The blog formerly known as   Fake Plastic Fish

Category Archives: Interviews And Guest Posts

April 9, 2010

Buying Less Plastic = Spending Less Money

The following is a guest post from Erin, who writes about the intersection of frugality and green living at The Conscious Shopper and The Green Phone Booth.  I asked her to write a post for Fake Plastic Fish about ways she saves  money while eliminating the plastic.  Here’s what she had to say…

It’s shopping day for The Conscious Shopper.

I get my list ready and head to the grocery store. First stop, the bulk bins, where I fill up my cloth bags with dried organic pinto beans, black beans, kidney beans, and chickpeas. Now I can bypass the canned foods aisle and reduce my family’s exposure to the BPA in the resin lining nearly all food cans.

SAVINGS PER YEAR: about $125

I pass the cleaning aisle: I don’t need to buy any household cleaners because I make my own concoctions with baking soda, vinegar, Dr. Bronners, and water.

SAVINGS PER YEAR: about $50

I pass the plastic baggies and plastic wrap – we reuse storage contain… Read the rest

March 10, 2010

It’s About Community: A Conversation with Annie Leonard

Do you know your neighbors? Annie Leonard, creator of the viral video The Story of Stuff thinks you should. In fact, she thinks it’s the number one thing we can do to take back our power as citizens and solve our environmental problems.  In this interview, she explains why, and insists that all of us need to be comfortable with speaking up and letting our voices be heard.

I sat down with Annie in her office in Berkeley two weeks ago, just before the launch of her new book, appropriately titled, The Story of Stuff for a conversation with the woman who has inspired millions around the globe.  If you happen not to be one of those millions because you haven’t yet seen the video, please take twenty minutes out of your day to watch it.   Annie is intense, engaging, and explains where all our “stuff” comes from and how it affects us in a way that powerful in its simplicity.

Some analysts say we have less leisure time than any time since feuda… Read the rest

December 29, 2009

Can a “Buy Nothing New” Pledge Help Reduce Plastic Consumption?

The following is a guest post from Katy Wolk-Stanley, author of The Non-Consumer Advocate blog. In keeping with last week’s posts about clutter and stuff, Katy’s post illustrates the relationship between plastic consumption and consumerism. Enjoy!

My name is Katy Wolk-Stanley and I am a die-hard member of The Compact, (a worldwide buy nothing new movement) and have been since I joined up in January of 2007. I buy used gifts; I buy used school supplies; Heck, I even buy used sheets.

It may sound like a source of frustration to not be able to walk into a store and quickly grab life’s necessities, but nothing could be farther from the truth. It turns out that much of what I had been grabbing were not necessities, but lots of stuff that were simply wants.

Not buying new has actually freed my life up. Saving not only untold thousands of dollars, but forcing me to make conscious and deliberate decisions about my purchases and how I live my l… Read the rest

November 10, 2009

Three Trashy Women

I’ve been meeting just the trashiest people in the last couple of weeks. Um… trashy in a good way.

Trashy Beachkeeper

I met Sara Bayles after the Blogger Beach Cleanup on October 24. You know, the one I missed. Sara’s blog, The Daily Ocean, tracks her goal of collecting trash on the beach in Santa Monica, CA for 365 days. She’s currently completed Day 72 and already collected 336.13 pounds of trash ALL BY HERSELF. And get this: she only collects trash for 20 minutes each day. That’s a lot to collect in a very short amount of time.

Sara is a ceramics teacher and told me that while always wanted to participate in an organized beach cleanup, she routinely found herself working and was never able to make it to one of them. So when she moved close to the beach this February, she took it upon herself to create her own beach cleanup program and invite others in the community to join her. So far, the community has collected an additiona… Read the rest

November 3, 2009

Dianna Cohen: Getting the Message from Her Own Art

Dianna Cohen is a painter, but she doesn’t use a paint brush. Trained at UCLA, she gave up the brush for materials most people consider trash: bags, boxes, little pieces of plastic. This year, she helped to found the Plastic Pollution Coalition. After twenty years, she finally started to get the messages from her own art. During my weekend in L.A., Dianna put me up in her art studio. I got to live with her artwork for three days and pick up a few messages myself.

