I went to the grocery store... con fotos

This might seem like it's going to be boring, and maybe it will be boring, but do you ever think about how you think?

Maybe that's a bit narcissistic.

Anyway, caring about the earth changes the way you think.

Let's use the example of some stuff I bought at the grocery store today.


Toothpaste. What I originally went to the store to buy. As in, if I didn't buy toothpaste this afternoon, I was gonna brush with water this evening.

Old mindset: this is not the cheapest. why am I even looking at this thing?

Current mindset: this is not the cheapest. but it's the only toothpaste I know of that comes in a recyclable aluminum tube. The rest of these toothpaste tubes are going to the landfill. If there's an option that doesn't go to the landfill, and doesn't break the bank, I'm voting for that one.

But next time, I'm makin' my own. More ingredients = more processed = more energy. Plus the energy used to ship it here.


Toilet Paper (sorry the pic is sideways... dumb blogger)


Old mindset: find the cheapest one and get outta here.

Current mindset: this is cheap enough, at $4 for 6 rolls. Better price than the 7th Generation stuff that costs $1.80 for one roll. It's made of recycled paper, which is good, 'cause I don't need to be wiping my butt with virgin rainforest trees, buuuuuuuuuuuut 7th Gen comes in a recyclable paper wrapper, and this is wrapped in plastic...

This went on for about three minutes as I paced around the aisle, looking like a maniac, until I finally went with the cheaper plastic-wrapped TP. Decisions, decisions. I long for the days where they used pages of the Sears magazine for this purpose... but they were probably made out of real paper, and not this weird magazine stuff.

Vitamins

Old mindset: WOOHOO BUY ONE GET ONE!

Current mindset: WOOHOO BUY ONE GET ONE! Even though theoretically, my diet should include all the vitamins and minerals I need. But it doesn't. I'm working on it. Am I? Well, I will work on it. Anyway, just buy the darn things already.


Throat Coat Tea

Old mindset: Old mindset unavailable because I didn't know what this was.

Current mindset: Eh, well, I mean, tea, I mean, it's probably individually wrapped, and that stinks, 'cause it's more trash for the landfill, but, I mean, it's organic, but, I mean, I've finally got myself down to no teabags at all, and... oh, come on. It's got echinacea and it'll make your throat feel better.

Sure enough, I got home and they're INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPED. CURSES. I have finally gotten away from teabags by brewing mint leaves in a mesh tea ball, and now I've blasphemed and bought these individually wrapped ones.

Oh well.

Baking Soda!!

Old mindset: don't need that.

Current mindset: I use this for everything. FOUR POUNDS for THREE DOLLARS??? fhdskafhlfg (yes there is a keyboard in my mind) Though I do have to remember that baking soda comes from mines, so it's not an awesome, sustainable thing... but it's great for cleaning and it's nontoxic. And the package is fully recyclable.

Check it out. "THE STANDARD OF PURITY"? Really? Like cleanliness is next to Arm & Hammer?...

Bananas

Old mindset: ew... gross... bananas.

Current mindset: POTASSIUM. FRUIT. Get in mah belleh. No, they are not organic. No, they are not local. Am I a bad hippie? Yes. Do I have bananas? Yes. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.


So... am I a snooty, organic-buying, looking-down hippie? No. Maybe? No, not really. There are choices to everything. Generally, I'd go ahead and say if you want to live in a city at this particular moment in history, it's going to be darn-near impossible to be 100% sustainable in your lifestyle. I'm not judging anyone when I can't do it myself. I'd rather help you than judge you. Is that weird? Sorry.

I used to think 100% sustainable meant that you were dead. There is no way you can be alive and not take things from the planet. But really, "sustainable" means that when you take something from the planet, you give something back, so that the overall health of the planet is always at 100%. It means that the way you live today, you could live for a million years. We cannot, for example, live on oil for a million years. There is not a million years of oil in the earth for people who use it as much as we do.

Changing the way we think is the first step in learning how to give back. Asking ourselves how our money translates into the ecosystem's health (or lack thereof). Asking ourselves if it's morally OK to buy plastic packaging when it ends up in the bellies of baby seabirds, destroying whole generations.

