Archive for November, 2007

Quest for Questions

I got an e-mail today from a new reader who wanted the answers to some basic questions: What’s the goal of Fake Plastic Fish? Why am I doing this? When does the project end? What’s been the most difficult lifestyle change I’ve had to make so far? I realize that unlike EnviroWoman’s plastic-free blog, Fake [...]

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Holiday gifts and Mindfulness at the Movies

I’m being inundated with articles about “greening” your holidays. Smugly, I thought I had my holiday gift-giving plans all figured out. The season is fairly simple in our house since we don’t have children (although we may have kitties by Christmas!) and both of us are non-religious. That said, we do have families and friends [...]

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MySpace, my Blog, my Face, and my friend Red.

04/07/09 Update: Well, I’ve had this MySpace account for a year and a half, so I think I’ve given it a good shot. Didn’t work out. More annoying than helpful. So I closed it tonight. I much prefer Facebook. Every time I talk to my friend Red about my blog, he asks me why I [...]

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Store Report: The Thing About Costco…

In last week’s post about tips for shopping at Safeway and other mainstream chain grocery stores, I mentioned that one way to save plastic is to buy large-sized containers. Sunny commented that for that reason, maybe shopping at Costco is not so bad. So tonight, I visited Costco with my camera to see if we [...]

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Week 23 Results: 3.5 oz of plastic

Yay! The total weight’s back down again. But my plastic still doesn’t fit in the palm of my hand. Maybe this week coming up? Before I get on with the tally, here is a PVC update and a local Deal Alert: First, the PVC update: As you know, I found four bottles in my house [...]

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What’s wrong with this picture?

Out for a nice stroll, buying nothing yesterday, Michael and I were dismayed to see Telegraph Avenue lined with plastic bags full of brown leaves. What’s wrong with that? Everything! Our city councilwoman, Jane Brunner, has been working on getting more trees planted along our streets. Do more trees mean more garbage for the landfill? [...]

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Happy Thanksgiving! Buy local; buy handmade; or buy nothing!

Yes, I can criticize Safeway, but I’m still sucked in by their advertising. This billboard has been all over town in the past couple of weeks, so I decided I just had to try making pumpkin soup in a pumpkin shell to bring for Thanksgiving this year. I waited until the last minute, and then [...]

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Store Report: Struggling with plastic at Safeway

I am really fortunate to live in the San Francisco Bay Area with stores like Rainbow Grocery and Berkeley Bowl that sell so many foods in bulk bins without any packaging at all. It would be much harder to live plastic-free without these kinds of stores. So I thought I’d take an aisle-by-aisle tour of [...]

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Recycling part 5: Only in San Francisco

Continuing my visits to SF bay area waste facilities, I took a tour yesterday of the San Francisco MRF (material recovery facility, aka recycling center) and San Francisco “dump.” What I saw looked pretty much the same as at Davis Street and CWS, so I won’t bore you with more photos of sorting machines and [...]

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Week 22 Results: 10.2 oz of plastic

We’re getting a cat! Okay, I’ll get on with the weekly tally. But keep in mind, we’re getting a cat! Non-recyclable items used this week but purchased before the plastic project began: 5 Refresh Endura single-use eye drop containers (#4 plastic). Cap & sprayer from a can of CHI Infra Texture Hair Spray. As I [...]

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