bowl? Check. Try it! You're just looking for a close-to-airtight fit. What do you have to lose, except a bowl of leftovers?



For other, you know, cheap and easy tips, check out Thrifty Green Thursday at the Green Baby Guide. Read more!

Take Back The Filter: Clorox Should Recycle Britas in the US, Too!

This is a pretty simple action (thanks Fake Plastic Fish!) that will help close the loop on Brita filters' production cycle. European consumers can recycle their Brita filters but here in North America, we can't.

Beth Terry and some of her compadres have set up a website to guide you through the action cycle but basically, if you're annoyed Brita filter users who don't have a super skinny drill bit handy to refill your own filter with activated charcoal (seriously!) you'll want to:

Go sign the petition to Clorox. Then, if you're feeling extra motivated, you'll want to send Clorox a letter, and finally, you should save your old filters and mail them in 'cause Beth's going to give them back to Clorox at their HQ in Oakland.

Here's the text I slapped into the comment box when I signed the petition, if you want to just echo MamaBird:

"Please let US consumers recycle their filters like European consumers already can. What a waste! Plastic in the landfills will *never go away*! Take responsibility for closing your manufacturing loop, Clorox. --A Brita pitcher user satisfied with the product but outraged at the abdication of disposal responsibility by Clorox."

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Goods for Girls

I've been meaning to explain the Goods for Girls button on my sidebar for ages. And fortuitously, while I have been dilly-dallying, they've gotten an easy cash donation process up for those of us who don't sew!

This is one of those no-brainer situations where a)it's a great cause, b)the person involved is skimming approximately zero off the top, and c)it's easy to give. If you're looking for a worthwhile place to give your green (or your hand-sewn organic flannel sanitary items) look no further.

Crunchy Chicken, an environmentalist mom (which is an understatement - she's amazing) who blogs from Seattle, got motivated when she heard about a huge Proctor & Gamble campaign to give out free, plastic-wrapped tampons in Africa. Great idea, she thought, poor execution (and holy ulterior motive). Most women in these areas are currently using rags, and cultural practices may or may not support tampon usage. Even more importantly, as Crunchy points out, most of the villages in the regions affected still burn their trash.

In many areas of the world, access to adequate menstrual supplies is difficult to come by. Many women and girls rely on rags, newspaper, camel skin or nothing at all for their menstrual needs. A lack of sanitary pads can be a big barrier to a girl's education.

It may seem difficult to comprehend for many women who have easy access to a varied source of supplies, but we can all appreciate how difficult life would be without them. Imagine trying to go to school or work without protection. For many, it brings life to a halt.

Providing disposable supplies creates an additional burden on some communities where solid waste disposal consists of burning the garbage. Since many disposable feminine hygiene products contain plastic, incineration potentially creates an environmental and health hazard.

Thanks for reading!

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Kitchen Tricks

Today's post is all about the kitchen: recycling, reducing waste, and getting the most out of our food in the first place.

How about upcycling those annoying little produce stickers by mailing them to an artist in Colorado (via Emerald City) so he can make some more sweet Warhollian pics? Perfect project for little recyclers, eh?

Speaking of harnessing your trash, Terracycle's an eco-business that sells worm poop in recycled containers. You can sign up to sell them your used drink pouches, cans, yogurt containers, and energy bar wrappers. Sounds like a perfect school project. Or just a project for all of us with worthless recycling options. (via fellow DCUM WrekeHavoc)

Check out They Call You Mommy's post on produce to stop the crisper drawer rot festival (less waste plus more veggies + fruits in you!). Did you know you should store tomatoes stem side down? Basil at room temperature?

How to wash that basil? Those tomatoes? Whip up some homemade veggie wash with this recipe from The Dollar Stretcher.

Speaking of veggies, Culinate had an interesting piece a bit ago about how cooking some vegetables actually enhances their nutritive value. The research is incomplete, but the idea that all veggies are healthier raw isn't true across the board. Broccoli actually gains carotenoids and cancer-fighting compounds when steamed.

If you blow it and end up with some slimy green refuse? And your composter's still not assembled because your instructions decomposed? Where to put that wet trash if you've been using cloth bags? Hmmm? I know you faced this dilemma when you stopped getting bags at the grocery store! Here are two great threads that pose various solutions (biodegradable bags are generally agreed to be impractical for wet trash, hence the dilemma). One's at Emerald City (one commenter suggests keeping wet trash in a plastic bag in the freezer so it doesn't smell, hmmm, that spot's taken by my vegetable stock stash, thank you but maybe you folks have the room) and one's at Ask Metafilter. The AM thread has practical, helpful comments, including a breakdown (pun intended) of anaerobic decomposition and some complicated systems for balancing wet and dry trash.

Last but certainly not least, check out this supremely awesome Table of Condiments That Periodically Go Bad so you can have some clue how long that onion dip can sit in your fridge. (via bblog - 2 weeks.)

