It contains the ice cream. It biodegrades. It provides calories. In other words, it has value all by itself. It is not wasted resources. If we must have packaging, why can’t all of it be designed in such a way? In other words, let’s make sure the resources we use deliver value instead of just […]
Consumerism and Materialism
Making green folks your customers–especially if, by green, you mean everyone
So I dropped and broke my cell phone which I bought pre-owned from ATT. Now that I had broken it, I didn’t want to buy a new one–not even a new used one. I wanted to get it repaired. The personal price of new was too much. So was the planetary price (which, by the […]
LVGRN: The knife at my throat
Last week on this blog, a man–namely me–dared to suggest to suggest that a reusable “feminine hygiene” product–namely, the menstrual cup–might keep billions of tampons out of the landfills. It only seems fair, therefore, to suggest a product for men that would keep millions of plastic razors out of the landfill. According to Grist, 2 billion […]
LVGRN: Getting rid of tampons
According to Grist: Most tampons are made from rayon-cotton blends — an important distinction, because rayon is often chlorine-bleached, a process that releases the cancer-causing chemical dioxin. This toxin builds up in fatty tissue and has been linked to endometriosis, immune-system suppression, and other health problems. Since it’s in a product intended for our, ahem, most intimate of locations, […]
LVGRN: Save millions of trees with recycled toilet and facial tissue
Greenpeace wrote to me today. They said: Greenpeace Senior Forest Campaigner Rolf Skar was on Fox’s America’s Newsroom yesterday morning to talk about Greenpeace’s new “Recycled Tissue and Toilet Paper Guide.” Megyn Kelly issued a challenge to her co-host Bill Hemmer: Could Bill, with his eyes closed, tell the difference between recycled toilet paper and Charmin brand toilet paper, […]
My reusable jar makes the funny papers
You may remember that, to avoid trashing disposable cups and bottles, I use a peanut butter jar as both my reusable coffee cup and my refillable water bottle. Well, today, cartoonist and animator Alex Hallatt, whose comic strip Arctic Circle appears on the Daily Green, emailed me this. Click on the image to enlarge. Enjoy!
Prioritizing resource use to improve lives
I’ve thought a lot about the definition of waste. The way I figure out, a good way of defining waste is the use of planetary resources that don’t improve quality of life. I like this view a lot. Instead of environmental effectiveness being based on the restrictive view that we should simply “use less,” we […]
The role of television in American resource use
At a certain stage during the No Impact project, we got rid of the television, which kept making use feel that spending less and using fewer resources made us losers compared to the people we saw on the screen. Duane Elgin, author of Voluntary Simplicity, said something that caught my eye (thanks for sending Rosa!) […]