alter eco project

here it is . . . TEDx

here is is! the livestream of the TEDx conference organized by the Plastic Pollution Coalition.

tedxgp2 on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

one.

 is it a birthday or blog-iversary?

it was exactly a year ago today that we started the alter eco project. it's been an incredible year learning how to reduce our waste and live without plastic & packaging. thank you to everyone that reads the blog and supports our efforts to help us "learn as we go". i have to admit that your positive feedback is sometimes the only thing that keeps us from feeling truly defeated. so thank you! today is a good day to recommit to the objectives we set last year. 

we're updating our site so we will have a fresh new look for the next year,  keep your eyes peeled and thank you again! happy birthday to us.

* if you want to reminisce a bit, here is how the whole thing got started: 

first, let me just state for the record that i am not perfect and this isn't some manifesto on how you should live your life like mine. i am wholly imperfect :  i drive a car, have had my share of foreign bottled water &  i've been known to drool over a gucci bag or two. oh, and by the way,  i'm not a writer . . . this little ditty is just my opinion so take it for what it's worth.

yesterday on facebook i posted a little snippet about my husband george & i devising a plan for a no waste and package free kitchen. i got such a great response that i thought i might just take the idea and park it here for a while on my domain that i was planning to develop as a portfolio site. so that's how the idea landed here but the larger question of " how did we get here?"  as in how did we arrive at the idea of a zero waste kitchen or why are we thinking about a package free kitchen is hopefully a little more interesting.

this is the pile that started it all ::

this pile is some of the waste from our weekend. it may not look like much for four people but this is what we created in less than 24 hours and we ate two meals out. it's too much! most of this will actually go into the recycling but we thought "seriously, can't we do better than this ?" 

we're smart - right? my husband recycles like it's his job, we support the local farmers market and ccof, we know about things like our carbon footprint and carbon credits, i have a pink metal coffee cup i drag around with me . . . but stuff like this drives us nuts. And this was definitely fuel on the fire ::

 

thousand layer crackers :: seeming harmless box, then foil :: inside the foil is a plastic tray and individually wrapped crackers :: wtf? :: they should change the name to " a thousand layers to get to your cracker "

we're not radical lefty granola tree huggers but we had already been trying to make small improvements in regards to reducing our consumption. we wanted to make reasonable changes we could live with so my husband rides his bike to work ( 50 + round trip) a couple times a week, and to my occasional dismay, we are very conservative with our heater in the winter (my mother will agree wholeheartedly) and we high five each other when our utility bill is under thirty bucks. it's progress right? it's something...

until this. i have been inspired listening to the audio book by colin beavan titled "zero impact man - the adventures of a guilty liberal who attempts to save the planet and the discoveries he makes about himself and our way of life in the process" you can check it out here.  

... and that was that. we decided to change the way we shop, how we eat and ultimately, how we live. it's going to be an interesting change for us and we will certainly have to be weaned off the teat of conveniencebut the goal is to minimize our families impact on the environment.

our objective:  is to have a zero waste kitchen and no longer purchase anything packaged. maybe as this evolves we will branch out to other areas but in my opinion, our eating habits contribute the majority of our waste... i'm sure this isn't a revolution but for us it's a huge undertaking...have you got any ideas for us?

so now, i am starting with cleaning out the fridge and purging the cupboards

let the games begin ;)

mad science continues

my attempt with mad science continues! we're having fun now over here with my "everlasting" compostable containers. here's the latest trick to see if i can force them into breaking down or at least making them smaller. even after running them over with my car, the "bio plastic" didn't obliterate them the way i was hoping.check it out here:

the idea is to now take all the little bits & pieces and put them in different forced "environments" to see how long (if ever) it takes to complete decomposition. george, my husband, thinks that i might have altered some kind of chemical process that speeds up the process by heating the containers. (check it out here) we'll see. one group is going be the baseline, another will soak in salt water and the last bits will go in with rich soil & the worms. i will update you on the progress.

also, if i ever start a "top 10 stupidest plastic products ever" list. this would have be number 10.

omg. i was absolutely stopped in my tracks tonight when i came home. there, sitting by the door was the wonder of all wonders, a bag of something called "ice rok". my son held it up by the corner, in a way that suggested it was on fire, and said "the mail man left us a plastic bag of water". huh? what the?

