Beth Terry's Blog, page 15
January 4, 2013
What to Do with All That Holiday Plastic
This week, I was asked to write a guest post for Maria Rodale’s Farm Country Kitchen blog about what to do about about plastic gifts and wrapping we might receive from well-meaning friends and family. For those of us working to reduce the amount of plastic we consume and the plastic waste we produce, the holidays can be challenging.
First, it’s important to have some strategies for avoiding acquiring a lot of holiday plastic in the first place. I let my friends and family know early on in my p...
January 2, 2013
Empire State Skyscratcher rocks our feline world
Hello people and Happy New Year. Our human mom, Beth, is very very busy, so we wanted to help her out by writing a blog post to tell you about the amazing thing we got for Christmas this year. We’re not exactly sure what it is, but mom acted really excited when she opened it, so we know it must be pretty special. (And no, we no longer speak like those Cheezburger Cats. We are 5 years old and have learned proper grammar!)
Anyway, Christmas Eve, Mom came home and started talking really loudly wh...
January 1, 2013
December 19, 2012
The End of the World is Coming and I’m Still not Buying New Plastic
Of course, I don’t really believe that the world is going to end this Friday. That would be too easy. The damage we are doing to life on planet Earth is a slower process and one that has the potential to cause much more prolonged suffering. And as I sit here typing sentences and then deleting them, typing and deleting, trying to figure out how to express what I’m feeling, I’m unsure if a post like this is even appropriate. But here goes.
I’m depressed.
A lot of really terrible things have been...
December 11, 2012
What Will It Take To Solve the Plastic Pollution Problem?
I had lunch today with Pam Marcus, the founder of Lifefactory, a company that makes reusable glass water bottles and baby bottles. She is also one of the organizers of the Plastic Pollution Coalition’s “Think Beyond Plastic Innovation Competition.” There is a $50,000 prize at stake for the best idea for reducing plastic pollution, whether it’s the invention of a new material or a technology or a process or… whatever. And I got to thinking… what will it really take for us to reverse this mess...
December 5, 2012
Plastic-Free Holiday Gift Packs Have Arrived!
I’m so excited to let you know that after a month of being held up by Hurricane Sandy and other weather on the East Coast, the second printing of my book, Plastic-Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too has finally arrived in the warehouse!
As I mentioned in a previous post, I put together an educational holiday gift pack to help spread the message that there are so many things all of us can do to reduce plastic in our lives and solve the plastic pollution problem.
The pack inc...
November 28, 2012
Are Plastic Ziploc Bags Suddenly Green or Greenwashed?
Every year I visit the San Francisco Green Festival and wander up and down the aisles of vendor booths, looking for interesting plastic-free products but always finding a ton of plastic packaging. Organic foods packaged in plastic. Natural drinks in plastic bottles. Compostable products shrink-wrapped in plastic. But this year, my jaw hit the floor when I stumbled across a booth I’d never have expected to see at the Green Festival: Ziploc.
Why would a brand of plastic bags have a booth at the...
November 23, 2012
Black Friday: To Buy or Not to Buy?
I’ve got a conundrum. It’s Black Friday, the day in the U.S. when the holiday shopping frenzy officially begins. Environmentalists decry this day of conspicuous consumption, advocating Buy Nothing Day instead. And normally, I would be one of them. But this year, I actually have something to sell: my book. In fact, I’ve planned a super cute gift pack with a copy of Plastic-Free, a copy of the Bag It DVD (which is packaged in a paper pulp case), and a cute reusable cotton gift bag from Green Pl...
November 1, 2012
Confession of an Anti-Plastic Activist Caught Red-Handed With a BPA-Lined Can
I just got back from a week on the East Coast doing book promos and visiting family, and all I got was this stupid Facebook photo…
Don’t you hate it when the environmentalists don’t rinse out their recycling?
Two days ago, my sister Ellen posted that photo and caption and tagged me. It would have been funny, if it weren’t my Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup can. My first reaction was utter embarrassment (for being caught eating out of a can lined with BPA or some other mystery chemical and eve...
October 17, 2012
Want Plastic-Free Glue? Make Homemade Wheat Paste.
I felt like I was back in kindergarten yesterday… cutting and pasting with paste you could eat if you wanted to. I’m taking my plastics information display to the ReUseConex in Portland tomorrow and wanted to make it sturdier. Taping paper pages directly to the wooden board was not working well. The paper curled and the natural cellulose tape I was using wouldn’t stay stuck to the wood. This is not attractive:
So I decided to mount the pages on recycled cardboard. And to do that, I needed pla...
