Napkins

Seriously, buy cloth napkins! They look elegant, save money, and are reusable! Our family has had the same white cloth napkins for 6 years. They are a little ragged looking and we have some newer ones to use when company is around. Just think of all the napkins we've saved from going into the landfill over the years and the money we've saved by not buying single use napkins all the time!! They can be really cheap if you are a sewer like me and use all those scraps in your fabric bin to make up a bunch (plus you are keeping those scraps from going into the trash, if you can bear to get rid of them)! Use a nice heavy duty fabric for this and they'll last forever.

You are going to be washing towels and whites anyways so they won't use much more water and electricity. You can even use them multiple times before tossing them in the laundry, especially if they aren't heavily used at dinner time.

So that's at home, what about when you go out and get fast food. They always stuff loads of paper napkins into the bag. What then? Well, I certainly don't want to throw them away unused, so I keep them in the car in the console and hand them back to the kids if they spill a snack on themselves. That way you always have something to clean up a mess in a snap and you were going to have to do something with all of those napkins anyways. Also, if you are out eating at the restaurant, remember to only grab what you actually need. For our family of four we grab 2-3 napkins and share. If we need more we can always go back (and have done that before). NO! Leaving the extra on the table is NOT a good idea. The next people are NOT going to use them, do you?

Try encouraging your local eateries to switch to recycled, unbleached paper napkins if possible. Just mention how nice it would be to know that your favorite place thinks green and maybe it'll sink in!

Paper, some info.

Like with plastic, I wanted to give some quick information on paper before moving too heavily into tips. We currently live in a very disposable society where we use so many paper products that are thrown away. We use paper towels, paper plates, paper cups, paper tissues, paper boxes,paper diapers, paper everything!! Luckily paper is easily recyclable, all curbside services take it and finding PCW (post consumer waste) products is relatively easy. But just because it can be recycled or can be found in PCW form doesn't mean we should be so quick to mindlessly pick up paper products when we have a good alternative.

Here are a few facts about paper according to Earth 911:

• In 2006, the amount of paper recovered for recycling averaged 357 pounds for each man, woman, and child in the United States
• Every ton of paper recycled saves more than 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space
• By 2012, the paper industry’s goal is to recover 55 percent of all the paper Americans consume for recycling, which is approximately 55 million tons of paper
• More than 37 percent of the fiber used to make new paper products in the United States comes from recycled sources

Recycling your paper is very important, and currently Americans are doing a fairly good job of this, according to paperrecycles.org:

In 2007, an all-time high 56 percent of the paper consumed in the U.S. was recovered for recycling. The 54.3 million tons of paper recovered equal approximately 360 pounds for every man woman and child in America.

The paper industry has set a new goal of 60 percent recovery by 2012. We'll need your help to get there.

What does all this good news mean? Well, that we are well on our way to becoming a more green society and our awareness on this issue is heightened. However, we need to spend more time looking for PCW materials to "close the gap" in the paper products we do buy. If you can't find a product containing PCW material, then consider writing the company that makes your favorite product and let them know how important it is to you as a consumer that they use PCW products. Emails are very efficient for this and don't take very long since most companies have a website with a "Contact Us" area. How do you find PCW material? Well, this information from Earth 911 can help you with that:

Recycled

Also, make sure to look for the Recycled symbol which means that product is made out materials used before. There may be a statement next to this symbol that mentioning the percentage of recycled-content in the product.

Recyclable

Confused by this symbol? Don’t be. This one means a product can be recycled – not that it necessarily contains recycled content.

Now, if we are doing a better job of recycling paper and buying PCW paper, then why do we need to increase our awareness of paper products? Well, there are still many pitfalls in paper and many ways to decrease our usage of paper. One of the major pollution problems with papers are dioxins (link):

Dioxins and furans are some of the most toxic chemicals known to science. A draft report released for public comment in September 1994 by the US Environmental Protection Agency clearly describes dioxin as a serious public health threat. The public health impact of dioxin may rival the impact that DDT had on public health in the 1960's. According to the EPA report, not only does there appear to be no "safe" level of exposure to dioxin, but levels of dioxin and dioxin-like chemicals have been found in the general US population that are "at or near levels associated with adverse health effects."

...Dioxin pollution is also affiliated with paper mills which use chlorine bleaching in their process...

Dioxin is released into our environment and makes it way into our food supply, we then ingest the dioxins and since they love fat they stick around in our body until they metabolize out. In order to decrease dioxin production we need to encourage paper mills to stop bleaching our paper products. Buying chlorine free paper (PCF) products (whether it's our paper towels or disposable diapers) is a good start. Again, contacting your favorite brand companies and requesting unbleached paper is another way to get the ball rolling. We need to start associating all that white paper with being unclean and toxic instead of the current psychology that all that white paper means clean and pristine.