When you buy a product, you vote for the means by which it was created, you approve the method of packaging, you applaud the purpose for which it exists. I'm not perfect at it. I'm not going to pretend I'm perfect at it. But think about it for me, wouldja?

My mom says I stink.

Let's talk about smells. Personally, I think it's better to smell like a human being than a month-old bouquet that someone sprayed with starch, but this is A) my opinion and B) usually not socially acceptable. I will attempt to explain my preference. And you may be grossed out. There. You were warned.

I am a female person whose skin dries to bleeding in the winter, so B.O. is not something I've felt compelled to be extremely vigilant about. I take 1/2 a teaspoon of baking soda, wet it into a paste, and use that for deodorant. Every day. Unless I forget. I've even been showering every day for weeks now. It's weird, but I'm getting used to it.

My inspiration is my mother. Mom is very sensitive to smells. She has smelled me from the opposite side of the couch, whereas my sister could not smell me while standing beside me. The problem now is not me being clean; it's my clothes. I'm not convinced that an article of clothing is dirty just because I've worn it before. It saves water and it means I don't have to do as much laundry. Unfortunately, I think Mom can smell me even if I've worn a T-shirt for just a few hours. She's that good.

So now I have to be all vigilant about that. Because by now, my parents think I can't smell. I had these pumpkins outside my garage for all of November, and by the time my dad found them in mid-December, they were very soggy. He bagged them up and put them in the garage for me. Sweet man. But they left a bit of a stain behind. I was instructed to scrub the garage, because apparently, it smells. I definitely was aware of the smell, but it smelled nice to me. It smells like butter to me, which is actually what pumpkin tastes like to me (with the right amount of salt).

Anyway, now they think I can't smell. Dad finally found out that I'm composting (in small contained buckets) and he ordered me to go home and smell them to make sure they didn't stink. Compost, when it's done right, doesn't stink and doesn't attract critters. The instruction came out of exasperation, I'm pretty sure.

Compost is a good thing. Compost means that my garbage never stinks. Compost means that I don't send useful gardening material to the landfill. Compost is the Earth's natural reclamation of its waste. (Humans, take note. Cradle to Cradle, anyone?)

Heck, San Fransisco decided to take some initiative and start up a citywide composting program. That's just plain awesome. So I guess even if my little home composting program were nixed, there are ways to get creative with this... I could go on Craigslist or Freecycle and see if there are any like-minded folks with a yard who already compost who might take my organic waste. That's how I do the recycling right now; why not with compost?

And my stance on B.O.? Well, I just gotta say two words: breast cancer. According to cancer.gov, there is no "conclusive evidence linking the use of underarm antiperspirants or deodorants and the subsequent development of breast cancer." Let's cut to the chase here. This is legalese for "we can't say anything because the deodorant industry will sue our butts if we do."

Here, read this paragraph from that cancer.gov link:

Findings from a different study examining the frequency of underarm shaving and antiperspirant/deodorant use among 437 breast cancer survivors were released in 2003 (7). This study found that the age of breast cancer diagnosis was significantly earlier in women who used these products and shaved their underarms more frequently. Furthermore, women who began both of these underarm hygiene habits before 16 years of age were diagnosed with breast cancer at an earlier age than those who began these habits later. While these results suggest that underarm shaving with the use of antiperspirants/deodorants may be related to breast cancer, it does not demonstrate a conclusive link between these underarm hygiene habits and breast cancer.

Sure, there were some later studies that said, well, maybe not. But you know what? I don't think I want to mess around with breast cancer. I don't need conclusive evidence to tell me that messing around with random chemicals is bad for my body. I don't want to get cancer and think that there was something I could have done. To think that I did not do everything I could have done. To know that something inside me said "hey, quit putting random chemicals in/around your body," and I didn't listen.

For example... do we know what aluminum does?

Aluminum-based compounds are used as the active ingredient in antiperspirants. These compounds form a temporary plug within the sweat duct that stops the flow of sweat to the skin's surface. Some research suggests that aluminum-based compounds, which are applied frequently and left on the skin near the breast, may be absorbed by the skin and cause estrogen-like (hormonal) effects (3). Because estrogen has the ability to promote the growth of breast cancer cells, some scientists have suggested that the aluminum-based compounds in antiperspirants may contribute to the development of breast cancer (3).

