Monthly Archives: November 2008

November 20, 2008 · 7:57 am

Day 143: Drinking Straws and New Vocabulary

“No straw please.”

Although I always try to say it, sometimes I forget. Or they can’t hear me. Or they forget. Or they don’t care. Or whatever. Regardless, I have quite a collection of drinking straws in my “un-numbered plastics” bin.

I had been intending to recycle them at the end of the year, but lately another option has caught my crafty eye. Lampshades. Check out how to make this cool one from Addicted to Decorating here. But don’t buy your straws like they suggest, reuse them.

If you don’t fancy yourself a craftsperson, you can still recycle your drinking straws at any place that takes mixed plastics. If you live in the lowermainland, we go to the Pacific Mobile Depot (North Van or Vancouver Island) or Happy Stan’s.

Speaking of which, I learned a new term today care of Happy Stan’s. They write a “tip of the month” on their website, and this month’s is right up our alley:

Precycling is the step before recycling. This is the process of making a conscious choice to purchase or use products and services which will have a less harmful effect on the Environment.

That is EXACTLY what we are trying to do. Yay for new vocabulary.

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Filed under DIY, soft plastics

November 18, 2008 · 7:06 pm

Day 141: Don’t Believe Everything You Read

If, in fact, what I read online is true, and “each week thousands of Globe and Mail readers make Margaret Wente’s column their first read”, then I feel that I have to speak out.

Allow me to paraphrase her Saturday article subtitled “Recycling targets seem to be based on the belief that the more we recycle, the faster we will go to Heaven” in which she snidely downplays the impact of disposable plastic in our society and infers that environmental municipal laws are based more on warm fuzzy feelings than economics or rational decision making.

First off, she introduces the fact that “it takes a great deal more energy to manufacture a reusable ceramic cup than . . . any kind of disposable cup” but goes on to justify using disposables because one would have to use their mug “a whopping 1,006 times to break even” compared to using polystyrene cups.

I agree with the facts, but not the justification. Continue reading →

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Filed under interactions, recycling, soft plastics

November 13, 2008 · 8:44 pm

Day 136: Dustalicious

Well, it finally happened. Our vacuum bag filled up. This doesn’t happen often because we mainly have laminate floors and prefer an old fashioned broom to the overpowering, cat-traumatizing power of our upright vacuum. But nothing beats the clean corners obtained by electrically induced suction, and now our bag is full.

In a perfect world, we would have a bagless version, but in reality we bought it years ago when we were on a pretty thin budget. I specifically remember that we went for the second from the cheapest model, congratulating ourselves on not being the complete lowest of the low. (This was long before the concept of craigslist or freecycle had drifted into my life.)

So the question is, what to do with the dust bag? Continue reading →

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November 10, 2008 · 12:47 pm

Day 133: Backyard Compost Etiquette

I’ve been receiving some composting questions as of late, and, not being a compost expert myself, I did a little online research and eventually decided to go to the source of all things compostable: the compost hot line.

Yes, here in Vancouver, we have a compost hot line where you can ask your burning compost questions and gardening experts will give you the dirt on how to turn your fruit and vegetable kitchen scraps into black gold.

Continue reading →

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November 8, 2008 · 8:56 am

Day 132: Our Car is Not On the Clean Bin Program

Our car doesn’t seem to understand the Clean Bin Project. It is trying to thwart our clean bins with broken auto parts and old engine oil. Well, at least the latter can be recycled. But buying new parts in almost unavoidable.

Now, before you all go into shock, yes it’s true. We have a car. Continue reading →

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November 6, 2008 · 9:11 pm

Day 129: Money We Can’t Spend

I’m tooting my own horn a bit here, but Grant and I have recently become winners.

Contest winners. We placed second in a national, outdoor video contest through Mountain Equipment Co-op. For you American readers, MEC is like REI for Canada. For the rest of the world, MEC is a huge outdoor gear co-op store. For us, MEC is like paradise -one that we used to shop in probably every other week or so. That is until we started the Clean Bin Project and became non-consumers.

So the irony of this is that we now have a $1000 gift card to one of our favorite stores, and we can’t spend it! The further irony is that the ridiculous amount of outdoor gear that we both have was one of the reasons we started this project in the first place. Seriously, we have 4 tents between 2 people.

In any case, we have another 8 months before we can officially buy “stuff”, so that should give us time to mull over what we think we “need” and what we are merely temporarily drooling over. One of the items on our radar is a portable solar panel – that’s green right? They also have a lovely selection of fair trade chocolate.

Anyway, enough horn tooting. If you want to see the video click here. It’s a 10 min movie about a ski traverse we did a few years ago. And in my defence, I am much better on the split board now than I was then. And also, to give credit where credit is due, Grant is the actual winner because he did most of the filming and all of the editing, but heck, I’m in it. (And yes that’s him up above, back in the shaggy-hair days, actually doing the filming on that very trip)

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Filed under gifts