This is an innovative solution I just came across for being able to recycle plastics that typically just end up in landfills or incinerated.  This company, MBA Polymers, is mining landfills for plastics and using extremely sophisticated technology to sort and recycle the plastics.

I am in favor of limiting the use of plastic in my life as much as possible because of plastic’s negative environmental impact and potential health risks. However, I know there are many beneficial uses of plastic. For example, using plastic for car bodies makes them lighter and require less energy, which means less fossil fuels for older cars and electric cars that can travel longer distances on a single charge. So, for all the beneficial uses of plastic, I am really excited to see such a large-scale provider of recycled plastic emerge. This means manufacturers can purchase their raw plastic for their products from MBA Polymers, instead of purchasing virgin plastic from other providers. The more we can use the same plastic over and over, the less new plastic we need to create and introduce into our environment. I think this is a big step in the right direction!

Future steps forward will include the creation of more plant-based plastics, instead of petroleum-based plastics. During mine and Melanie’s yearlong experiment of living with less plastic, we discovered that most recyclers couldn’t process plant-based plastics, because they couldn’t properly be identified, sorted, and recycled with current equipment. However, it sounds like MBA Polymers is set up to be able to handle a complex array of different and new plastics as they are developed. So, ideally in the future we can get all the benefits of plastic with plant-based, healthy plastics that can be easily recycled and used over and over for new products.

Dr. Michael Biddle, the founder of MBA Polymers, won the prestigious 2010 Innovation Award for Energy and the Environment from the Economist. Here is an interview of Dr. Biddle on CNBC:

Here is an overview video of MBA Polymers:

So what do you think? Is this a step in the right direction?

Hi Friends!

We mentioned several months ago that we were preparing to move to San Francisco.  About 5 days before we were going to leave, it just didn’t feel right to us, so we decided to stay in Dallas near our family and friends.  We are really happy about our decision and are now looking for our next home together.  We fell in love with all the eco-friendly practices in San Francisco, so we decided to create the life we imagined living there, here.  I want to share with you some of the eco-friendly living aspects of choosing our next home.  If you’re in the market for a new home, maybe some of these can help you find a great place as well.

In thinking about and looking for our next new home, one of the things that’s important to us is having access to the DART rail (Dallas Area Rapid Transit).  The DART is relatively new in Dallas, so all the stations are beautiful, and the trains feel brand new.  When my family visited recently from England, we took the DART into downtown Dallas and then rode the trolley to the Arts District.  It was a lot of fun and gave us a taste of the lifestyle we’re creating.

Our second big priority is quick access to Whole Foods, which happens to be on the DART rail as well.  Whole Foods is the place in Dallas to buy fresh, organic produce and bulk bin items.  We don’t have real farmer’s markets like (sigh) San Francisco or Portland.  However, Mark and I LOVE LOVE LOVE Whole Foods.  I’m not sure why they haven’t asked us to be their poster children, because everyone who works there thinks we should be.  We traipse in with our fabric produce bags, fabric grocery bags, reusable containers for bulk bins, and our smiling, happy faces.  No other grocery store compares to the experience we get from going to Whole Foods.  Apart from their super friendly staff, they have so many cool eco-friendly practices and products to check out every time we visit.  We’re not paid by Whole Foods for loving them, but I wish we were.  I would sing their praises all over the world.  If you have a connection to Whole Foods, let me know, because I would love to create little videos about all the great things in Whole Foods…or anything else…I just really love them.  I never thought I’d be so passionate about a grocery store  Actually, I’m very passionate about eating real, healthy, organic, fresh food, and Whole Foods is the place that provides it for us.

Okay, moving on…

We’re also looking for somewhere with double-paned windows and thick insulation in the walls.  The thick insulation is REALLY important to us because in our last apartment, we could hear our neighbor snoring, sneezing, talking, and whatever else every night.  That’s a big privacy concern for us, but it’s also better for energy conservation, obviously.