*photo courtesy of stickermanproduceart.wordpress.com
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Nuuuurdles

I can't get this out of my mind.






It's from Plastic Ocean, an article about, well, more than what kind of bag you use to transport your groceries. A sailor from Southern California named Charles Moore came across a vast dead zone of trash teeming with plastic (including discarded kayaks) when he went off course while racing. He was so aghast at what he found that now he runs a foundation that sends expeditions out to do oceanic research and educates the public about plastic pollution in the ocean. The Garbage Patch in the Pacific he discovered (similar dead zones are found across the globe) is twice the size of Texas.

The picture above (by Gregg Segal) pretty much captures the egregious impact of plastic on marine life. I'm sure you all have heard that the teeny tiny plastic crap we give out as party favors ends up choking baby seals or that the plastic carriers for your six-pack may end up strangling tiny otters as they grow, or, as it turns out, grossly misshaping a sea turtle. What the picture doesn't capture is how omnipresent plastic is in our lives (start looking around your house -- and start trying to even minimally reduce your plastics usage and you'll become truly alarmed) not to mention how dangerous that plastic can be. The BPA lining our cans that may slowly migrate into our food? Try boatloads of tiny wayward particles of plastic called nurdles that each could bring a toxic load of persistent organic pollutants right to your dinner table...

"The word itself—nurdles—sounds cuddly and harmless, like a cartoon character or a pasta for kids, but what it refers to is most certainly not. Absorbing up to a million times the level of POP pollution in their surrounding waters, nurdles become supersaturated poison pills. They’re light enough to blow around like dust, to spill out of shipping containers, and to wash into harbors, storm drains, and creeks. In the ocean, nurdles are easily mistaken for fish eggs by creatures that would very much like to have such a snack. And once inside the body of a bigeye tuna or a king salmon, these tenacious chemicals are headed directly to your dinner table. One study estimated that nurdles now account for 10 percent of plastic ocean debris."

--Susan Casey, Plastic Ocean in Best Life Magazine

Article above via Fake Plastic Fish, a blog about living plastic-free, and a pretty fascinating read in and of itself.

And now, since it is incredibly difficult to avoid plastic even when you try pretty hard, I thought I would allow a marine mammal to cheer us on up. Thanks, Treehugger, for the link. Hope we can all do Flipper the favor of examining the plastics in our lives to see just how essential we think they are....



Dolphin Play Bubble Rings Read more!

Plastic Smile

I swear I feel like we are all trapped in the Batman movie where the deodorant chemicals interact with the shampoo chemicals which interact with the room deodorizer and lock the poor unsuspecting victims into a Joker smile....

You've read all about plastic stabilizers leaching out of baby bottles and sippy cups aka the Bisphenol-A fiasco of the summer. In case you're needing succinct recommendations, my favorite resources are Z Recommends' extensive research on bottles/sippys and the old Green Guide basic guide to plastics. We recently went cold turkey on CBoy's pacifiers (poor guy), in part bz the plastic shield on his preferred binky was made of #7 plastic, um, yes, the shield that he chews on cavalierly to make a clicking sound while he bounces and grooves. That and the fact that his one true pacifier love was discontinued due to The First Years' fears of latex lawsuits (bad allergies in some kids) and therefore I'd only been able to stock up for the past 6 months via EBay auctions filled with sleep-deprived parents. But I digress....

You can check your own plastics to see what you should keep and what you should toss. Altho skipping plastic altogether may be the safest bet, supposedly safer plastics are labeled #1,2,4, and 5. Look on the bottom for the recycling symbol. If something isn't labeled with these numbers, don't use it for eating/drinking. Do not use plastics #3, 6 and 7 for food consumption and don't reuse items for food consumption not intended for reuse (like sport water bottles, takeout containers or yogurt tubs, much as that hurts my Depression-era sensibilities). That doesn't mean you should chuck these items into the landfill, just use them as plant pots and sandbox toys, not as food containers. Or tuck them away until small humans who ram everything in their mouths stop DOING THAT.

Yes to 1, 2, 4, 5
No to 3, 6, 7
Don't use recycled plastic containers (like takeout containers) in the microwave or let acidic/fatty foods sit in them.
Do remove cling wrap from items you buy at the store asap (it's almost all PVC which is bad news) and put it into another storage container.
Make sure the containers and plastic wrap you do use (even glass and ceramic) are microwave safe (should be labeled).
Don't let plastic wrap touch your food while it's being heated (or just use a paper towel).
Skip the Nalgene bottles (they may leach Bisphenol-A too).
Classico jars make awesome storage containers.

