My Favorite Way to Prevent Food Waste

Have you heard? Forty percent (40%!!) of food in America gets thrown away. Much of that food is tossed before it ever reaches consumers.

My favorite way to prevent food waste: shop at the farmers market.

One of the very big down sides of industrial agriculture is homogenization. This applies not just to the sharp decline in the number and diversity of varieties grown, but also to the accepted size and appearance of fruits and vegetables. Too large, too small, not spherical or cylindrical enough, slightly blemished. I read once that when citrus is harvested the fruit has to fit within narrow size and shape parameters so that the same quantity will fit perfectly together within each box. Those that don't fit correctly are tossed to the side, possibly recovered, possibly not. Many perfectly edible, nutritious, and delicious fruits and vegetables never even make it to stores because they don't fit the aesthetic or utilitarian standard.

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Cheap Plastic Toys Don't Inspire Ocean Conservation

Dear Monterey Bay Aquarium Manager of Merchandising,

We love the Monterey Bay Aquarium! Although the membership cost was a little steep for our family, my husband and I agreed that in addition to wanting our family to visit regularly, we also felt great about our money supporting the Aquarium's awesome mission: to inspire conservation of the oceans.

Through our regular visits, my husband and children and I are all learning a ton about ocean life, and most certainly developing a deeper appreciation of the ocean: its beauty, its enormity, its mystery, its diversity, its fragility. After visiting the Aquarium, our next trip to the library often results in us leaving with a tall stack of books about aquatic critters.

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What Do You Do When Something Breaks?

In our disposable society, the ability to repair items seems to have fallen by the wayside. But it used to be a regular part of life, back when products were higher quality, more durable, and more expensive. If you couldn't fix it yourself, you took it to someone who could. Instead of tossing a pair of shoes when there was a hole in the sole, you took it to have the sole replaced at the local shoe repair place. I remember when I was a teenager, a favorite pair of black flats got a hole in the bottom. I knew I'd never find a pair of black flats that were as comfortable as my simple worn pair. So my mom took me to the shoe repair place about a mile away from our house to get a new sole. It was the only pair of shoes I ever had repaired.

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Simple Reusable Gift Tags for Cloth Gift Bags

We love our reusable cloth gift bags. Compared to wrapping paper and paper gift bags, reusable bags are:

• Eco-friendlier! We create less waste and recycling.
• Cheaper (in the long run)
• Faster and easier to wrap gifts with
• Easier to reuse
• More durable -- those paper gift bags only last so long when you reuse them
• WAY simpler clean up (my favorite part)

But I did run into one little snag the first year I wrapped all of our gifts with cloth gift bags: gift tags. Those little card stock gift tags you tape onto presents? They just kept falling off. Tape doesn't work well on fabric. At least not the scotch tape I was using. Sticker gift tags didn't work either.

But I soon thought of a solution: reusable gift tags. I used the same idea as the one I came up with for the numbered tags for my Children's Book Advent Calendar Countdown. I made super simple gift tags using index cards punched several times at the top to make them easy to string along the ribbon used to tie the gift bag shut.

I decorated them with holiday stickers from my childhood collection (a little scary that I still have these). I put clear box tape over the stickers to prevent my little ones from peeling them off.

These tags work well for me since we generally purchase and wrap a set number of gifts for each child from the same people year after year (one gift from Mami and Papi, one gift from my parents selected and wrapped by me, one gift from Santa).  I also have made gift tags to and from "Tia," since my sister often spends Christmas with us.  I stash the tags with my cloth gift bags and ribbons for easy reuse.


How do you label your gifts wrapped in reusable gift bags or fabric?

Related Posts

If I Can Sew This, So Can You: DIY Reusable Gift Bags
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle while Wrapping Gifts
Children's Book Advent Calendar with an Eco-friendly Twist
Eco-novice's Green Gift Guide

For more great ideas on being green 

and saving green during the holidays, 

visit my Green Holidays page.

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Six Simple Steps to a Paperless Kitchen

1. Switch to cloth napkins.

Not ready to commit to a paperless kitchen? Still in love with paper towels? Just try switching to cloth napkins. You'll feel like you are eating in a fancy high-end restaurant every night! We use a mish-mash of cloth napkins at my house. I like cotton napkins that are somewhat absorbent best, because then they can soak up a spill in a pinch. We use our cloth napkins for a full day (sometimes longer) before washing. We just leave them on the table between meals. You can get different napkin rings if you want to make sure each family member reuses the same napkin.

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Question: How Do You Compost? (Please Comment!)

Dear Readers,

Help me out. I really want to compost. I feel guilt every time I toss watermelon rinds and carrot peelings in the trash. But I'm having trouble jumping in and trying it. Here are my issues:

• There are multiple methods. Which one is the best for me? Note that I have actually ruled out worms because a couple of my friends tried that method and it seemed like a lot of work.
• If it takes too much time, I will fail. I know, because I watched two tomato plants die over the summer simply because I didn't water them. (In case you are concerned, my husband is in charge of watering our new tree.)
• I have a toddler. A crazy, gets-into-everything, I-cannot-control-her toddler. I need to be able to let her roam somewhat unsupervised in the backyard or I will lose my mind. We are also hoping to get a dog. I cannot have an amorphous pile of compost that my toddler or future dog will get into.
• I'm scared of attracting vermin. I've had ants, cockroaches, fruit flies, and rats. There are also plenty of stray cats and dogs in my neighborhood that I would like to stay off my property.
• I am completely willing to drop $100 to $200 on a compost bin if it will solve all my problems and make all my composting dreams come true. But I'm scared I'll buy a bin, and it won't work all that well, or won't make composting easy-peasy enough, and then I won't use it, and then I'll have a big hunk of plastic in my backyard and a lot of eco-guilt.

Click here to continue reading (and to comment!) at The Green Phone Booth.

If you are a composter, I want to hear from you! Please click over and share your wisdom.

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How to Make Letting Go of Clutter a Little Easier

Naming your clutter can be the first step on the road to freedom.

I finally checked out The Happiness Project from the library. I know everyone else has already read it and discussed it in all three of your book groups, but it takes me a while to get around to reading the bestsellers. At any rate, I enjoyed the chapter that addresses clutter. While working to reduce the stuff in her house, author Gretchen Rubin identified types of clutter she and others have trouble getting rid of. Several categories I immediately identified with.

Types of Clutter

• Bargain clutter: things that you bought because they were on sale
• Freebie clutter: things you have because you were able to get them for free
• Nostalgic clutter: momentos from the past
• Aspirational clutter: things that you own and aspire to use someday
• Buyer’s remorse clutter: things that you bought which you later realized you didn’t need or want, but you hang onto it rather than admit that you wasted your money on a bad purchase. 
• Conservation clutter: things that are theoretically useful but currently useless to you

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The Friday Question: How Do You Store Raw Meat?

Ground turkey packaged straight from the
butcher counter into my Pyrex container.

Although I aspire to being disposable-plastic-free, I am far from there, particularly in the realm of food. But I do try to draw a line somewhere, and the line I have drawn is this: I do not buy meat packaged on styrofoam trays. Not even the organic ground turkey at Costco, even though it is quite a good price for organic ground turkey.

When I decided to stop purchasing meat packaged in styrofoam, I resolved to instead buy ground turkey at the meat counter in Whole Foods, so I could have it packaged in my own reusable glass Pyrex containers. After using the meat, I could just put the Pyrex through the dishwasher and store until my next meat purchase. I could also use them for any other raw meat I bought at Whole Foods.

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