All I Want For Christmas: Not To Feel So Conflicted About Wrapping Paper

Posted on December 7, 2015 by gretchenwing

What’s better than Christmas presents? If you’ve had a toddler in your life recently, or been one yourself, you know: Wrapping paper! Especially that foil kind which holds its shape. If I had digital copies of my photos from the early 90s, I’d share some ADORABLE pics of my boys wearing Christmas wrap like armor. I have no idea what present was inside; the resulting shiny togs, and the boys’ joyful faces, is all I remember.

Problem is, that stuff’s not recyclable. Too high of a metallic content. In fact, most Christmas wrap, glommed all over with tape, gets rejected in the end: too much plastic.

This year, to add to my perennial conflict between wanting the brightest, shiniest, bring-back-my-innocent-childhoodiest gift wrap and wanting to, y’know, save the Earth, I was asked by our local Dump to write an article promoting zero waste in the Christmas season. The info they sent me included stats like this:

Garbage increases by 25% nationally over the holidays—that’s an extra 25 million tons. Most wrapping paper is not recyclable, due to metal or plastic content or tape. Then there are those 2.65 billion annually discarded Christmas cards, not to mention 38,000 miles of discarded ribbon, enough to tie a bow around the whole earth.

Sigh…I felt like I was writing that article to myself.

The Dump folks also included a link to this wonderful, crafty blog, Suburble, written by a way-cooler-sounding-than-Martha-Stewart woman named Tara. Tara walks you through the steps of making your own reusable Christmas bags, like this:

I could do that! I could even wear that!

I have a sewing machine. I have tons of cool fabric bits. What remains is to wrestle my pre-awareness-of-global-crisis enthusiasm for VERY BAD WRAP and translate it into enough enthusiasm for FABRIC BAGS that I will actually sit down and make some.

…or…

I could take my own advice from that article, and make gift wrap out of decorated paper bags. That sounds like a fun day for my inner child.

…or…

I could take some more advice and collect pretty grasses and dried flowers to tie onto gifts. But it’s pretty wet out there. That inner-child thing’s looking better all the time.

Anyone else wrestling with this? A support group would be nice.

Coolest Freecycle Ever: Community Playgrounds

Posted on November 29, 2015 by gretchenwing

This isn’t an official travel blog post. For The Mate and me, a jaunt down to the Bay Area for Thanksgiving doesn’t count as a serious, blogworthy Road Trip. But we’re still on the road, and I want to share this cool thing we saw, so maybe it does count after all.

Kids come with a lot of stuff, right? Tricycles and scooters and playhouses and various plastic contraptions with dials and buttons and little squishy horns that (none too soon) lose their squawks. Kids grow. Parents get more stuff, keeping up with the demand. Until finally, the kids are in high school, the garage is full, and the choice arises: endless yard sale, or multiple trips to Goodwill?

But in Oakland, at least, parents have created a third alternative: bring those toys to the nearest playground. And oh, boy–talk about Toddler Heaven!

What to play with first????

We could have stayed there all day if we’d had enough snacks.

Gentlekids, start your engines!

After all, we all know that other people’s toys are always the best, right?

Even big kids like Son Two are captivated!

Yes, of COURSE I know such community playgrounds only work in a climate like California’s. Try this in Washington or Oregon, in the South or Midwest or New England, and…ugh. The mental pictures I get–mold, cracked plastic–not pretty.

But a girl can dream, right? What do you think?

My Favorite Catalog is the One I Don’t Receive: Do You Know About Catalog Choice?

Posted on November 4, 2015 by gretchenwing

Do you love receiving unsolicited catalogs in the mail? Then by all means, don’t read this.

You know that scene in “Dead Poets Society” where Robin Williams’ character makes his students rip the intro out of their poetry textbooks? “Begone, J. Edwin Pritchard!” “I don’t hear enough rrrrip!”

That’s who I think of when I use Catalog Choice to rid myself of the ~~disturbing wasteful downright stupid~~ unwanted catalogs clogging up my mailbox. “Begone, ‘Bed, Bath & Beyond’! Never darken my doorway again, ‘Jockey’! ‘ Walmart’–I said good DAY.”

I LOVE Catalog Choice. I love knowing I DO have a choice, and a method, of reducing the amount of costly junk mail swirling around me–and when I say “costly” I’m referring to the whole process, from cutting down the tree to my fellow citizens having to haul all that recycling off our island.

Never tried it? Here’s all you do: Go to catalogchoice.org and create your profile. It costs nothing. (They do ask for a donation, but again–your choice.) From there, every time you receive an unwanted catalog, all you do is log in, type the name of the catalog you wish to divorce yourself from, enter the codes printed on the back of the catalog, and–hey presto, it’s out of your life. (Catalog Choice even includes a way for you to report bad catalogs who refuse to listen to you the first time and keep showing up, though this hasn’t happened to me yet.)

Of course there are those catalogs with whom I enjoy a happy, lifetime relationship. (Talking to YOU, REI–and thanks again for opting out of Black Friday.) I would never “Catalog Choice” them out of my life. ‘Cabela’s’? No thanks. But ‘King Arthur Flour,’ you can snuggle on over here…

We probably all have more “losers” than “keepers” when it comes to catalogs. Want to share your top 3 keepers? I’m listening. (But for the rest–tell ’em to get lost.)

K Cups: Does The K Stand For Are You KIDDING Me?

Posted on August 23, 2014 by gretchenwing

This is one post where I actually expect to get some hate mail, because I’m about to spew some hate myself.

I hate K cups. I hate the IDEA of K cups. I hate that they seem to be charming our convenience-hungry society backward in the ecological march, just when I thought we were starting to make some progress.