Did you get that? It says that aluminum plugs your sweat ducts. WHY in the world do you want to plug your sweat ducts? God put them there for a reason. If we know that much, how much is left that we still don't know, that we might never know?

So, yes, I am going to embrace my B.O. a little, and excuse me for doing so.

But I still hope I don't stink too bad.

Sorry.

I'll try to do my laundry more often.

Transition to nowhere

My, but it's been awhile. It's hard to summarize the last two weeks, but I'll give you the quick and dirty:

• 6-month internship in DC ended mid-August
• Flipped out over trying to decide what I'm doing next
• Decided to move to Greensboro, NC
• Bought train ticket to Greensboro, NC
  
• Decided against moving to Greensboro, NC
• Parents saw me flipflopping around like a fish out of water and offered the townhouse in DE for a bit
• Decided to visit NC instead of moving there
• A week after my internship ended, finally started relaxing
  
• Somehow still have a boyfriend and a family

So, the beau and I in North Carolina, having a not-quite vacation. It's almost like a vacation except we're both unemployed and have no specific prospect of employment at the current time, plus we neither of us have outstanding amounts of savings. Anyway, life is more fun that way.

Thus, I have not written. But there have been many discussions about eco-living in this state of being between the beau and I. So hopefully, I'll write about that.

I can, at least, make a recommendation about something you can watch that might change your life. My friend Steve in Greensboro lent us this DVD, The Corporation, and now we can't stop thinking about it. We may watch it again. I'd say it's biased, except that they also interviewed folks who work for large corporations and they were quite proud of their statements regarding the exploitation of various resources, including the environment, sweatshop labor, and the American public. It was an in-depth and unique take on the impact of corporations, and it's honestly totally convinced me that one of the best things I can do for the environment is to avoid supporting large corporations at all costs.

If you're curious, the movie site is here and you can view the full documentary on Youtube in 23 chapters.

I hate cars, but they do stuff.

My life has been foiled again by my lack of car ownership.

Actually, I lied. My life is great. I've been car-free for a few years now, after I ditched Grandma's old Buick Regal.

I'm willing to admit that my hatred of cars could stem from this particular car. It got me where I needed to go, and it held up fairly well for several eight-hour excursions between home and school. However, the thing was a boat. A tank. A beast. That, and it broke down a bunch. The alternator, for example, when I was driving home from work one night. Simultaneously, the coolant hoses sprung a leak, so my lights grew progressively dimmer as the fog rolling out from under the hood grew progressively thicker.

Then there was the time when the coolant hose came detached from the engine. I am in no way a knowledgable person when it comes to automobiles, but I understand that the engine is a very important, technical, and heavy part of the car. This particular problem meant that the engine had to be taken out temporarily in order to fix the hose. I got the thing towed to a very nice mechanic who gave me a massive discount -- he only charged me $400. Also, he gave me a free pen.

Despite the free pen, I became pretty much disenchanted with cars. I have a life, you know, Car. I'm not made of money, and I don't enjoy the mechanic's. That guy was very nice (free pen!), but he was out in some very sketchy part of town that I think only exists when you need it to exist. Like the room of necessity in Harry Potter. Only crappy.

Now... I know. I know what you're going to say. Oh, but, see, if you buy a nice car, and take care of it, and don't bother with your Grandma's hand-me-downs, and buy it only nice gas, and pet the dashboard and fold your hands toward the warmness of your heart and chant "Ohm" three times, you'd be fine.

Not to be flippant, but yeah flippin' right.

I refuse to be convinced that a car will not be expensive, or deadly, or require lots of maintenance (translation: time and even more money), or whatever. Try as you might, I won't budge on this. The way I see it, you can own a car, go wherever you like, and spend a lot of time and money on the thing. Or you can not own a car, go almost wherever you like, and spend not so much money. Either way, you will be inconvenienced, so you just choose a preferred method of inconvenience. I prefer to miss out on some things rather than own a big fossil-eating time-stealing polluting death machine.

But that's just me.

(I don't care if you own a car. I just care about me owning a car. You do what you gotta do. I ain't judgin'. Unless you drive a Hummer. In which case, I am.)