We want to continue using Green Mountain Energy for our electricity, since all their energy comes from renewable sources.  Texas produces more wind power than any other state.  When we drive to see Mark’s family in West Texas, we drive by the farms with all the wind turbines, and they look amazing against the desert landscape.  Farmers put the wind turbines on their land, creating extra income for them while not compromising their crop production.  Most of the farmers there grow cotton, which in many cases is very damaging to the environment, although more farmers are branching into organic cotton.  There are also many oil fields leading up to Lubbock, and the air there smells horrible.  It’s a remote area, but there are some homes.  I don’t know how anyone could live there.  Just another reason to find alternatives to oil.

We also want to find somewhere that has a great recycling program easily available.  In our previous two apartments, we collected our recycling and drove it to the recycling dumpsters throughout Plano.  It would be much easier if the apartment offered recycling.  We also want to compost.

One of the things we’re considering is the quality of construction.  It’s not eco-friendly to buy cheap things that will only fall apart and need to be replaced often.  If we choose an apartment, we want somewhere that cares about the tenants enough to provide a quality home for them to live in.  So this is an eco-friendly and self-loving decision we’ve made.

So how’s our hunt going?  We’ve actually found an apartment building that meets all of those requirements.  The few downsides are that the porch is small, so I’m not sure how we would compost, and I really want green space.  I crave a little garden to grow our own fruits and vegetables.  Also, I know Cosmo would love to roam around in the grass.  She loves being outside.

We’ll keep you updated on our progress and let you know when we’ve found somewhere.  We have a lot of updates, we just haven’t been writing as much on this blog because we’ve been focusing on other projects.  Mark is preparing a wrap-up of our year without (hardly any) plastic, which he’ll be posting soon.  I also wrote on our Twitter account for the first time in forever (or ever), so if you’re a twitter fan, I’ll be posting more on there as well.  I’m learning how to use it because I’ve been shunning it for a long time  For some reason, yesterday I woke up and was excited about learning how it works.  Maybe the Twitter Fairy visited me during the night.

If you live in an apartment, what’s your best composting and gardening solution?  What do you consider when finding a new home in order to encourage an eco-friendly lifestyle?

I hope you all are doing well, and thank you all for your lovely, informative comments throughout this past year.

Love,

Melanie Jade

Hi Friends!

I just wrote an article on MyMagicalJourney.com about how clearing out your “stuff” and not buying into consumerism (ha! no pun intended) can lead to a healthier, happier, and more prosperous life.  Mark and I clear out our home quite often, and each time we’ve found new sources of money and felt so much lighter and more joyful.  It’s as if clearing the clutter allows the energy of creativity to flow.  Check out my article, Freedom From “Stuff”, and be sure to let me know any additional ideas you have and stories about your own experiences clearing out clutter to improve your life.

Love,

Melanie Jade

Hi Friends,

You may have noticed in my last post I did a bit of Target-bashing.  However, there are some great products at Target, and I even bought new toothpaste and toothbrush there and am about to give you….dun dun DUN! …my review!!!

I can’t wait to tell you about my new toothpaste.  It is so delicious!!!  Mark and I have had an issue this year finding toothpaste that is not in plastic packaging and that actually tastes good.  You may remember I tried straight baking soda first.  However, as I almost vomited every time I used it, I figured it was counter-productive.  Then we tried Tom’s.  I had high hopes for Tom’s toothpaste.  We bought two mini-tubes (one mint and one strawberry flavored) before leaving for our honeymoon.  For those of you who are new to Tom’s, their tubes are made of aluminum and are recyclable.  The caps are still plastic though.  They use natural ingredients and flavorings, and they provide a chart that lists each ingredient, its origin, and its purpose in the toothpaste.  I think every company should provide that information.  We did’t start using our toothpaste until we got to Dublin, and we were less than thrilled.  It has a funky grittiness like chalk, and it’s not very minty.  It’s okay, but not super great.  We liked our other toothpaste better and didn’t feel like Tom’s was doing a great job.

However, we ran out of the three bottles of toothpaste we found under my mom’s counter and had to buy some more toothpaste.  Mark remembered while we were in Target and we decided to try a new type of Tom’s toothpaste: Wicked Fresh.  That describes exactly what we want from a toothpaste, so we bought it.  We are both happy to report that this new formula is wonderful!  We love it!  It is seriously wicked fresh and has a great texture.