For those of you who don’t know–bless your hearts–the K stands for Keurig, the owner of the Green Mountain Coffee Company, based in Vermont. The actual cup contains a single serving of YOUR CHOICE of coffee, or tea, or cocoa, with YOUR CHOICE of flavoring, price range, or political correctness. You stick it into a machine, press a button, and the contents gets flushed with steaming hot water, giving you YOUR CHOICE of delicious hot drink without having to argue with your office mates, or roommates, or just plain old mate, about what to brew.

And K cups are made of plastic. So every time you have that specially-made, personalized cuppa whatever, you create a miniature yogurt container of garbage. Except that yogurt containers are recyclable. According to Mother Jones, only 5 percent of K cups are currently made of recyclable plastic, but even that plastic has to be separated from its aluminum lid, and from the wet grounds within. What are the chances THAT cup will ever actually stay out of a landfill?

(Orig. image courtesy wikimedia)

I have three concerns here. One is obvious: the increased trash.According to Mother Jones,

Journalist Murray Carpenter estimates in his new book, Caffeinated, that a row of all the K-Cups produced in 2011 would circle the globe more than six times. To update that analogy: In 2013, Green Mountain produced 8.3 billion K-Cups, enough to wrap around the equator 10.5 times. If Green Mountain aims to have “a Keurig System on every counter,” as the company states in its latest annual report, that’s a hell of a lot of little cups.

The second one is the creep of thoughtlessness these little cups-o-convenience represent. For a busy office, yeah, I get it. No more fights over who let the coffee pot sit there and burn. No more horrible instant. (I’m a tea drinker myself, but I do “get” the gourmet coffee thing.)

But families? Couples? Individuals? Day after day, creating piles of unnecessary plastic trash? Really, people?

For tea, even! A little plastic cup instead of a tea bag?? REALLY?

(Orig. image courtesy Wikimedia)

I also hate that this Vermont-based company–Vermont, for Pete’s sake!–trades off that P.C. “Green Mountain” name to lure and lull folks into getting comfy with a product that is anything BUT green.

But hey. It’s YOUR CHOICE.

OK. I’ve ranted enough. Let me hear it, people. Can anyone convince me of the value this insidious device? (Humph. Just try. )

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle…on the Catwalk

Posted on August 29, 2013 by gretchenwing

High Fashion made a grand entrance to Lopez Island last week, and got dumped.

Literally. The Second Annual Trashion-Fashion event is a fundraiser for our beloved Dump, and all outfits must be made from materials gleaned either there or at the Thrift Shop. And boy, were they ever.

I didn’t get to go last year, but I had seen some of the winning entries displayed at our library, so I couldn’t wait. And I was NOT disappointed. I knew we had some amazingly creative folks around here, but this blew me away.

The decor alone, featuring chandeliers of found objects, was jaw-dropping. Here’s a taste:

Bike tire rims, lamp shades, neckties…you name it, they chandeliered ’em. (All photos courtesy Anne Whirledge-Karp)

As for the outfits…I think I’ll give the ol’ adjectives a rest and let the visuals do the work for once:

Ever wonder what to do with that old Twister game in your closet?

Isn’t she ADORABLE? Those are CDs on her head. She could belly-dance, too. Definitely a prize-winner.

Not even a broken leg could keep Sheila off the catwalk. She ditched the wheelchair and used crutches to model her bead-curtain Cleopatra ensemble.

Isn’t this outfit the last straw? Seriously, she must have used every last straw in the dump. It’s ALL straws!

A grand prize winner…made of deer fencing! Not too comfy, but Maria wore the hell out of that dress.

…and a lil’ something for the ladies too!

I wish I could say these designers and models inspired me to make my own outfits out of castaway stuff, but the closest I’ve ever come to that kind of creativity is sewing old Levi’s pockets onto the back of my green jeans for patches. Sigh. At next year’s Trashion-Fashion event, I will be happily occupying my rightful place in the audience once more.

But I’ll bet I have some creative readers out there. What’s the coolest item you’ve ever re-purposed? Brag a little!

(And thanks again to my friend Anne Whirledge-Karp for all the great photos. Next year I’ll bring MY camera!)

Trash Talk: Portlandia’s Not So Far Off

Posted on July 30, 2013 by gretchenwing

If you’ve read more than a couple of my posts, you know by now that I’m not the world’s most up-to-date, culturally hip blogger. So it should come as no surprise that I only this past week watched my first episode (recorded, of course) of “Portlandia,” which has been on…well, don’t ask me, but I’m pretty sure it’s been all year by now.

It made my adopted Northwestern self laugh. Especially this episode about recycling:

I KNOW, right? Especially that part about recycling leftover lotion!

Thing is, I was laughing with recognition. Because our little island voted last year to become an independent sanitation entity, taxing ourselves. So we can be as PICKY as we want to in our recycling. And we want to be very, very picky. Here are some examples from our dump:

Not just “plastic”…but Plastic With Necks!

See what I mean? PICKY. I love it.

There’s a special section just for gardeners and farmers.

Special attention is paid to oil and such waste at our dump.

Best of all is our Take It Or Leave It. Definition? Just what it sounds like. But ours is SUPER organized. Here’s what I mean:

We call it Neil’s Mall–named after the guy who runs it, originally as a volunteer.

“Towels? Aisle 3.”

SOMEBODY will find a use for this stuff. But you can’t have the cabinet.

Thing is, it’s fun to laugh at the Sanitation Twins. But there’s a reason “Portlandia” has been singled out to be mocked for its earnest do-goodiness. Here in the Northwest, some of us really ARE that way. And no apologies!

How about you? Do you think recycling to this level of detail is silly? Does your town’s recycling plan make you crazy, or do you love it? Talk trash to me!!