Anyway, back to my life. Turns out I have this opportunity to go to Harper's Ferry on Monday for work, just to ride around and... see an actual national park during my internship with the National Park Service. (Though the medians and random block-sized parks in DC technically belong to the Park Service, and therefore technically count as units of the National Park System.)

Basically, I can't go because I don't own a car. There's even a train station there, but there are no trains that run during times that allow any reasonable person to make a day trip from America's capitol. Despite the fact that there is a pretty sweet commuter train service apart from Amtrak that runs several times a day... they never run at the times one would need them to run. I could rent a car, but I'm not 25 yet, so they charge me extra for that. It's just enough to push the price beyond my cheapskate purchasing power.

Now, if I belonged to Zipcar, I could probably swing it. Zipcar is pretty cool. It's not car-rental, it's car-sharing. This means that you become a member, pay some up-front fees, and then you can rent for just a few bucks every hour. Apparently the gas is free, the insurance is already taken care of, you just call and tell them what you want, when you want it. Then you use a magical little Zipcard and the car opens for you, and only you. It's honestly a very snazzy thing, and I hope to Jeebus that it opens up in more cities. It's great for people who feel like owning a car is a big scam don't want the responsibilities that come with car ownership.

But guess what, I'm dumb and I'm not a member. Also, I move soon, so no Zipcar for me.

And no Harper's Ferry. I mean, there are ways I could make this work. If I really really really really really wanted to go, I could bite the bullet and pay $70 to go out there. It's not impossible, it just forces me to consider if I really really really really really want to do something. Which is probably not a terrible thing.

I graduated from college a year ago, and I've been hitching rides on the Student Conservation Association. I'm just about to complete my second internship with them. It's been a great way to see different parts of America, try different jobs in conservation, and meet different people. A little bonus, for me, is that the SCA provides housing and such wherever you go, and they let you know if you're about to apply to an internship that doesn't do well for carless folks.

As I said, I'm about to be turned loose on the world again (eep). By a mixture of fortitude, prayer, and helpful parents, I've managed to avoid car ownership. Part of me wonders how long it will last, and the other part is expounding constantly on the evils of automobiles. I'm led to believe that one of these personas may be perceived as more "mature" than the other. (Guess which one it is!)

The possibilities for my post-internship life are just about endless, and thinking about them all makes my head spin. Some of the possibilities involve me owning a car. I don't like these possibilities very much. I'm looking at it like I'm looking at a marriage proposal: should I really be making a commitment to something I hate so very very much? Or am I already considering divorce as an option for later on down the road? It could work out. It could. I could be a very nice person with a nice job and a nice place and not moving anywhere because of the job I need to pay for the car expenses.

But I'd hate it.

The dump in the Pacific

CNN has an article today about the plastic problem in the Pacific. If you haven't heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, you might want to have a look-see.

Very basically, all the trash out in the Pacific gets swept out to this vortex where the currents collide. Turns out there's a lot of trash. Some scientists estimate that this patch is approximately the size of Texas. Probably, if I were Texas, I'd be getting garbage-patch envy from all this comparison.

But you're not going to go out there and find a huge raft of plastic bottles. You'll see ocean. You'll see the occasional piece of solid trash. The devil is in the details; when scientists scoop up the ocean water, they find tiny pieces of plastic. Everywhere.

Of course, there are other pieces of debris out there, like fishing nets, which tangle up wildlife and cause considerable damage. The plastic is a problem because of the tiny creatures at the bottom of the food chain. They don't exactly have the brainpower to decide that plastic is not good to eat. Even seabirds have been found dead with their bellies full of plastic. Unlike you and me, some species in the world just eat whatever looks good. They don't spend exorbitant amounts of time deciding what to eat that day, or scrutinizing the expiration date on the milk.

This will become a problem, obviously, because everything feeds everything else. Apart from the fact that we are overfishing like crazy, depleting the middle of the food chain, now we're hurting the bottom of the food chain. Um... I know we're proud of being at the top of the food chain and all, but one link maketh not a chain.

On the island in Alaska (oh no, here I go with 'on the island...'), we had a stretch of beach, which came in handy when we loaded and unloaded two months' worth of supplies. Every high tide would leave a different assortment of trash mixed in with the strands of bull kelp. Plastic lids. Soap bottles. Tupperware. It's a wildlife refuge, dangit, not a trash heap!