Guess what I’m using my new toothpaste with?  Why, my brand new(ish) toothbrush!  Mark found a Preserve toothbrush for me in Target as well.  I was in desperate need of a new toothbrush, but I just couldn’t be bothered to research the best options yet, so I was making do with crazy-bristle-mania toothbrush.  Preserve toothbrushes are made of 100% recycled plastic, and the bristles are made of nylon.  We’ve seen Preserve products in Whole Foods  before, and frankly, we weren’t impressed with their packaging.  The toothbrushes we saw in Whole Foods a long time ago were heavily packaged in plastic.  Bleh!  However, my new toothbrush has new and improved AMAZING packaging.  It’s packaged in a mail back pack!  Minimal packaging, and when I’m done with my toothbrush, I slip it back into the cover and drop it in the mail for them to fully recycle.  The package is already addressed and is postage paid!  This is so crazy cool, I think I did a happy dance in the store.  To top goodness with more goodness, my new toothbrush is pink!  So cute, so colorful, so wonderful  I love it!

So see?  We’re not Target haters.  They have some good products.  They also have areas that need to be improved (but don’t we all?).

What do you do for eco-friendly oral hygiene?  Are you a Tom’s convert, or have you found another fabulous product?  Have you tried their new Wicked Fresh???  OMG it’s wonderful.  What about toothbrushes?  I know there are other options available – what’s your preference?

Melanie

Hello Friends,

This morning I went on a little errand to Target looking for an ingredient in a Christmas gift.  Since beginning our project, regular shopping has ceased to be a big activity for us.  First, we have realized we appreciate only having things we really need and don’t feel any drive to just buy stuff for the sake of stuff.  Second, I’m so much more aware of the products we buy and how and where they are made and packaged, that even though some items initially look appealing, they usually aren’t appealing enough to take home.  For example, I saw a really pretty outfit in a mall several months ago (the last time I went to a mall), but the label said it was made in the Philippines.  I’m all for supporting other countries.  However, the dress (or whatever it was…I can’t even picture it now) was overpriced and I wondered if the people who made the dress were paid well for their services.  Deciding that they probably weren’t, I decided not to buy it.  Then I checked the label and saw it was made with polyester—cheap cheap cheap plastic fabric.  So why the expensive price?  No clue.  But I digress…

So I’m looking for my ingredient at Target, and first I look in the candle section.  It’s not there (I’m not saying what “it” is on the off-chance that someone in my family might read this and get a hint as to their Christmas present).  However, they do have tons of cheaply perfumed, over-packaged candles.  I love me some candles (but not artificially scented ones), and here are some eco-friendly tips when buying them:

• Buy candles that don’t have any packaging.  If you have candles in glass containers, put hot water in them when the candle is used up to get out the leftover wax.  Then, buy candles without any packaging and put them in the glass container (if you want).  The truth is, candles don’t have to be heavily packaged or packaged at all.  By the way, the aromatherapy candles in blue glass at Bath and Body Works are not in blue glass at all.  The glass is covered with a clear blue plastic film.  Can you believe it?!  I have one of those candles and was shocked when the blue started wrinkling up.  No more Bath and Body Works for me.
• Buy candles made with essential oils, rather than artificial scents.  They smell better and have the added aromatherapy benefit.
• Stay away from paraffin candles, which are products from the oil industry.  There are many other options, like soy wax and beeswax candles.  Soy candles need a container, so reuse one you already have.
• Support local candle makers!  There is something so nourishing about supporting local crafts people.  I love it!  It’s especially fun if you buy the candles straight from the person who makes them, so you can talk and develop a relationship.  Then every time you light the candle, you’ll have the connection to who made it and how it was made.

But I’ve digressed AGAIN!

So, after the candle aisle, I go to the beauty section.  By this point, every aisle I’ve gone down is filled with products packaged in plastic.  Every.  Single.  Product.  Then, the roof opened, angels sang, and a bright shining light illuminated a section of products on the shelf.  One.  No, not one thing…the company name is One.  Reading their packaging, I think it’s a cool product name, but after searching and searching online, I have yet to find their homepage.  I have found a ONE organization that helps people with AIDS, a ONE organization for adopted children, but no beauty products.  Lemme tell you about these products.  First, NO PLASTIC!  Then I notice, not only do they have a solid shampoo bar (several in fact), but they also have a solid conditioner bar!  I’ve never seen or heard of solid conditioner.  If this is old news to some of you, sorry, but I haven’t shopped for shampoo or conditioner in over a year.  They also have lip balm, body cream (which I was given as a gift – Coconut scented – yum!), bar soap, and lotion.  All their packaging is recyclable, which I love.  Their products have great online reviews, and they smell good too.  By the way, I’m not sponsored by One products (or anybody else).  I just found their website: OneBathandBody.com.  I’m sure there are always ways to have better ingredients and better (or no) packaging, but I think this company is already off to a great start.