A second factor in the problem with paper is the lost of our forests. Forests not only provide shade and habitat for animals, it also scrubs our air clean and provides oxygen for our planet. Deforestation is still a problem that many people ignore. This quote from National Geographic's Green Guide explains the issue:

Nearly half of the trees cut in North America are made into paper. Every year, from Washington state to Georgia, over 3.8 million acres of forest are clearcut, leaving wide swaths of stumps marking our insatiable demand. Nor does it stop at our borders; our wood pulp and virgin paper products are increasingly sourced from South America and China.

Trees are incredibly important for our health and the health of our planet. There are companies out there who are good stewards and farm trees in sustainable ways as well as provide PCF paper and they need to be encouraged in the marketplace. Even some of the more traditional paper manufacturers are getting into the game and they too need to be encouraged by buying their PCF and PCW products. There are, however, many ways in which to reduce your use of paper altogether and that will be the subject of my upcoming blogs. For now, I ask you to look for products that contain the previously shown "recycled" logo and look for unbleached or PCF products to replace existing paper products in your household.

Styrofoam!!

Seriously, stop using it if at all possible. There are so many recyclable alternatives to this product that we should be capable of discontinuing it's use. OK, so like everything, it does have it's advantages, it's lightweight so transporting is fairly easy and it's inexpensive. The problem comes in that it's typically not available for recycling, despite being easy to recycle back into it's original form (egg crates can be recycled back into egg crates), which is not true of other plastics. However, the fact that it is so lightweight does not make it a desirable good to recycle since recyclers can't make much money off of it. Also, it's lightweight nature makes it susceptible to fly off to various parts of our planet and polluting everywhere. According to Earth 911:

• Because it is so light (comprised of 98 percent air) it is easily carried by wind and water currents to all reaches of our planet. Its unsinkable nature makes it a main component of marine debris
• It is non-biodegradable and can remain as pollution in our environment for nearly 1,000 years

So to continue my one step at a time I'm going to focus on egg cartons. Pick eggs that come in paper cartons. These are easily recyclable as well as reusable, you can use them for crafts for your kids as well as to start seeds in and you can plant the container too! Even the clear plastic egg containers are preferable if your recycling center takes them.

More Plastic Bags!!

So, hopefully you showed up at your grocery store this weekend with your cloth bags, or at least the intention of using paper bags. You get your non-salmonella tomatoes and realize, "Oh no, the only bags to put these in are plastic!" What do you do now? Well, again this is about reduction, so there are a few things you can try.

1) You can put things that won't bruise easily (like bananas, avocados, etc) in your basket loosely (i.e. no bag). This will help reduce the number of bags you use, after all everything is going into a larger bag anyways when you go through check out. Plus, some of your other items that are bunched together, like tomatoes, could also be carefully placed in your basket without a bag as well.

2) OK, again this is where I point you to an item you can purchase. There are produce bags that exist that are extremely lightweight to help you replace those little plastic produce bags. Google "cloth produce bags" to see a variety of bags available for sale. If you are crafty, you can make your own using a light-weight muslin and a cotton drawstring. If you don't know how to sew, making a bag is about the easiest way you could start. Typically these bags come in two sizes, one for leafy vegetables and one for smaller items. I would, however, like to point out that you may want to avoid washing these in hot water since they tend to shrink, and avoid bleach.

I hope this gives you one more step that you can take towards reducing your plastic bag use. There are other ways that I may point out here and there, but they tend to fall under other categories that I will touch on at a later time.

BTW, you can now sign up for email updates of this blog. Just fill in the email box at the top right corner of this page.

Reducing Plastic Bottles!

So, first we reduce our reliance on plastic bags, now we need to start thinking about the other large plastic waste producer, plastic bottles. So hold on to your socks, here are the facts about plastic bottles according to Earth 911. Americans buy an estimated 28 billion bottles of water each year, over 80% of which end up in landfills. For each liter of water that you drink of bottled water, 3 liters were used in filling it up and 1/4 liter of oil was used to get it to your mouth. If you recycle one single bottle you will be saving enough energy to burn a 60 watt light bulb for 6 hours. In 2006 over 17 million barrels of oil was used to make plastic bottles, enough to fuel 100,000 cars for that year.

So, we all know that we should recycle bottles when we are done with them, but that's not really enough. Buying all those bottles in the first place is the real problem. Now, I again am not claiming you have to swear off bottled water, after all what do you do if you are out without your water and your kids start screaming that they are thirsty, or if you are at a festival and it gets hot?! The first step in reducing your dependence on these bottles of water, is to get some sort of water filter (our house has one under the sink) and refill the bottles that everyone has lying around in their car. Now, I know there was some email going around saying not to do this, but this Snopes report pretty well debunks that theory. However, it is important to note that if you taste plastic, it's probably not a good sign.