But I know, when one goes to the beach, or downtown, or to the highway, one just looks past all the trash. Trash is not going anywhere. Trash will live forever. Our trash will outlive us. I just don't think trash should be allowed to do that. I'm already shorter than my younger sister. I don't want to decompose before my trash does.

My approach to the situation is to try to avoid generating trash in the first place. I'm doing pretty well, if I may say so myself.

• I avoid takeout and/or fast food (weird waxy cups, plastic lids, styrofoam/plastic containers, wrappers)
• I avoid buying products packaged in non-recyclable containers (plastic, food wrappers)
• I carry my water bottle everywhere (plastic one-use bottles)
• I buy Tom's of Maine, which makes toothpaste in aluminum tubes (though I may try to create my own paste soon)
• I only use bar soap (generally, packaging can be recycled, and sometimes you can even find locally-made soap. Failing that, Dr. Bronners FTW)
• I don't wash my hair (... I haven't washed my hair in over a month, but I managed to keep it a secret 'till now. I rinse daily or every other day, and to be honest, my hair feels quite healthy.)
• I don't shave (mostly on principle that I have better things to do with my time than be in the bathroom, partially because what the heck is in that shaving cream, anyway?)
• I wear my glasses instead of my contacts (no more saline solution bottles, no more fretting about putting them in and taking them out)
• I use re-usable feminine products
• I buy from the farmer's market, bulk foods from the co-op, bring my own bags, and re-use plastic bags I already have (this saves a TON of trash)
• I don't buy crap I don't really need, and repurpose as much trash as I can
• Of course, I recycle, but this is not something I want to rely on. The true benefits of recycling are widely debated. Certainly, it's better than putting anything in a landfill, but even better than recycling is reducing one's overall waste output.

My current struggle is teeth. Toothpaste, I may begin to make on my own. I've begun flossing again, but I haven't decided what is the most eco-friendly way to go about it. Ideally, I want something that will decompose in a composter, but I also want something that doesn't need a huge amount of energy to produce. If anyone's got any thoughts on this, please hit me up. Also, toothbrushes. They're meant to be disposed of, unfortunately. I've seen toothbrushes with replacement heads, but will they clean my teeth?

I didn't start all of these things at once. I did them one at a time. This is really more of a process than a total lifestyle makeover. Start small. Pick something easy. Later on, pick something else. That's all there is to it. I know that I have gone into areas that other folks frown at (the hair thing, the shaving thing, I know, I know), but the important bit is to decide what is right for you, personally, in your own life. That's all.

Apple photos

A picture's worth a thousand words. Here's some photos to show you some of the stuff I went over in yesterday's post.

Here we have a batch of seeds that are sprouting. You see the white tails poking out of some seeds. They'll keep going as long as they stay moist. I like to wait until they have some growth on 'em before transferring them to soil




How the seedlings spend most of their time. The bag keeps moisture in. Seedlings like moisture. They seem to get enough light through the baggie.


Inside the cup. These were from pink lady apple seeds.


And these are from fuji apple seeds. In the middle, you see a baby seedling. That's what they look like when they first come out of the ground, though they'll probably still have an apple seed shell on top of them.


This guy has root rot. The bottom of the root has become all shriveled and brown. There's still a bit of healthy root, but better to get rid of it so it doesn't infect anyone else.

Baby apple trees

Over the last few months, I've been working very diligently on my experiments in growing plants. Working so diligently, in fact, that I managed to destroy most of them!

The main thing I've learned about plants is that you do more by doing less. In the beginning, I just wanted to be a good plant mommy, and water my plants all the time, and spoon-feed them little drops of sunshine, etcetera. Since then, I've learned that plants are not like babies. Plants are more like teenagers. They just want to do their own thing. If you dote on them, they wither.

(I base this statement on my own experience with being a teenager, which wasn't too long ago; I was a bitch, Mom would agree.)

Mostly, I overwatered. Overwatering killed maybe ten or twenty apple seedlings, my one chamomile shoot, my random garlic cloves, and my one orange seedling. Rest in peace, guys.

Since then, I've decided to stick with sprouting apple seeds, since I've always got a supply of them. The mint is also around, but it's infested with aphids and some other bug that makes a really sticky substance. It's irritating.

