An open letter to all grocery clerks and baggers

Dear grocery clerks and baggers,

I appreciate what you do.  Really, I do.  Because you are there, doing your job, I am able to get in and out of your grocery store in a timely manner.  Sometimes even in a speedy manner, though usually not.  However, I'm not complaining about that. 

What I am complaining about is your lack of consideration when bagging my groceries.  No, you don't put the potato chips under the potatoes (usually).  And even if that happens, I can deal with it.

No, what I object to is your unnatural fixation on your store's plastic bags. 

You see, I bring my own bags into your store, with the intent of using them to haul my goodies home.  I like using them.  They are easier to carry, hold more, and are reusable, unlike your store's plastic bags.  I keep a pile of canvas bags on the passenger seat of my car, just waiting to carry a gallon of milk, a bag of spinach, or a dozen eggs.

And yes, I use them for meat products, too.

Now, you may have been taught in Grocery Bagging School that meat products must always go into a plastic bag.  You may have even been reprimanded in the past for not properly double bagging a package of hamburger.

If so, I am sorry.  And if you let me know which manager yelled at you, I will happily go yell at them in your defense.

But in spite of all your training, call me crazy, but I don't think it's likely you are going to get into trouble for not putting my package of pork chops in a plastic bag before placing them into my canvas bag.  (If I'm wrong and you do, see my above offer to yell at your manager.)

And I definitely don't think anything bad is going to happen to you if I ask you to put my package of pork chops directly into my canvas bag, instead of into a plastic bag.

And I especially do not appreciate it if you ARGUE with me, after I have asked you (nicely, I might add) to please not put my pork chops in a plastic bag before putting them in my canvas bag.

No, I do not care what you think may happen.  I am not here for your opinion.  I am here to buy groceries.  Nothing more. 

For the record, the only time I've ever had a package of meat "leak" between me leaving the store and arriving home, it was in a plastic bag.  Wouldn't you know it, your store's landfill-clogging bags have holes in the bottom! And the damn juice got all over my car, anyway.  So let me worry about washing my canvas bag in the unlikely event that something organic escapes the hermetically sealed plastic already encasing the meat in question.

To sum up: I respect your desire to place my pork chops, steaks, chicken legs, or any other meat products in a plastic bag.  But I am asking you not to (nicely, I might add).  I expect you in return to respect my wishes and humor me by putting what I am buying directly into my canvas bag.

And if you argue with me one more time about this, I may have to hurt you.  You have been warned.

Sincerely,

An Environmentally-Aware Customer

Compost, the Universe, and Everything

A couple of days ago, the spousal unit was getting ready to dump a batch of gluten-free pumpkin beer that had gone bad.  I know, it was very sad. It had been pretty tasty before it turned, too. Buh-bye, beer!

Anyhow, as he was preparing to dump, one of us (jokingly) said, "I wonder if you can compost beer?"  Since my hands were free, I sat down in front of the Magic Box and googled the subject.  Up popped a very useful website:  75 Things You Can Compost, But Thought You Couldn't.  I wanted to post it here as a resource.  I've already looked at it several times.  Hopefully, we can reduce our garbage output and increase our compost pile.

By the way, yes, you can compost beer.  And dryer lint.  And cotton swabs.  And more.  Really.

Green Laundry

I celebrated Earth Day by making homemade laundry detergent.  Yes, that's the type of thing I do for fun.  (Don't judge me, lol!)

Anyhow, this was something I've wanted to do for years.  Years!  I've honestly been thinking about this since my first job out of college, which was, um, a long time ago.  Long enough that I could have made many hundreds of batches of laundry detergent between then and now.

But did I?  No.  Can you say procrastination?

So this year was the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, and it seemed like a good time to make some detergent. 

First, I had to research.  Liquid or powder?  Powder is easier to make and store, and it's always been my preference among commercial laundry products.  Okay, that was easy.

Next, a recipe.  I found many, but used this one because it was easy to follow and I liked the pictures.

Then, the ingredients.  That's where it got a little harder.  I found borax at the first store I went, but I had a hard time finding washing soda.  I know, I could have ordered it, but I was on a deadline.  April 22 was looming!  And I didn't want to drive all over, wasting gas.  So I hopped on the InterWeb again, back to the helpful Instructibles page.  There was a comment saying you could call the company and find out where it was stocked in your area.  So I called Dwight and Church at 1-800-524-1328 and gave them my zip code, and found out Arm and Hammer Washing soda was sold at a grocery store less than a mile from my house.  Cool!  Okay, now I just needed the soap.  Fels Naptha and Zote, the two recommended brands, are still proving elusive.  If I want to try them, I might have to resort to ordering them.  But in the meantime, I had read enough web sites and blogs to know that just about any bar soap will work, and Ivory is highly recommended.  So I bought a 3 pack of Ivory bars for $1.07, and I was in business.

I won't bore you with the details.  Read the directions on Instructibles, it works just the way it says.  I think it took about 10 minutes from start to finish, and that includes the time it took to play with the soap shavings a little before continuing.  I haven't done the math yet, but I bought all the ingredients, which will make a minimum of 3 batches (1 bar of Ivory per batch), for less than the cost of one box of Tide (my former detergent of choice).  A batch of homemade powder will clean about 32 normal loads, using 1 Tablespoon per load. 

And the million dollar question:  How does it work?  Surprisingly well.  We don't have heavily soiled clothes, but we do have a 15 year old washer and really hard water, and 1 Tbsp of this stuff handled a load of laundry just fine.  In fact, I made sure to wash my gym clothes, using the sniff test both before (ewww!) and after.  Any (ahem) aroma of exercise was gone.  I pretreat stains, so there were no worries there.  The spousal unit did comment on the lack of fragrance.  He feels clothes should have a "clean" smell, I feel they should have no smell.  But I'm willing to play with some essential oils to come up with a fragrance he likes.

All in all, homemade laundry detergent was a success!  And now we are using fewer chemicals, doing less damage to the water system, and are ever so slightly less reliant on big corporations (except for our washing soda and borax), which is a good thing.  Plus, it's kind of fun to make. The next project will be homemade dishwasher detergent...

April 22, 2010

Happy Earth Day!
earthday.org

Earth Hour 2010

Tonight, 8:30pm (local time). How will you observe?

Earth Hour 2010

Upcycling?

Upcycling is taking something you would throw away, and making something of equal or better value out of it.

Huh?

Like recycling. Only more so.

For instance, when you recycle, oh, say, paper, you put your used paper in a recycle bin, where it will sit and eventually be carted away to be broken down and remade into, oh, I don't know, packing material. And that's good, because, hey, packing material is something we all use, and really, does it need to be made out of freshly cut trees?

But what if you wanted to upcycle that paper, instead of just giving it tosomeone else to recycle? You could shred it and make your own paper out of it. There are instructions here and here, or put your own Google-Fu to work. Then dig out that calligraphy set you bought years ago, and make your own cards out of it. Okay, you don't want to make paper out of paper...fair enough. How about jewery? Look at this, or this. Or what about yarn? Or...well, let your imagination roam.

Why is this something I think a lot about? Well, our landfills aren't getting any emptier, now, are they? Besides, it's creative and fun. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent happily making plarn or frogging thrift store sweaters to upcycle into new (and occasionally useful) items. And I'm dying to make the paper beads. Hey, it keeps me off the streets...

So that's upcycling. Gotta love it!

And the Earth breathes a sigh of relief...

You can't imagine how happy this makes me:

Buh-bye, Hummer!

Seriously, it took this long?