The blog formerly known as   Fake Plastic Fish

Category Archives: Green Business

May 31, 2012

Pitch Me Your Green Product, but Skip the Greenwash. Here’s How.

My email in-box is forever filling up with product pitches from various PR reps who want me to review their latest offerings on this blog.   While I love reviewing things like plastic-free chewing gum, plastic-free lip balm, or compostable cleaning cloths, more often than not, the pitches I receive are either irrelevant to my topic–I’m not going to review an organic shampoo in a plastic bottle, even if the producer hand-picked the ingredients from her own backyard herb garden and reduced her carbon footprint by mixing them up using a pedal-powered generator–or don’t contain enough information to capture my interest.  Several years ago, I wrote up a detailed Advertising/Review policy, but it doesn’t seem to help much.  And in conversations (read: rants) among other green bloggers, I’ve discovered I’m not alone.  So I decided to write a letter to “green” companies to let the… Read the rest

January 10, 2011

Ambatalia Handmade To-Go Bags, Furoshiki Napkins, & More!

Molly de Vries lives just across the bay from me in Marin County and is the owner of Ambatalia, a company producing beautiful cloth to-go bags, napkins, and other reusables.  Her story is inspiring. Please enjoy her story in her own words.

My name is Molly de Vries, owner of Ambatalia, textiles for a non-disposable life, and The Fabric Society Shop.

My Story

I grew up amongst 7 brothers and sisters in downtown Mill Valley, California…

and am now raising my own three kids with my husband Willem in the original house my mom and dad bought back in 1955.

Mill Valley was much different than it is today. Lots of artists, musicians, and incredible places like the unknown museum, a magical spot filled with what some people might call junk or garbage. It was inspiration to me.

I grew up with a kitchen wall filled with beautiful old utilitarian hand tools and a large house furnished with found objects collected by my mom and dad. Also shopping at the Marin Ci… Read the rest

January 20, 2010

Green Moving Boxes Made from… Plastic?

As you know, I avoid buying plastic products.  Plastics contribute to the degradation of the world’s oceans, harm wildlife, and threaten human health.  But in certain situations, I think that durable plastics can actually be the better alternative to biodegradable materials like cardboard.  No, I didn’t suddenly take a job lobbying for the American Chemistry Council.  Rather, I was contacted by Spencer Brown of Rent-a-Green Box, … Read the rest

January 7, 2010

Plastic-Free Birthday

It’s my birthday! So how will I celebrate?

Well, first with a birthday lunch at work. Group lunches at the office are always challenging because of the packaging associated with take-out food. But fortunately, there’s a new lunch place in San Francisco I’ve been dying to try: Mixt Greens.

Mixt Greens is certified green under the Bay Area Green Business program. Their food is organic. Their packaging is compostable. And even the restaurant itself is constructed to green standards.

Next? We’ll see . Karaoke this weekend? A movie? A walk on the beach? I haven’t decided yet. Hoping to get together with Ruchi, aka Arduous, and hang out some.

I think I probably won’t blog again until next week. So cheers. Thanks for all your support. And keep away from plastic this weekend. 🙂… Read the rest

November 30, 2009

Notes on a Plastic-Free, Shopping-Free Holiday

Have you ever had so much fun that you completely forgot to take pictures? That’s what happens when the day is all about great food, friends, and silly games. Our friends Red & Jen (that’s them on the left) hosted a Thanksgiving potluck, and you know what? I didn’t see a lick of plastic. Okay, maybe I just wasn’t looking for it. Because sometimes I just have to turn off my “Fake Plastic Fish” brain and turn on my “connecting with others and forgetting about judgments” brain. I kinda wish that part of my gray matter would light up more often.

So here are a few notes with only a few pictures (which were actually taken by Jen and sent to me the next day!)

Thanksgiving

1) Michael and I got up early Thanksgiving morning and cooked butternut squash pie with a gluten-free pecan crust, baked yams (w/ butter, brown sugar, & lemon juice), and Autumn Harvest Salad with Persimmons. I got a little frantic tim… Read the rest

November 16, 2009

How to Survive the Green Festival

The Green Festival… this weekend was my third and probably best experience attending. I’ve read negative reviews of the Green Festival from green bloggers bemoaning that the vendor floor is so consumption-oriented and there is still so much plastic packaging and plastic products. Those comments may be valid. But you know what? The experience of The Green Festival is what you make of it. Here are some tips:

1) Meet up with your friends — the folks who create the products that you do love. I hung out with Jay from Life Without Plastic, the company that sells the airtight stainless containers I reviewed a year ago, on Friday afternoon and toured the vendor floor with him for a bit. He had just spent the previous days at the Green Business Conference and his enthusiasm was contagious.

2) Be a little outrageous. It’s the Green Festival. It’s your chance to sparkle. Walking past the ChicoBag table with Jay, I spotted a huge … Read the rest

October 28, 2009

Fantastic Letter from PolarSolar to Fake Plastic Fish

While I was away this weekend, I received this email from a San Francisco company that installs solar water heaters:

from Joseph Wright to Beth Terry date Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 5:05 PM subject Thanks and Question

Hi Beth,

I wanted to write to let you know what a hero you are of mine and I want to thank you for the positive influence that you have on the lives of others and the environment…I also have a question…I am a fellow Bay Area native and I operate a sustainable water heating business — after reading your recent blog post I have decided to eliminate PVC from our materials list (obviously very common plumbing material) and we will never look back… I have reposted your entry on our blog and was wondering if you would prefer some other way for us to refer to your information. I hope that all is well and I look forward to more of your inspiring ideas and calls to action…

http://polarsolar.com/blog/

Highest Regards,

Joe

Joe Wrig… Read the rest

October 21, 2009

Warm Plastic-Free Quilt Handmade Just In Time For Winter

Monday was rainy and cold. It sure was nice to have my new T-shirt quilt handmade by Fake Plastic Fish reader Colette Carrabba, who blogs at Carrabba’s World.

But let me backtrack a little.

Remember when I wrote about how the stuff on and around my desk was overwhelming me? A lot of you left some really great suggestions for ways to get organized. One of the most helpful came from Erika Barcott who wrote a whole post in response on her blog Redshirt Knitting and recommended the book, It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, by Peter Walsh. He recommends going through your stuff and keeping only 50% of it. He says that if things are important to us, we ought to treat them that way. Hoarding stuff away in drawers and boxes to be dealt with later only makes us feel overwhelmed in the present. While I don’t agree with his admonition to throw the rest away (we all know there is no such thing as “away”) I di… Read the rest

October 7, 2009

Learning Where My Food Comes From: A Field Trip to Straus Dairy Farm

After reading Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and seeing the film, Food Inc., I added the task “Visit farms and ranches where my food comes from” to my ongoing, never-ending “To Do” list.  And it sat there.  And sat there.  Until a couple of incidents spurred me to get serious.  First, reading about the very sad fate of male chicks to which I have been inadvertently contributing even though I buy Certified Humane eggs and second, seeing how much fun Colin Beavan had visiting a local farm in the film No Impact Man.

How many of us really understand how our food is produced?  Labels on meat and dairy products are full of pictures of happy animals in beautiful rustic settings with plenty of space to roam and be free.  But is that the truth?  And how can we make decisions about what food products are healthy, sustainable, and in line with our values if we don’t have complete information and may not e… Read the rest