I've learned so much. At the beginning, this was my mindset:

• Plants need soil, water, and sunshine.
• If a plant gets all three of those things, it should grow.

Now I know:

• Each plant is a little different.
• Plants generally need soil that drains well, a little water, a lot of sun or fluorescent light, adequate air flow, and an appropriate temperature range.
• Apple seedlings like soil that drains well, very little water, tons and tons of light, cool temperatures, and high humidity for their little leaves.

Now I have something like ten apple seedlings, and only a few of them succumbed to root rot. So I can pat myself on the back a bit.

Here's the method that's finally yielded results, if you're curious:

1. Sprout the seeds. Check the seeds in the apple. If they're already sprouting, put them in a moist paper towel, and put that inside a plastic baggie. (Or, for a non-disposable option, use a washcloth or rag and put it in a tupperware or other sealed container.) Wait one week. If they're not sprouting, dry them for 1 week. Put them in the moist paper towel + baggie apparatus, and put that in the fridge for 3-4 weeks (checking every week). Take it out, and wait one week.
2. You should have at least some seeds with a white tail sticking out. These are your future apple trees. Throw away the seeds that didn't sprout.
3. Prepare a home for your seedlings. I like to convert plastic containers into pots -- plastic cups, yogurt cups, water bottles chopped in half. Punch three or four holes in the bottom, and fill it with potting soil. For best results, you'll want one for each sprouted seed, but I tend to stick them two or three to a pot. Another small tip: I found it's easier to use clear plastic containers and fill them half full of soil, and you'll see why in a second. Water the soil until water flows from the bottom, and let it drain until there's no more water coming out.
4. Plant your seeds. Make a little dent with your finger, put your seed in there with the root pointing down. Cover the root gently with soil. I find I get the best results if I let the seed rest on the top of the soil, or very near the top.
5. Create good growing conditions. This means light, and lots of it, temperatures from 60-75ish, good humidity with adequate air flow, and moist soil. Basically, here's how I do it: cover the top with a plastic baggie, and punch some holes in it. (That's why it's handy to use half-full clear plastic containers; they admit light, and your seedlings won't be crushed by the baggie.) Since it's summer and it's too hot out for these guys, I keep them inside on my shelf all day, and I use a CFL bulb to give them light from about 7 AM - 10 PM. I've got a few at work, and they only get light from 8 AM -5 PM, but they seem to do all right.
6. Let 'em be. They'll shoot right up in a matter of days. I water mine maybe once every week or two. And I water from the bottom, not the top. Just put some water in a shallow dish and set the pot in the water; the soil soaks it right up through the drainage holes. You can still overwater this way, so be conservative. Apple seedlings like it a little on the dry side; a little on the wet side will kill them, easily. Just note that you should really try to alternate watering from the top and the bottom, so that the salt doesn't build up too much in the soil. The only time I intervene is to pull off the woody seed case. Generally they should be able to cast 'em off on their own, but sometimes they do need help.
7. Pull the ones that don't do well. If one gets root rot, you'll know it because it won't grow as fast as the others. When you pull it up, it'll have brown roots that are sort of soggy. This sort of thing is communicable, so you want to get rid of it. If they start to wilt, or if you see any brown around the roots, you want to get rid of it. They progress as such: first, they should pop up off the soil, with the seed shell still on. They cast this off, and the false leaves spread and start photosynthesizing. There'll be a little shoot between the false leaves; these are true leaves, and it's so cool to look at them every day and see how fast they grow. If the leaves look really, really super-green, you want to pull back on the watering. Light green is a good color for the leaves.

The thing you want to remember is that these guys may not bear fruit, necessarily, when they get older. And they also may not bear fruit that resembles the apple they came from. Apples these days are grafted, which I'm not really sure what that means, but you basically do something to the roots so that they grow up really small, and they produce the apple you want them to.

Johnny Appleseed, who I read about on Wikipedia, evidently did not believe in grafting due to religious beliefs. I'm with him on this one, more for ecological reasons than anything else. We really should have trees that grow tasty apples naturally. Actually, we should really have more fruiting trees in the wild, period. Because they're cool. Yeah, I won't see an apple from these guys 'till I'm 30. So? I still think it's cool.