I ended up not finding what I went to Target for, but we also needed some lettuce.  I decided to check their produce department, and every single kind of lettuce was packaged in plastic!  What is up with you, Target???!!!  Are you living under a rock?  Actually, almost everything except some bok choy and parsley was packaged in plastic.

When I got home and told my honey about my shopping experience, he joked that One was probably called One because it was the ONE product at Target not packaged in plastic.  Ha!  So true!

Our favorite place to shop is Whole Foods.  We LOVE Whole Foods.  The people there are SO nice, the food is SO yummy, and we can find everything organic there as well as the latest and greatest eco-friendly products.  We even took a class at our local store – Wine and Cheese Tour of Italy.  It was so much fun, and only $5!  We learned a lot and had a great time.  Grocery shopping used to be a chore, but now it’s a fun, nurturing adventure.  Mark and I LOVE our shopping trips to Whole Foods.  The house we’re moving into has a Whole Foods less than 2 miles away, so we can walk or bike there.  That was a criteria for choosing our house, believe it or not (but believe it ’cause I’m serious).

One final shopping note: I’ve always had an idealized view of farmer’s markets.  They seemed in my mind like a place of wholesome goodness.  I longed for the interactions No Impact Man had with the local growers.  However, Mark and I have been to two local farmer’s markets (one in a Dallas and one in a smaller city), and we were really disappointed.  The people at the stands selling fruit and vegetables hadn’t grown it themselves.  They bought it all wholesale and were reselling it.  They couldn’t tell me how they were grown or anything.  (Is this becoming a bitchy blog post?  I hope not).  The bread wasn’t made by the person selling the bread.  It was made by a local company and put into wicker baskets to look more wholesome.  I felt so disappointed.  So so so disappointed.  It’s like someone saying Santa doesn’t exist.  But you know what?  WE’RE MOVING TO CALIFORNIA!!!  WHERE THEY KNOW WHAT A REAL FARMER’S MARKET IS SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE!  Hopefully that’s not another illusion.  Mark and I have found the perfect spot for us in California, and we’re planning to move there in January.  In our California community, they have curbside composting, plastic bags are banned, and styrofoam take-out containers are banned too!  We love our future community and are looking forward to making it our home  CALIFORNIA, HERE WE COME!

Okay, thanks for going on a mega shopping trip with me  You were great company  But seriously, do you notice these things when you go shopping?  Have you found great stores to shop at?  Is your farmer’s market like my dream farmer’s market?  Surely they exist somewhere, right?

Melanie

Hello Friends!

My wonderful Father-in-Love just sent us a youtube video about Akinori Ito, a Japanese man who invented a machine to convert plastic back into oil.  With this process, the plastic waste can be converted into diesel, kerosene, or gasoline.  He has found a way to look at plastic trash as treasure.  His machine is portable, which has allowed him to easily transport it to many countries.  In many developing countries, where extensive plastic recycling may not be available, this machine can help them decrease their trash and create what is currently a valuable product.  From 1 kilogram of plastic, this machine makes 1 liter of oil.  From the video, it looks very easy to use, and you can stuff all different types of plastic into it.  ”People don’t know that the garbage is oil, that’s why they are throwing it away.”

Check out the video and see for yourself:

I think this is a great idea. We already have so much plastic in our environment. Rather than digging for even more oil, let’s solve one problem we have (the amount of plastic trash in our environment) and at the same time create solutions we need (more oil at lower financial and environmental cost). I think this is a great transition tool. Let’s transition out of using so much plastic and out of widespread oil use. In the meantime, this seems like a great idea to me. Imagine if even more solutions were invented for utilizing what we currently call trash…people might start digging up landfills and cleaning them out! Landfills could become prime real estate! Oh the possibilities!