i found out later that a friend of mine who owns a health food store actually received this as a sample and left it for me to see. it's about the size of an i.v. bag with an insane plastic spigot / spout thang on the top that reminds me of an overgrown lego. interestingly, it's covered with all kinds scary of claims like :

* recently discovered! deep mountain glacier water

* locked in the rok for 20,000 years

* impervious to the pollutants & radiation from rain or air

so i went to the website (www.icerokwater.com) printed on the side of the container and guess what? it's all legal stuff!  it's about all the law suits that are associated with the product. ok! so then i googled it for kicks and ta da! they have a new website www.icerokglacier.com that is all shiny and pretty. all i can imagine is a bird on the midway islands choking on this lid/spout. i will use the water for my plants and then decide what to do with the container. hhmmft.

on a much happier note, here is something that is really fantastic. have you heard of kids konserve? well, check this out. it's called a food kozy , a re-useable wrap,  perfect for a sandwich and doubles as a placemat. made from recycled milk bottles, it's  bpa, lead and phthalate free and they're adorable. we found them at whole foods and emily, jillian and i split a 5 pack that was just over 20$. kids konserve is also teaming up with annie's homegrown (the kids gold standard for mac & cheese) to reduce waste! yippee! here is the lovely jillian to model the product:

  

 
 

btw, it's all the same

i'm not exactly a math or science whiz. in fact, i was invited by my university to take biology 101 more than once. but, i do like the idea of a project so here's what i am up to today. . .

you know those cups and containers made out of compostable material ? they look just like plastic but they are actually made from poly lactic acid (PLA) or corn. well, i decided to see exactly how these break down and i have to admit, that it's alot harder than i thought. i buried some containers in my biodegradeable graveyard this spring (you can read about it here) and the stuff just doesn't compost / decompose. it's been a few months (nearly 4) and there isn't any progress. so i decided to take some containers and conduct my own stress tests to see if i could force some change. 

the green ware website says the cup will break down at 120 degrees, but guess what? the photos below show what two containers, one cup & a lid, look like after going through the super hot, pot scrubber cycle of my dishwasher. Then, as a hail mary, i tried to boil (for almost an hour) the pieces to within an inch of their life. 150 degrees later (confirmed by my candy thermometer) the finished result ~ they look exactly the same! they just don't show any signs of breaking, they're just kind of shriveled and super rigid. the texture kind of reminds me of shrinky dinks. eeek! 

so... let's not use them! besides, the same people who produce plastics are in bed with the guys who benefit from genetically modified corn so the money all goes to the same people. 

   
 here's a little something for those of us who use facebook frequently * thanks to my friend michelle, who is originally from west virginia (and very in touch with the mountain top renewal issue) to bring this to our attention! it's very clever just like the lovely michelle.

progress in unexpected places . . .

how's this for mainstream? 

i was flipping through my sister in laws crate & barrel catalog, when i saw something that nearly took my breath away! check this out :

  

i love it! the description says "bags go from grocery to fridge, eliminating the need for wasteful plastic disposables". you go crate & barrel! they're not perfect but at least it's a little something  ;)

 

 plastic help hotline, go ahead caller. . .

here's how you know that repetition works!  below i transcribed a message i got on my cell from a friend who was feeling a little guilty:

oh forgive me mother eco, of the immaculate plastic bag-less conception!!

i have sinned!  i have a  confession to make!

i was up at the music store and i got a plastic bag, i rode my bike up there and i just realized they gave it to me when i rode my bike back home by your place and i feel really bad, i was trying to avoid you guys, and now the guilt is just seeping out of my pores, i don't want to let this come between us and you know ruin our friendship.

call me and absolve me! 

let me know how much penance i have to do? 

 

about a month ago, i buried a bunch of compostable & biodegradable items in my back yard to see just how fast they start to breakdown. you can read about it here. 6 weeks later, i have dug it all up and i thought you might like to hear about the progress.

this probably comes as no surprise but the overall winner hands down is paper. i buried waxed paper and butcher paper. in four weeks, the waxed paper broken down to almost nothing. the butcher paper is thicker & stronger so it's still recognizable but i think that it will be gone in another couple weeks. i have put this same paper in the worm bin and it breaks down in half the time if it gets wet. also, i found the remains of this bio- box which surprisingly is nearly gone too. 

no shocker here, the taterware, greenware cups and bio-bags are still good as new. i'm going to try to improve the conditions by adding some moisture and covering the area to increase the heat factor but i'm sad to report that the type and logos haven't even worn off. hmmphf.

 a little bent out of shape . . .
 

coming unglued, again.

