Beth Terry's Blog, page 19

Pitch Me Your Green Product, but Skip the Greenwash. Here’s How.

My email in-box is forever filling up with product pitches from various PR reps who want me to review their latest offerings on this blog. While I love reviewing things like plastic-free chewing gum, plastic-free lip balm, or compostable cleaning cloths,more often than not, the pitches I receive are either irrelevant to my topic–I’m not going to review an organic shampoo in a plastic bottle, even if the producer hand-picked the ingredients from her own backyard herb garden and reduced her ca...

Use a Straight Razor to Manscape Without Plastic

Ever considered trying a straight razor? Chris Reeves did and lived to send me an email about the experience. Chris is the visitor programs manager for the Seymour Marine Discovery Center in Santa Cruz, California. In his free time he gives talks about plastic pollution in the environment and will be holding a training for other folks to do the same. Chris says he’s also “a Gemini who likes long walks on the beach picking up trash and talking to kids about weird dead stuff.” He’s funny. Here’...

Funny Friday Post: Secrets of Celebrities

My friend Axelle, super minimalist and organizer extraordinaire, sent me an email a few days ago that was so funny I would have snorted milk out my nose if I’d been drinking milk in the first place. Axelle doesn’t have a blog–or, she does, but she hasn’t written anything in it since 2010. So I asked if I could share it here, since it’s related to my favorite way to reduce plastic use: reducing consumption of everything.

Please enjoy.

Secrets of Celebrities

by Axelle Fortier

How do Bill and Melin...

Kicking the Plastic Addiction Video Promo

I’ve gone commercial! Well, no I didn’t. But I did make a commercial. Okay, not exactly. Filmmaker Alec Bernal, who created last month’sLunchbox Project video, just finished making me an awesome YouTube video promo for my book Plastic-Free. All I did was show up… and bring along the plastic sea monster. Check out the transformation…

(Note: Because I had to reduce the dimensions of the video to fit on this blog, Youtube automatically reduces the default resolution, making some of the video look...

Plastic-Eating Fungi: Environmental Salvation or Distraction?

Recently, several readers, including my dad, have forwarded me articles about a group of Yale students who discovered an Amazonian fungus (pestalotiopsis microspora) that can not only eat polyurethane plastic, but can actually survive on it as its sole source of carbon. Could a fungus be the solution to our plastic pollution problem? And what does it mean in terms of the kinds of plastics we see littered every day?

Let’s stop and think it through.

There are many different types of plastic polym...

Compost this Book. But first, check out how cool it is!

I am so full of excitement right now I could burst. I just received the first case of my new book: Plastic-Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too, and I feel like a proud mama right now. A few nights ago, I had a dream that the book arrived and the pages were made out of plastic. I couldn’t believe it. So I called my editor and asked how that could have happened in a plastic-free book, and he said, “It’s not plastic; it’s nylon.” And I was all, “What? Didn’t you even read my...

Peppersmith Makes Chewing Gum Without Plastic

Most chewing gum is made from plastic. Don’t believe me? Read the details in my 2010 post “Chewing on Plastic? Yum.” Even “natural” chewing gums like Glee, which is made with natural chicle, also contain plastic. And the few brands that seem not to contain plastic often come packaged in a plastic bottle or plastic blister pack. Thankfully, I’m not much of a gum chewer. But I know plenty of people who are (including the love of my life), so I was super excited to learn about Peppersmith plasti...

Don’t Be Fooled by Reusable Bag Norovirus Scare

It’s been all over the news for the past two days: Six Oregon girls, travelling to an out of town soccer tournament in Seattle, all got sick with norovirus after passing around cookies in a reusable bag. Scientists from the Oregon Public Health department did some sleuthing and traced the virus to the reusable bag. (Read the full story on OregonLive.com.) So, does that mean that reusable bags are dangerous? The disposable bag industry would like you to think so. Hilex Poly, the plastic bag ma...

What Can Environmentalists Learn from Bad Kitties?

I’m back from my meditation retreat, where one of the common admonishments is “Don’t push the river.” What does that mean? To me, it’s about being in the flow and not exerting more effort than necessary to live peacefully and mindfully in the present moment. After all, the river’s gonna flow whether you push it or not, right? Recently, I’ve discovered that it’s often not necessary to dam the river either. I’ve learned both of these lessons from my cat. And now I’m wondering how we can apply t...

Plastic-Free Progress Report: Sarah Schmiechen

Sarah Schmiechen is a long-time reader of this blog and prior participant in the Show Your Plastic Trash Challenge. She emailed me recently to let me know about some of the successes and challenges she’s had in reducing her plastic consumption, and she suggested that it might be useful/helpful for me to post profiles of readers and the changes they’ve made in getting plastic out of their lives as well as the difficulties they still face. I thought that was a fabulous idea and asked Sarah if s...