Two very different Hawaii trips

This weekend, Anna C. of the blog BYOTalk and I will both be in Hawaii. I'll be in Waikiki kicking back for a few days visiting my parents and getting my blowdryer fixed. No big deal. I'll continue to blog while I'm away, and I'll be back on Tuesday.

Anna, on the other hand, will be joining the crew of the Alguita oceanographic research vessel in Hilo for a month-long trip to the North Pacific Gyre to study marine debris concentrations. This is the area of the "Pacific Garbage Patch," which I'm sure most of you have heard about by now. (If not, please read the article, Plastic Ocean.)

This will be the 8th voyage for the Alguita, and this time the crew plans to "venture further west than ever before, investigating possible concentrations North of Hawaii, and just East of the International Date Line. It may be that the areas of the North Pacific Gyre with the highest concentrations of marine debris have yet to be seen or studied."

That quote was taken from the expedition's blog, http://orvalguita.blogspot.com, which will be updated with posts and images during the coming month. I've posted a link to it on my sidebar, and I encourage those who are interested to track the progress of this voyage to find out just what plastic is doing to our oceans.

I have to admit, I'm really envious of Anna and the crew. I'd love to be going out there to see for myself. But in a phone conversation a few days ago, Anna told me that the seas are predicted to be very rough and the trip challenging. I'll look forward to experiencing the journey vicariously through the blog, and I hope you will too.
 

 Tweet this!

Living in a material world

The holiday season has been over for several weeks now. And for several weeks, I've been contemplating the complaint we seem to hear every year from social critics bemoaning the rampant materialism of our culture. People, they say, care more about buying new things than they do about caring for each other and the planet. These critics decry the commercialism of Christmas. And while I agree that our society has become dangerously acquisitive, I'm wondering if the solution isn't for people to become more materialistic rather than less.

If we really were materialistic, wouldn't we care more for the materials of the world than we do? Wouldn't we spend more time enjoying the material things that we already have rather than mindlessly consuming more? Wouldn't we place a higher value on each item with which we come into contact, considering where it's been and where it will end up when we're finished with it, than thoughtlessly tossing things away as if they never existed in the first place?

A few months ago, I had the privilege of giving a presentation on the do's and don'ts of Bay Area recycling at a Green Sangha meeting. This was during the "practice discussion" portion of the meeting, "practice" meaning a state of mindful awareness and compassion that Green Sangha members strive to cultivate. At the end of my talk, someone asked me how this information informed my practice. At first, the question took me by surprise. But after a few seconds of thought, I realized that having to consider the proper way to dispose of things forces us to slow down and appreciate, be mindful of, the materials that pass through our hands, the matter that sustains us and also gives us pleasure.

I've heard complaints from people when asked to recycle their waste that it's too hard to remember to do and takes up too much time. My gut feeling is that if having to consider the full lifespan of a product causes us to slow down, then perhaps we'll be less likely to consume more than we actually need and learn to appreciate what we already have.

I've also heard of folks doing "gratitude practice" where they silently thank God or the Universe or Fate or whatever for each thing they encounter as they go through the day. As I've said before, I'm not a religious person, my personal feeling being that this amazing physical world that we live in is it for us, so you'd maybe expect me to value the materials of this world. But believers in a Creator of the universe also have every reason to give thanks and to slow down and care for the material pieces of this world as well. After all, if God created them, if they are in fact parts of God, who are we to use and dispose of them recklessly?

My husband Michael, a.k.a. Mr. Linguistics, told me that actually, the word "material" comes from the Latin "mater" meaning "mother." So instead of meaning selfish overconsumption, the word "materialism" ought to mean care for our mother, our Mother Earth, in fact.

Maybe we can learn to savor the small, seemingly insignificant objects in our lives as if they too mattered. Weight loss programs teach us to slow down while eating and enjoy each bite in order not to overconsume. This is a tricky practice for me. I like to wolf down my meal as much as the next person with "food issues." But maybe we'd lighten our bodies and also our impact on the earth if we tried to be more materialistic, not less.

