The blog formerly known as   Fake Plastic Fish

Category Archives: Green Business

August 19, 2008

Tara’s Organic Ice Cream – Their trash can is empty!

Michael was terribly excited last week to tell me that a new shop had opened in our neighborhood combining two of our biggest passions: ice cream and zero waste. “You have to come see and bring your camera so you can write about it!” He’s not often so emphatic about what I post on my blog, so I figured this must be serious!

We joined up with a couple of other ice cream-lovin’ friends on Sunday and headed up the street to Tara’s Organic Ice Cream, which just opened a week ago on College Avenue (near where Safeway wants to build its mega monstropolis.) And sure enough, the boy was right! The ice cream is awesome, certified organic, but even better, the shop offers only durable or compostable containers and utensils.

The spoons are metal (for eating in the shop) or made from potato starch (for taking to go.)

Even the little tasting spoons are made from metal.

The bowls and containers are either durable dishes, like this one that … Read the rest

July 8, 2008

Berkeley’s Green 4th of July

I love living in the Bay Area. Especially after reading Life Less Plastic’s post about all the plastic and Styrofoam at her city’s Taste of Chicago festival.

Here are some images from Berkeley’s Independence Day celebration at the Marina:

I especially love that the garbage containers are labeled “Landfill” and explain what goes to the landfill and why it’s important to choose recyclable or compostable alternatives. All the disposable dishware at the event were compostable. And there were water stations for filling up reusable bottles.

The “greening” of this event was the doing of my friend Mary Munat, aka Green Mary. In February, I wrote about Janice Sitton, my event greener friend in San Francisco. Mary is my other event greening friend, and she’s been doing it since 2000. Here’s how she got inspired to do this work, excerpted from her web site:

Mary’s epiphany came … Read the rest

May 21, 2008

Check out my fancy new "business" card holder (and cards!)

Isn’t this just the coolest idea ever? I wish I could take credit for this recycled business card holder, but the kudos go to the geniuses at Acorn Studios, where they have full instructions for making your own! (2011 Update: The Acorn Studios link has been removed. Here are instructions on another site: http://rockvillecentre.patch.com/articles/diy-business-card-holder)

So I displayed my new Fake Plastic Fish cards in their spiffy recycled plastic holder at the monthly gathering of East Bay Green Drinks tonight, where I was invited to come and present the Take Back The Filter campaign. The cards were designed by Ed Colmar of Green Graphics, a green printing and design firm here in Oakland. He’s probably going to help me clean up this web site too, maybe in time for its one-year anniversary. Right Ed?

For those who don’t know, Green Drinks is a monthly gathering of “people interested in sustainability, including … Read the rest

May 8, 2008

Let me be your guinea pig, please!

Seriously, if you have created something that you think will help us reduce waste and won’t just add to the mountains of garbage, plastic or otherwise, littering our world, send it my way to try out. But don’t send any plastic packaging or I’m liable to ship it right back to ya. I received two nifty items in the last few weeks, both packaged sans plastic and both very cool.

The first was from Bibi Rogers, who has created a company called 4U2ReUSE. Bibi has sent me several emails explaining how important this project is to her and her vision for a healthier planet. While out on a kayaking trip with her son, they came upon a beach littered with plastic bags, the sight of which profoundly affected her. She wanted to do something to solve the problem. Experience told her that carrying reusable bags was the best choice, but often people forget to bring them. What if they had a cute carrier to store their old plastic bags in so they could reuse the… Read the rest

March 4, 2008

The Business of Green Part 3: Tracey TieF of Anarres Natural Health

Tracey TieF has a wholistic health practice in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada called Anarres Natural Health. She’s also a Fake Plastic Fish reader and frequent commenter, and a few weeks ago she emailed me a copy the newsletter she sends out to all her clients. I was blown away. Hers is exactly the kind of business we need more of.

Besides using all natural and sustainable ingredients (she doesn’t use Indian Sandalwood or Rosewood which come from un-sustainably harvested and endangered plants), supplying the electricity for the clinic from 100% wind power, choosing suppliers who are local, small enterprises, and striving to serve the entire community through Pay-What-You-Want-Days, Tracey has a big ole anti-plastics campaign going, which she calls the The End of The World of Plastic 2008 Challenge.

Here is an excerpt from her previous e-mail newsletter:

5. Bonus article: Take The End of The World of Plastic 2008 Challenge… Read the rest

November 13, 2007

San Francisco Green Festival, the aftermath

The San Francisco Green Festival was somewhat of a sanctuary after my dismal visit to the bay on Friday. It was huge, HUGE! I went intending to browse and gather information. I ended up with a backpack and tote bag full of stuff but almost zero plastic. (I’ll tell you about the one bit of plastic I’ll be sending back at the end of this post.)

Anyway, after walking a couple of miles to the festival from the wharf, I was starving and headed directly for the food court, where I was happy to see that all the offerings were organic, the tableware was compostable, and the water was piped into a water station rather than served in plastic bottles. I had a tasty veggie wrap and salad from Back to Earth Organic Caterers and filled up my own Klean Kanteen at the water station. Instead of taking their disposable napkins and compostable cutlery, I used my own cloth napkin and To-Go-Ware utensils.

I was also heartened to see many waste stations at convenient in… Read the rest