The next step is to get a more durable bottle that you can use to take your water around with you. Now, I'm not here to sell you a bunch of stuff, but I will occasionally post a product that is interesting. I do not necessarily endorse each of these products, but I want you to know that these products exist. This is one of those times. I highly suggest that if you can put aside some money to buy a SIGG bottle (Google it, I'm not going to link to a retailer). There are probably some generic versions of this bottle. You may ask, "why not just the durable plastic bottles I see everywhere?" The answer is that those are also good, but the point of reducing our dependence on plastic isn't helped by buying these bottles. When these bottles do eventually end up in the landfill at least the metal one will biodegrade as opposed to the plastic ones. Not to mention it's easier to find recyclers to take metal as well. While the SIGG bottles still contain some plastic components it's use is pretty limited.

Aside from the environmental reason to do this, there are some really good monetary reasons to take these steps. Simply, at 24-20 oz. bottles for $5 (this is what I saw most recently in an ad), and individuals should drink at least 3 of these a day, one person would be spending $228/yr. For a family of four that is almost $900/yr. So if you gawked at the price of a SIGG bottle you can now see how very cheap they really are. They pay for themselves in a few week's time. Anyways, isn't $900 a year helpful in taking your family on a nice little vacation? See, not only am I lazy, but I'm cheap, but "the lazy, cheap, environmental mom" was getting kind of wordy (or so my husbands says)!

Reduce those plastic bags!!

OK, so the last post explained why reducing plastic was a good idea, but it seems everything is packaged in plastic now a days. So what's the point? You may be thinking that by going over to paper you're still doing just as much damage by cutting down trees and if you are like most you probably forget to take your cotton bags with you when you go to the store. Even worse, you probably never think about using anything other than plastic in any of the stores besides the grocery store. So what do you do?

First, understand the environmental impact of those plastic bags. As stated in the blog "Plastic" below, plastic does not biodegrade, are made of non-renewable products (oil), and are not generally available for curbside recycling pickup. In fact, according to Earth 911, only 5.2% of plastic bags that entered the MWS were recycled in 2005.

On the other hand, many grocery stores use paper bags that have some Post-consumer Recycled content (PCR). I know that local to me that Harris Teeter uses recycled paper bags.

Paper Bags - All Harris Teeter paper grocery bags are produced from 100% recycled paper. By upgrading our paper bag from 35% recycled paper in 2007 to 100% recycled product we estimate we are able to save 22,293 trees a year.

This means a couple of things. One, that paper bags does not necessarily equal cutting down a tree. While there is still energy used to recycle and repurpose the paper into new bags, it isn't quite as bad an environmental impact as when you use paper bags with 0% PCR content. Two, in a pinch, having forgotten your cloth bags, paper is a good substitute and can be thrown into your curbside recycling bin (BTW, many curbside recycling programs don't even need you to sort your recyclables and this is incredibly convenient, if you don't know how your's works call your local municipal waste pick-up provider). Three, the baggers tend to use fewer paper bags than plastic for the same number of groceries, so you are reducing the total number of bags used. And lastly, They stand up better in your trunk than plastic bags.

Now the optimum is to use cloth bags wherever you go. Luckily, many stores are now making fashionable or easy to use cloth bags. Target has a very inexpensive cloth bag that folds up into a zippered little wallet-sized pocket. These are easy to store, get 2-3 and keep in the bottom of your purse or bag. Other places have bags that also fold into a tiny zippered compartment and hang on the side of your bag by a clip. But, if you already have lots of cloth bags and don't want to go buying new ones (because after all, it doesn't make ecological sense to go out and buy something new when you already have that item at home) then consider placing your bags inside of each other when you've unloaded them, then hang them on the handle of your door that you go out most. The next time you go to your car, grab the bags and place them in a visible area for use on your next shopping trip.

Now personally, I've moved to a system to combine these two aforementioned methods. I have a small folding bag that I keep in my purse for emergency uses. All my other bags get unloaded in the house and placed inside the largest of my bags. As soon as I complete this I then hang them in the kitchen to be taken out to the car immediately (although I am going to start altering this pattern by placing them prominently on my front door handle). Once the bags are in the car they are placed between the two rear seats that the kids sit in, on the floor. My daughter even sees them and reminds me when we get to the store (so long as they are there in the car). One friend even suggested that her older daughter was held responsible for remembering the bags when grocery shopping. In the event they got in and forgot the bags, the daughter had to go back out and get them, which only happened a couple of times (let's face it, it's easier to train our kids to do these things than it is to train ourselves sometimes, and that's why I'm the Lazy Environmental Mom).