On a related note, check out the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep report as it ranks beauty care products (think baby shampoo) in terms of safety (the FDA isn't the strictest regulatory agency so even though you'd think that anything labeled baby shampoo has to be safe, well, read the report). Things to avoid: phthalates, which are commonly found in perfume and nail polish remover as well as plastics and may be linked to male reproductive disorders among other issues -- they're banned in the EU, and inexplicably still here in American products (like the iPhone). You can find phthalate-free nail polish/remover at Whole Foods. It's also worth avoiding parabens, which are a preservative in most shampoos, conditioners, moisturizers, even though the jury's still out on safe levels of these chemicals. They are a potential carcinogen and may mimic estrogen (high paraben levels were found in a breast cancer study). The 365 brand of beauty products is pretty cheap, believe it or not.

Interesting thread on raising an eco-conscious baby at this WashPost online discussion transcript basically urges us just to buy less stuff. Which is certainly not going to be your takeaway from my lunchbox suggestions, which are more along the line of investments you'd make to avoid creating a pile of disposable lunchstuffs like juiceboxes and the like. But then again, I don't just want a green baby, I want a green healthy baby. Heck, I want a green, healthy baby who actually eats her lunch!

In terms of avoiding plastics in your kid's lunchbox (I don't know about you but that's what almost all of our kidgear to date was made of until recently), check out Sigg (aluminum, though, which has raised health concerns in the past) or Klean Kanteen (stainless steel, but make a chirpy noise) bottles, Thermos Foogo storage jars, Reynolds Cut Rite wax paper sandwich bags (looove these! hardly ever available at Whole Foods, grab em when you can -- I'm going to try this online vendor), sandwich wraps, and Built NY lunchbags (go leadfree on the reusable lunch sacks). I really love the efficiency and food variety you can cram into Bento lunchboxes but wish they weren't filled with plastic tubs. And while we are talking kidlunch, do check out the archives of veganlunchbox for awesome ideas. If you want to buy any of this expensive enviro lunch packaging, check out Lunch in a Box and see if their coupon code/link to Reusable Bags -- can get you 20% off your order.

Speaking of bags, the Washington Post ran a phenomenal comparison of the enviro cost of paper vs. plastic bags recently. Bottom line tho: forget paper, forget plastic, we should all bring our own durned bags. In case you don't have 1,001 political/tech conference tchotchke bags already floating around your front hall closet, there are lots of clever reusable grocery bags out there. Makes me smile thinking back to college when roommates L and S and I used to wear our sweatshirts to the grocery store, take them off, and wrap up our food purchases in the zipped hoodies. I bet hoodies don't have crazy chemicals in them.... Read more!

Water, Water, Everywhere...and Nary a Drop To Drink

So, while I was pregnant with CBoy, the Post reported that male fish in the Potomac were starting to bear eggs. Sigh. This after the lead scare during EGirl's babyhood, and echoes in 2004 of the ecoli/coliform bacteria warnings in the early 90s that made me start boiling and then buying water in the first place.

I know that the environmentally friendly thing to do is to embrace tap water, as most of it is safe to drink, but I think the movement to skip bottled water (did you know that only 23% of those horrid little plastic bottles are recycled?!) may very well stagnate in our nation's capitol if the Potomac's water quality continues to go downhill. After all, bottled vs. tap in DC happens to be a faceoff between questionable quality and absurdity. Why, just this very morning, the Washington Post noted that female fish are starting to become "intersex," too, because of pollution in the Potomac. We'd used a variety of filters over the years but opted to buy bottled water in response to lead scares and to have water delivered as a response to hormone disruption press.

Another thing that fueled a change in the sourcing of my (for those who know me, prodigious) water consumption? Seltzer is not regulated like other drinking water bz it is considered a food by the FDA! So as I have long thought, Lord knows where the water in that seltzer comes from. (see the substance of a 1999 NRDC letter to the FDA).

The recent plastics press about Bisphenol-A leaching made me finally get off my duff and get rid of the plastic bottles. I had to solve the conundrum of getting clean water delivered in giant, 5-gallon #7 bottles that leach endocrine disruptors into said water. Our family is now getting water delivered from Arkansas, believe it or not (I know, I know, where *would* there be more hormone runoff than in a poultry state?!), extensively tested water sourced from a natural spring inside 600+ acres of protected land and delivered in glass bottles. Glass 5-gallon bottles that are heavy enough to make for some quality hoisting noises and expensive enough to provoke some quality sputtering noises at bill-paying time. I shudder to think about the environmental impact of shipping our water from Arkansas to DC but when I emailed our fabulous new mayor about my concerns (hormone disruption up at the tippy top with some gratuitous comments about the possibility of organic school lunch offerings a la Berkeley's affiliation with Alice Waters) his staff sent me back a chipper little snippet saying he'd be working on making healthy school lunches for *all* kids in the District. Sigh...

Next up on the agenda is to get a whole house water filter. If you own your own home, I say go for it. If you want to start thinking about drinking water issues in general, NRDC did a tap water study in 2003 called What's On Tap? that's a great place to start. Consumer Reports has a 2007 report on water filters that's helpful, too.

But what I really need to do is just drink more wine (organic wine from the Prestons should do nicely!) Read more!