 

july 4th and i have a love/hate relationship.  i used to love it. when i was a kid, it meant sunny days, a big parade, ice cream, staying up late for fireworks. what's not to love about that? 

then, in my 20's, i moved to hawaii for a couple of years and that's when the 4th became a nightmare. it meant garbage in the water. long before i became aware of things like  5 gyres and what it really meant (to the environment) to drink water in plastic bottles, i started to see the mess firsthand. 

living in maui meant being in the water everyday. one year, i sailed more than 300 days.  i spent every afternoon at the beach rigging while waiting for the wind to come up on the north shore and we would sail until dark.  the south shore was more calm & mellow before the wind would kick up, so we would snorkel or paddle over there in the early morning.  i remember very distinctly one 5th of july, being in la perouse and when i put my head underwater it was full of that red paper that makes up firecrackers. 

i remember wanting to scream but it was so quiet underwater. it felt like i was swimming in a snow globe but instead of snow it was littered with red paper. it was so sad, seeing all that paper floating around, waving back and forth on the bottom. it was in the reefs, on the beaches, in my hair ~ it was everywhere. even if i wanted to (or tried) it couldn't be cleaned up.  i think it's part of why i come unglued about garbage at the beach. 

i hate seeing the ocean so vulnerable. 

back in the day.

hands across waddell

i just wanted to thank everyone that participated in hands across the sand this saturday at waddell creek.  i think it was a really successful event and it was great to see all your smiling faces and i was happy to hold your hands. . . i thought you might like to some other photos from around the hands site:

      

 
 
 
there are tons of images, all kinds of people holding hands along different beaches in interesting locations. one group sang woody gutheries'  "this land is your land" and became too emotionally overwhelmed when they got the part about the " gulf stream waters" that they couldn't really finish. there were many stories about passing on a wish, a hope or a hand squeeze and our group did something similar, we had blue marbles . .

if your not familiar with bluemarbles.org check it out here:

    

  

 

i do have to admit though that i did a little daydreaming about how this event might look if it we added a little dash of hollywood . . .

i was wishing for that moment where after two months of standing around nail biting and making paper airplanes, the bp executives would see the impact of our peaceful hands across the sand demonstration and be so inspired  that they would somehow have a head slapping moment of clarity to do the right thing. with a little movie magic and a two minute fast cut montage of some engineering brainiacs scribbling down drawings along with some heart pounding music, we cut to the steady handed operators who put a cap on this geyser. just like the end of animal house when all the misfit characters get what they deserve and all the wrongs get right. if only real solutions were this easy . . .

me & my marble

small satisfactions

 glorious & unpackaged . . .

 "life is made up of obscure and seemingly mundane victories that gives us our own small satisfactions"   . . .

this quote from billy joel could not ring more true than it did this morning.  i was motoring around doing errands and ended up in the bakery aisle at the grocery store. maybe you remember another post i wrote about trying to buy unpackaged (and de-stickered) breads here in the fall. you can check it out here. 

i have to admit that i always had a bit of an uneasy time going back there because after initially meeting resistance i was somehow always poised for more. anyway, i was thrilled when i reached the counter and saw that it had been converted to self serve! previously, i  had to be waited on and that of course, always led to an exchange. it drove me batty that the bread had to be "properly packaged" to make it all 50 feet from the bakery to the checkout. it was a mundane victory that felt amazing! i whipped out every dishtowel i had and wrapped up enough bread to soak up the bp oil spill.

actually on that note, i wanted to remind you that saturday the 26th is "hands across the sand". 

What is Hands Across The Sand?

Hands Across the Sand is a movement made of people of all walks of life and crosses political affiliations. This movement is not about politics; it is about protection of our coastal economies, oceans, marine wildlife, and fishing industry.  Let us share our knowledge, energies and passion for protecting all of the above from the devastating effects of oil drilling.

What to do at a Hands Event

Step 1     Go to the beach at 11 am in your time zone,for one hour,  rain or shine.