Now, what about those times you are out shopping on those large money trips, like back-to-school or Christmas? It can be tough to have enough bags for those, right! Well, again, this isn't about being perfect environmentalists (baby-steps), so we want to focus on reduction of plastic bags. So once you hit your first shopping stop, tell the cashiers at subsequent stops to not bother bagging your purchase and place it inside the previous store's bag (let's face it, that's what you're going to do with that bagged item anyways). At first the cashiers may not get it, but as they see more and more of us doing it, it will become second nature to everyone involved. Once you run out of room in the first bag accept a new bag at the next store. Just think of it, you could actually go Christmas shopping and instead of bringing home 15 different bags that only have one or two items in each one, you could probably cut that down to 5-6 bags. You could even ask up front at the first store for the largest bag they have! Then when you get home use that gigantic bag for your trash can and you just saved a little dough in the mix!

Plastic

Two posts in one day!!! I must have time on my hands! Not really, but I felt it was important to jump into this and so here I am again today. Most times I will be presenting a small step with the reasoning behind it, but I'm going to start out a little differently. This post is strictly informational. I'm going to start out by explaining some of the reasons why you want to reduce your use of plastic products. Then I will start doing posts about small steps to take to reduce your reliance on plastic products. I will admit that sometimes getting a lot of information like this can be a little deterring and that it may also cause one to feel overwhelmed. However, I believe it is of utmost important that we understand what reasons there are to doing this and this particular topic is rather large and daunting so the reason deserves it's own individual post. So here it goes.

Plastics are a large and difficult category to traverse when speaking of the environment. Our society is reliant on plastics for everything from the bags we bring our groceries home in to the refrigerator that we put those groceries in as well as tremendous commercial uses for plastic. However, we as consumers need to understand a few facts about plastics. First, plastic is made from petroleum. According to Smart Cycle 7% of our oil goes to making plastics, 50% of which is used in packaging. Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour and plastic makes up 15% of our municipal solid waste (MSW). The following information from Smart Cycle is a direct comparison of the energy used for recycling versus the energy and consumption for making new plastics:

Recycled PET Plastic vs. New Virgin Plastic

Energy
11 million BTUs per ton vs. 70 million BTUs per ton

Greenhouse Gas Generation
0.2 ton vs. 4 tons

Air Emissions
0.02 ton vs. 3 tons

Water Discharge
0.5 lbs per ton vs. 10 lbs per ton

Solid waste generation
100 lbs per ton vs. 200 lbs per ton

SolidWasteDistrict.com states that

in 2001, the United States generated more than 11 million tons of plastics in the MSW stream as containers and packaging, over 6 million tons as nondurable goods, and more than 8 million tons as durable goods.

If you add that up you see that means over 25 million tons of plastics went into the MSW in 2001. This is up 11-fold since 1960. The many sources I looked up estimated anywhere between 25-33% of recyclable plastics are actually recycled. There are many reasons for this from a lack of curbside service in some areas, to a lack of use of knowledge and or effort on the part of consumers.

Plastics do not biodegrade, instead they photo degrade, which means that sunlight breaks plastic into smaller portions of plastic. They therefore break down into smaller and smaller pieces that then contaminate our soil and water. For more information on the life cycle of plastics, check out Earth 911's webpage that deals with the subject (it's their focus this month).

Unfortunately, we've all seen plastic bags and bottles on the side of the road and on our beaches, so not all of our plastic waste ends up in the MSW system in an appropriate manner. So what has happened to all this plastic waste? Well, many will be surprised to learn that much of this debris (as well as other pieces of trash) has ended up in the pacific ocean, in an area that many many have dubbed "Garbage Island", “Asian Trash Trail”, “Trash Vortex” or “Eastern Garbage Patch”. According to Greenpeace International:

The very thing that makes plastic items useful to consumers, their durability and stability, also makes them a problem in marine environments. Around 100 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year of which about 10 percent ends up in the sea. About 20 percent of this is from ships and platforms, the rest from land.

This trash that ends up in the sea then gets caught up in the North Pacific sub-tropical gyre forming a plastic soup that is twice the size of Texas! There is a lot of information on this "Trash Vortex" that can be viewed in a multi-part video series on VBS TV's website. I highly suggest watching it, but be warned that it is quite sad to see the state of our ocean and what our consumer products have done to it.

While this particular piece of information can be quite overwhelming and make one feel that there is nothing that can be done, do please keep in mind that while there is nothing that we can currently do about what's already out there, we can stop or slow down what's added to it. That's what we are going to do over the next several posts, as well as, hopefully, the rest of our lives. So stay tuned for up coming tips on how to lower your impact by reducing your plastic use!