Over lunch, Dianna explained to me about her art process and her passion for protecting the environment. While in college, she became intrigued with the different shades of brown paper bags and began creating collages, stitching them together with a needle and thread. One of my favorite pieces is this beautiful abstract piece made with cardboard boxes:

Her interest in plastic bags arose at a homeopathic shop in Belgium that provided the bags with colorful flowers printed on them. Dianna … Read the rest

October 27, 2009

Jackson Browne: Defiant About Bottled Water

Jackson Browne doesn’t appreciate the bottled water industry pumping millions of dollars into advertising to convince us that bottled water is better than tap water. He also happened to be sitting right behind me during the screening of Tapped Friday night at UCLA, one of the events organized by the new Plastic Pollution Coalition this weekend. So after the film, I asked if he would mind saying a few words to Fake Plastic Fish readers about his stand on bottled water. He said he could only give me a minute, but as you’ll see in the video, once he got started, his passion kicked in and he gave a lot more.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uD5gZ7yBZc

For those who are unable to hear the video, here’s a summary of his main points:

Tap water is more highly regulated than bottled water. Often, bottled water is just tap water that bottlers extract, bottle, and sell back to us at an exhorbitant price. Jackson carries his own me… Read the rest
September 24, 2009

A Tale of Two Plastic Laundry Baskets

I received the coolest email this morning from Fake Plastic Fish reader Ellen Simpson, who was inspired by this blog to figure out a way to repair her old plastic laundry basket instead of trashing it and buying a new one. She, in turn, inspired me to fix my own broken plastic laundry basket this morning. Here then, are the tales of two baskets, complete with pictures. First, Ellen’s:

from: Simpson, Ellento Beth Terrydate Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 7:23 AMsubject Laundry basket repair

Hi Beth,

I’m a big fan of your blog, and I wanted to let you know you inspired me to do a little green repair this past week. I have a plastic laundry basket that my husband and I have used for years. It’s cracking in a few places, and a few weeks ago one of the handles broke off completely.

My first inclination was to throw it away and get a new one. But then I thought, what would Beth (and her dad) do? I decided to try to repair the handle. Gluing the old handle back on woul… Read the rest

September 3, 2009

No Impact Man teaches me to suck eggs.

In May of 2007, I listened to a radio program that changed my life. The show was To The Best Of Our Knowledge’s Going Green episode, and the interviewee was Colin Beavan, self-described No Impact Man. His efforts to live sustainably caught my imagination. He and his family were attempting to live for one year generating zero environmental impact, while living in their ninth floor New York City apartment. I think maybe I related to him as a fellow urbanite. I realized I didn’t have to move to the country and live off the grid in order to lower my ecological footprint. But there was something else, too. Something in his voice that let me know here was someone who wasn’t blaming everyone else for the state of the earth but had decided to see what he himself and his family could do about their share of the mess we’re in.

Several weeks later, I managed to look up his web site, and it was through following links from the No Impact Man blog th… Read the rest

August 28, 2009

Music Festival Dilemma – Drinking Wine Without Plastic

Remember last year when I blogged about my difficulties filling up my Klean Kanteen at San Francisco’s Outside Lands Music Festival? If you haven’t read the post, be sure and check it out. It’s pretty outrageous.

Well, this year, Outside Lands is supposedly making a big change. They’ve announced they will provide water refill stations and encourage festival participants to bring their own bottles. I’ll let you know how this works out because I’m going to the festival this Saturday. By myself. Why? Because no one else I know is up for spending 100 frickin’ dollars to join me for Jason Mraz, Black Eyed Peas, TV on the Radio, and a whole host of other bands plus food and art and wine. I know it’s not Radiohead this year, but still fun, right? (Oh, and some guy named Dave Matthews who is the headliner. Meh. [Although I could be convinced otherwise.])

Anyway, the water situation seems to be covered, but … Read the rest

August 27, 2009

Personal Changes Do Make A Difference: An Interview with Diane MacEachern of Big Green Purse

Yesterday, I asked whether personal changes at the individual level can truly change the world. Today, I’m happy to share with you an interview with a woman I have truly grown to admire and who believes that shifting our personal spending towards greener products not only makes a difference but is actually more effective than waiting for governments to act.

I reviewed Diane MacEachern’s book, Big Green Purse, a year ago. Since then, I have had the pleasure of knowing her through the Green Moms Carnival, working with her on the BlogHer Green Team, plotting World Greenification with her in her hotel room at the BlogHer conference last month, and watching her cut loose on the ballroom floor. I have the utmost respect for her integrity and personal commitment to environmental work. Please enjoy my interview with this inspiring woman. She gives me hope!

Beth: You’ve had a long career in environmental education and activism. And I … Read the rest