Let's take a breath and consider the paperclip as well as the paper, the cheese wrapper as well as the cheese, the gate hook and also the blister pack in which it was sold, the cat litter as well as the cats, our plastic eye drops container as well as our drops and pain-free eyes, or our filter cartridge in addition to the clean water it provides.

These are all parts of our material world, our mother, our earth. And whether she was designed by a Creator or by random chance, she's the only one we have. Let's honor her, and all her trillions of pieces, by considering more and consuming less.
 

 Tweet this!

Naughty kitties pass the test, as does our drinking water!

I was surprised how easily the kitties went into the box two weeks ago. The blue plastic box that I got from a very nice person on Freecycle. They were so quiet in there, I had to check a couple of times to make sure I hadn't imagined putting them in. Good thing they get along with each other. We will need to get another cat carrier for when they are bigger and can't both be stuffed into the same box. Freecycle or Craigslist. No new plastic for these cats!

So we went to the vet and got shots and blood drawn. Well, they did. I just felt their pain from a distance. And today we got the results. No toxoplasma gondii for these babies. Their poop is certified flushable, as is their litter! And pregnant women are safe in my house. Hurray! We're still using the Swheatscoop litter, although I'm not crazy about the smell. I do sprinkle baking soda into it to absorb odors. I've heard that pine litter is good. But I really do want something that's certified flushable so I don't have to make decisions about what kind of bag to gather it in and whether to landfill it or find some way to compost.

And to anyone who thinks we are using too much water by flushing their litter, we don't have kids. So I think we're allowed this one. (Wow. That was a little snippy of me.)

Oh, and speaking of snippy, Arya has been destroying my legs trying to climb me like a tree. Thanks, David. So I asked the vet to show me how to clip their nails, and now they're safe for a while. Then, I went out to find my own kitty nail clippers, and guess what. They all come packaged in mondo plastic blister packs! No way! So I posted an ad on Craigslist for cat nail clippers and got one person who offered us his used clippers for free (which Michael picked up for us on Saturday) and about 10 other people who advised me to just use people nail clippers on them. So I guess I'll try both ways and see which works better.

Oh, there was one guy who wrote back, "do not clip the cat's nails!!! give them a scratching post, and wear long sleeves." Um... no. They have a scratching post. I do wear long sleeves. And I am a bloody mess. They're indoor cats. What's wrong with a little clipping? We'll see if I still feel this way the first time I have to do their nails myself.

Now, Look at this face. Doesn't she look innocent? Don't be fooled. They are rascally kitties, and I need your advice. What can I use to keep them from chewing electrical cords, eating my plants and knocking them over, and the most worrisome thing, messing with the CFL lightbulbs in table lamps? Soots in particular seems fascinated by those swirly mercury-containing time bombs.

I've seen the bitter sprays sold in pet shops, but of course they all come in plastic bottles. Anyone have a recipe I can make myself? I read the ingredients of one of them... rosemary, sodium bicarbonate, and water. But I couldn't figure out the proportions and it just ended up leaving a baking soda film on my plants. Help!

Oh, and in other un-cat-related news, our water is certified drinkable right from the tap! I bought one of those Culligan test kits from Ace Hardware and found that the levels for chlorine and other contaminants was very low. I sent a sample to the lab to be tested for lead, and that one came back clean too. We are just testing so well today! So that solves our plastic water filter issues. We just don't need one at all.

Of course, I recognize that there are those in other areas who don't have such great water and do need a water filter. First, please have your water tested to make sure you need a filter in the first place. If you do, a water filter uses less plastic than all the bottles you might otherwise be buying. But this is why I am promoting a campaign to get North American Brita to recycle their cartridges. Some people have to use a filter and shouldn't have to toss all that plastic into a landfill. Right?
 

 Tweet this!

Questions and requests for Brita users in U.K. and Central Europe

04/14/2008 Update: If you've reached this page because you want to know how to recycle Brita filter cartridges in North America, please visit http://www.takebackthefilter.org for more information about the campaign to urge Clorox (owner of Brita in North America) to develop a take-back recycling program for these cartridges!

