Green Is My Name

I would like to introduce you to the organic section of one of the supermarkets, Key Food,  in my neighborhood:

That’s right its organic food, wrapped in plastic, on Styrofoam trays.

So, I put on my best Fake Plastic Fish hat, and wrote them a letter:

To Whom It May Concern:

I frequently shop at your 22-15 31st Street location in Astoria, New York. I love that you have an organic produce section and would love to be able to make purchases from that section of your store. I believe that eating organic produce is a smart and healthy choice, and I applaud you for including it in your inventory.

However, I am concerned by the way you choose to package the organic goods. Produce is placed on Styrofoam trays and then wrapped in thin plastic film. As you may know, both Styrofoam and plastic do not biodegrade and will last forever. After a small moment of use, this packaging will become permanent trash. Instead of using this additional packaging, do you think it would be possible to instead sell the produce free of packaging, in the same style you sell conventionally grown goods?

I look forward to hearing from you,

Caitlin

Lets see what happens from here.

Lets just put it out there: I love pizza.

I want to find ways to still make my favorite meals at home while lessening the amount of waste I produce. When my fiancee and I make pizza at home we usually buy premade dough that comes in a plastic bag, and some kind of cheese, which also comes in a plastic bag.

So step one for Pizza: eliminate the plastic that comes with buying pre-made dough.

I admit it, the only kind of pizza I will tolerate is thin crust pizza. So when I saw a post over at The Frugal Girl for a thin crust pizza dough I knew that this recipe was the one I wanted to try.

The results? Pretty darn delicious pizza.

Since it was my first time making this recipe, I followed the directions exactly. I think that the next time I make it I would want the dough to be a bit less….loose. It was super floppy! But for now, this sure beats both the expense and plastic involved in buying pre made dough.

The next, and of course, harder step is to find a way to get cheese on the pizza without plastic packaging.  For now though, I’ve made a simple small change that gave me a great result. And, it was more fun then buying pre-made pizza.

One of the first conscience changes I made to my life was the purchase of a reusable water bottle.

I bought a Sigg bottle from mysigg.com for a total of $27.99 after shipping on 1/26/08. This means its been 472 days since I made the original purchase. I was so worried that the price was too high and I would never use it enough to justify the price. HA. (Now of course I see them everywhere I go, no need to worry about shipping and all the extra mess that goes with it.)

It did take a few days to arrive so I am going to round down and say I have had it in my possession for 465 days. Ive used it everyday since it arrived, meaning it has cost me $0.06 a day! What a bargain. I get my water straight from the tap without any sort of extra at home filtration, so that means I only spend six cents on water a day! SIX CENTS!

The bottle has certainly gotten a lot of abuse from both myself and my fiancee over the past year, so it does have some scrapes and dents, but no holes to speak of so all is well. I don’t mind the marks, I think of them as battle scars really. There is even a dent placed near the top that functions quite well as a thumb rest.

The bottle holds 1 liter which is great for car rides and to bring to work, but I must admit I am itching to get a slightly smaller one. It would be great to take with me when I know I have a day with a lot of walking ahead of me. The extra weight can be a real pain in the butt sometimes. It is never to hard to fill it up again so I wouldn’t be losing anything by not having the larger bottle with me. Also my fiancee tends to drink all the water in one gulp when we are together so I would love to be able to designate one bottle as mine and one as his.

I am surviving just fine without it for now, I figure I will wait until it somehow works it way to me. Maybe Christmas or something like that. I admit to having a crush on the 18 oz Kleen Kanteen in Green Moss!

Of course the best thing is that I haven’t purchased any water in containers of any size since I started using my bottle, and I have bought no single serve juices et cetera since then either. Plus, I think I am even better hydrated then I was in the past since I always have something to drink nearby.

My boyfriend and I just took down all our Christmas decorations, and as we were putting them away, I couldn’t help but be pretty satisfied with what we had done.

Our tree was decorated mostly with handmade ornaments, or ornaments that were given to us by others who were no longer going to be using them. The ones that we made by hand were made from old magazines from my office waiting room, and old toilet paper holders- and they looked SO COOL, if I do say so myself. It was exciting hanging up the ornaments we had made, I had so much invested in my tree. Plus it reminded me that of all the ornaments on my tree growing up, the ones I liked putting on the most were the ones I had made in school. (Heres looking at you macaroni ornament.)

Our Christmas lights (though bought new 2 years ago) are LED and have a lifetime of use left in them. Our tree was real and will be brought down to our local park this weekend to be turned into mulch as a part of a NYC parks department program. Our tree holder is all metal, so should ever break it too can be recycled.

Presents were either wrapped with previously used wrapping paper, or packaging paper from gift shipments. I even sewed a bag to be used as the gift wrapping…and it didn’t fall apart.

While not everything we gave was used or homemade, I am happy with the percentage of gifts that were. Its a great point to be starting from for next year.

Are there things I could have done better? Of course, but for now, I am thrilled with what I did do! Now I know what to do to set myself up for an even better “green” holiday season next year, and I cant wait to give it all a try.