Step 2    Join hands at 12 for 15 minutes, forming lines in the sand against oil drilling in our coastal waters

Step 3    Leave only your footprints

Hands Across The Sand from Walton Outdoors on Vimeo.

checking in with jillian on our own toxic america

 sweet jilly . . .

my friend Jillian and I were chatting about the CNN piece that is coming up called Toxic America. as a physicians assistant and mother, jillian (Jillian Chelson Briscoe, MS PA-C, Family Practice) has a unique perspective and she is my go to girl about anything health related. check out this short article she wrote after attending a medical conference in southern california last week : 

When I was in highschool I would listen to a song entititled "Everything Causes Cancer" by Joe Jackson, while we drank Tab and ate Coffee Hagen Daz icecream. With adolescent bravado we would listen to the lyrics, dismiss it and get back to Tab and maybe some dancing. Back then, a song was just a song.

This past month, the President's 2010 Cancer Report was released. The findings? Joe Jackson was on to something.The cancer report supports what in some circles we have been hearing for the last 5 years. Each of us is exposed to some 80,000 chemicals throughout the year. If you were to randomly test an American woman's breast milk or urine you would find some 200 chemicals present. Breast feeding mothers do not panic. Breast milk, toxins and all, is still a better nutrition and immunological support for your baby than formula. But the scariest part of this is that newborns will have these same 200 chemicals present in their bodies despite never having been exposed themselves. Toxic mommies make toxic babies.

As we watch the spill of oil into the Gulf, we are horrified. If that was not enough, as The Alter Eco Project has posted, CNN will be doing an environmental piece called Toxin Towns. We can choose to see this as a barrage of bad news or we can use this as a launching point for each of us to get up and do something for our planet and for our bodies. If we want health, they both need us.

The Cancer Report focuses much of its attention on pesticides. Nearly 1,400 pesticides have been registered by the EPA for agricultural and non-agricultural use. Exposure to these chemicals has been linked to brain/central nervous system (CNS), breast, colon, lung, ovarian, pancreatic, kidney, testicular, and stomach cancers, as well as multiple myeloma and soft tissue sarcoma.

The EPA has required testing of less than 1 percent of the chemicals currently in commerce. Pesticides do not discriminate and find themselves in just about every organ system. These chemicals are alien to our bodies and are among a leading contributor of cancer.

Cancer is currently the 2nd leading cause of death. Currently 1.4 million Americans are living and having some successes with cancer. It is projected that by the year 2030, 2.3 million Americans will be living and victoriously this disease. Today 1:2 men will get cancer and 1:3 women will get cancer.

It does not appear that we are winning the war against cancer. Relying on medical researches and politicians alone is not working. As Colin Beaven has showed us in No Impact Man (a must read) one person can make a difference. Like a virus we too can replicate and pass it on. I will provide some suggestions to get you started. This list is not exhaustive. Use what works for you and pass it on.

First and foremost you can make consumer choices that align with the desire to decrease the environmental chemical overload on your body and your planet.

Eat organic. Buy from farmers's markets or grow your own.

Refuse to Ever buy another bottled water. The contents are barely regulated and often contaminated. The plastic leachs into the water. The empty bottles are incinerated releasing dioxins into the environment. Dioxins, by the way, are second to plutonium in terms of danger to the body and the planet. What you may not have considered, you are drinking carcinogens then kindly make more carcinogens with your waste. The ultimate whammy you pay for it.

Cancer is not something that you just get. Cancer is something that has been brewing in your body for decades before it finally appears. This means that the body is working hard everyday to scour and destroy cancers that appear. I heard an oncologist state that our bodies are doing surveillance on 400-1000 cancer cells in our bodies daily. The problem occurs when there is an altered orchestration of our phenomenal physiology.

Although I have over-simplified cancer and its development here are some suggestion to help give your body a fighting chance (although it is really a loving choice) against cancer.

Really eat when you eat ( eating and driving or eating & working is not fortifying)

Slow down. Less is more

Avoid sugars and high fructose corn syrup

Eat red meat sparingly & always organic and grass fed. If you cannot afford it don't eat it. Your body can't either.

Eat good quality protein but favor plants.

Minimize caffeine and alcohol. Drink Green tea and water instead.

Keep your grains whole and avoid gluten when you can.

Sweat. E

xercise daily for 30 minutes. This is one of the best things that you can do for yourself, your family and your planet. Make sustainable clean energy not sick cells.

The point of all of this? While we are constantly bombarded by these chemicals, we have a choice. We can live in a way that protects both our bodies and our planet. And it is not too late--If it only takes 90-120 days to change the entire cell membrane so consider the possibilities. Get going. Joe Jackson was not completely right.