I'm still trying to find out why the North American Brita Corporation will not take back and recycle their used filter cartridges like the European company does. The North American Brita corporation claims that the cartridges themselves use a different technology. That may be true of the On Tap filters, but from photos online, the classic pitcher filters look just the same as ours. Would any reader in the U.K. be willing to send me a classic pitcher filter so I can compare it with the U.S. version? Sending the box and instructions would be really helpful, too. I will pay for the cost of the filter and the shipping. We can do it via PayPal or any other way you'd like.

It does, however, appear that the OnTap faucet cartridges, which I believe are only sold in Central Europe and Asia, are different from ours. In fact, this looks like a better design to me, as the entire housing is not part of the disposable filter. I gather these are not available in the U.K., right? Would someone in a European country that uses these types of filters be willing to send me one of them with the box? Same as above. I will reimburse.

And I'd love to hear from anyone living in Europe who recycles their Brita cartridges. Can you please let me know what country you're in, what type of filter you use (faucet or pitcher and what model), where you take it to recycle, and just what your experience has been using these where you live. I'm trying to gather as much information as I can to present to the North American company.

I'm not planning on having too many more posts about this issue on Fake Plastic Fish. As I mentioned before, I created a Yahoo Group for anyone who wants to look into it further. But I thought tonight this would be a way to gather some info from folks in Europe who are not part of that group.

Thanks! You can contact me directly via email if you don't want to comment. My email address is beth [at] fakeplasticfish [dot] com. (Does it really help to write it out like that? I get so much spam, I wonder if it even matters at this point!)
 

 Tweet this!

Week 30 Results: .8 oz. of plastic waste

Before I show you this week's tally, I thought I would give you an idea of what I've been hoarding since June 17, 2007. This is all the non-recyclable stuff I've collected through last week. Click to see a larger image:


The awful truth is that all the stuff on the blue plastic sheet, including the blue plastic sheet, was acquired AFTER I started this project. All the stuff on the carpet around me are things I already had that I used up. This has been a real learning experience. When I started out, I had no idea how to eliminate plastic and I ended up with a lot more than I intended to.

I feel like 2008 is a new beginning. I have a better idea of what I'm doing and why avoiding plastic is a much better alternative than recycling it. Which is why this year, as I said previously, I'll be saving all the recyclables too. There are still plastic items I can't do without, like prescription bottles (which can't be refilled in California. Even my vet won't take them.), eye drops, and cat food. But I'm willing to lower my cheese consumption considerably. This will also help with my New Year's Intention #2.

That said, here's the plastic tally for this week. Yes, there are cheese wrappers, and there will be more for the next couple of weeks. My sister sent me some awesome Vermont cheddar for Christmas. But after that's gone, I'm slowing way down.


This is the very first week that the tally consists of only new plastic waste:

• 2 Refresh Endura single-use eye drop containers (#4 plastic). Did you notice that one of the caps is missing from the photo? I'm really worried that Arya ate it. I rescued the second one from her jaws, but couldn't find the first one anywhere. She seems fine. Hopefully, it'll just make its way through her. Or I'll find it in a corner when I least expect it. I'm a terrible mama cat!


• Plastic lining from a 3-lb. bag of Pet Promise dry cat food. These bags are made of three layers: a shiny outer layer with the picture on it. Is it coated with plastic? I don't know. It doesn't come off. Then, a brown paper layer. And finally a shiny plastic inside layer. The top layer is easy to remove. I had to soak the brown paper in order to remove the inside plastic. The brown paper will go in the compost and the outside layer into the paper recycling. I hope that's the best way to handle these bags.


• 4 plastic windows from some boxes of Greenlite CFL lightbulbs that were free from PG&E. I have found CFLs packaged without plastic, as I mentioned in another post. But these were free, so I grabbed 'em. (Of course, the lightbulbs themselves contain plastic, so when they finally burn out, they'll be added to the tally. I'm thinking that won't happen for a long, long time.)


• 1 Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese wrapper.


• 1 Grafton Village Cheese Company maple-smoked cheddar cheese wrapper. Oh, how I will miss my cheese this year.


• 1 cap from a glass bottle of Straus organic nonfat milk. I'm going to be drinking a lot less milk, too. Veganism seems to be creeping around my house waiting to get me. Well, at least eggs can still be purchased plastic-free!

 

 Tweet this!