These past months have been a whirlwind, and while the city has been battered by Covid-19, and many lives have been lost or forever altered, the number of new cases is dropping. Good news delivered late, but we’ll take it. One of the less talked about effects of Covid-19 (unless you run in composting circles)…
Category: Action
Trading cotton balls for reusable rounds
Let’s talk cotton balls. They’re soft, they’re squishy, they’re incredibly disposable. Disposability is part of their appeal, but with serious questions about how sustainable it is to produce cotton, and ethics around farm labor, I’m trying to transition away from my more consumptive habits and opt to not buy cotton if I only intend to…
Toothpaste (that isn’t paste)
Designers take note! I’ve found a toothpaste that can actually look attractive while sitting on a bathroom shelf. It’s called Bite and I found it when researching alternatives to toothpaste sold in plastic tubes. I grew up using Colgate, so for me, nothing tastes cleaner than a mouthful of fluoride and I’ve been buying toothpaste…
Goodbye, bags. Thanks for the litter.
It’s a big deal: New York state has banned plastic bags. The ban will take effect next March. So, prepare to say goodbye to bags in the trees, bags in the gutter grates, bags in the park, bags on the beach, bags tangled around a pigeon’s leg. We’ve had a good run plastic bags (have…
More bread, less plastic
A while ago I blogged about a less-than-successful attempt at waste-free grocery shopping, and revealed that sometimes I buy gluten-free bread. I didn’t buy gluten-free sandwich bread after that, so guilty did I feel about the plastic bags. But I like bread. So I figured it was time to look into whether or not any…
Composting in Red Hook
If you know me, you know I don’t want to go to Brooklyn unless there’s any possible way I can get around it. But this sustainability thing is dragging me out there more often than expected. I guess I can’t be mad about it; Brooklyn has some great community gardens and learning sites, such as…
Recycling the weird stuff: Mascara wands
I’m struggling to cut down on some of the ordinary junk that I’ve been living with for decades. Makeup is one of those things. I don’t have cases upon cases of makeup but I do have a fair amount that I need to work through before I’ll need to go out and find lower-waste alternatives,…
The Williams Pipeline and the airing of grievances
This was my view of last night’s DEC hearing on the Williams Pipeline, held at the Bay Ridge Manor in Brooklyn. Residents from New Jersey, Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Rockaways, and beyond gathered to share their objections to the proposed pipeline that would carry fracked gas from Pennsylvania through New Jersey to the Rockaways via New…
How to make paper using the contents of a recycling bin
I read Bea Johnson’s Zero Waste Home a few weeks ago, and that’s when I developed an undying urge to make paper. In the book, Bea Johnson tells the tale of how she decided to make less waste and move towards a trash-free existence. She eliminated most of the paper in her life but her…
Shopping Waste-Free in New York
The first step to creating less waste is to change the way you think. And to do that, you need to change the way you shop. And that usually means changing the way you eat, too. So many changes, I know. I say nothing revolutionary when I say that Americans eat a diet full of…
Climate Conscious 