What are your thoughts about this video and Akinori Ito’s invention? What other items can you think of that most people think of as trash but could actually be used in wonderful ways? Let’s re-think trash…

Melanie

P.S.  Just found this great video – in Maryland, similar technology is already being used to convert plastic into oil.

The holiday season is upon us and people are already thinking about what gifts to give to their friends and loved ones this year. Keeping in line with our No New Plastic project, I thought I would post some of mine and Melanie’s plastic-free, eco-friendly holiday gift ideas.

Digital Gifts

• Netflix Subscription for streaming movies and tv shows
• iTunes Credit for digital music, apps, and videos (link opens iTunes Store; avoid the plastic gift cards!!)
• Print, Email, or Facebook Amazon Credit for digital music, videos, video games, and much more
• HuluPlus Subscription
• Help a parent or grandparent get setup on facebook or Skype or upload photos to flickr
• Digitize old slides and photos at ScanCafe (I just did this for my grandfather and so far it has been a smooth process!)

Handmade Gifts

• Decorate a canvas bag that can be used as a reusable shopping bag (we recently did this for my Mother’s birthday)
• Create a painting, drawing, or other creative expression
• A Letter telling the person how much they mean to you
• Give a monthly or weekly ‘date’ when you and the gift recipient will get together (in person or via Skype)
• Create something from re-purposed materials

Gift Donations

• On behalf of your gift recipient donate an animal or support a project at Heifer International or World Vision to help families build a better future for themselves and their communities.
• Give an online or check donation to the gift recipient’s favorite charity
• $20 can give one person clean water for 20 years. Consider giving a gift to charity: water.

Cash Gifts

• One of the best ways to ensure people are getting what they really want is to give them cash or a check. You can include a card or personal note if you’d like to personalize the cash gift even more.
• You can even send money to anyone online with just their email address at PayPal (you can include a personal note).

Gift Wrapping Ideas

• Giving someone a scarf or some shirts? Use it to wrap their other gifts.
• Use the Japanese-cloth-gift-wrapping technique
• Wrap your gift in newspaper or junk mail and holding the wrapping down with a bow (you can paint and decorate the wrapping however you want)
• Use paper tape instead of plastic tape

These are just a few ideas to get your creativity going. We would love for you to share your own plastic-free gift ideas by leaving a comment below.

Jen recently made the following comment on our last Kitty Cosmo post, Kitty Cosmo: Chapter 5 Part 2…

And then what happened? As far as I can tell, this is the last kitty Cosmo post (sorry I’m a bit late discovering this blog). Did you get it all sorted in the end?

We know our adventures with Kitty Cosmo’s toilet training is one of our readers favorite topics, so I wanted to give everyone an update.

Well, Melanie and I left for our wedding just a few weeks after our last Kitty Cosmo post and then moved out of our apartment and left for a three and a half month honeymoon and sabbatical. While we were gone Kitty Cosmo moved over to Melanie’s mom’s house where her best kitty friend, Midnight, lives. My mother-in-love was not ready to take on the continuation of Kitty Cosmo’s training and to start it for her cat, Midnight. So, Kitty Cosmo’s training is on hold.

As you can see in the picture above, Kitty Cosmo is thoroughly loving her vacation! She gets to do all kinds of stuff she couldn’t do at home, like sleep on the bed, eat wet cat food and LOTS of treats, explore a big backyard, and run around chasing her friend Midnight (the spoiling part is just a preview of what I’m sure we can expect when we have children and send them over to grandma’s house). For now Kitty Cosmo also gets to use a litter box. However, our plan is that once Melanie and I finish our current travels and settle into our next home, Kitty Cosmo’s toilet training will resume. And once it does, we’ll be sure to let everyone know how it is going!

You can follow all of Kitty Cosmo’s Adventures here: Kitty Cosmo.

Hello Friends!

The Plastic Pollution Coalition is hosting a conference that will be streamed live this Saturday, November 6th, at 11:30AM EST.  The topic is the Global Plastic Pollution Crisis.  You can watch it live by visiting this post on Saturday and clicking on the video below… (at least I think that’s how this works)  Many thanks to Beth Terry from FakePlasticFish.com for letting us know about this.

Hello Friends!

This post is all about food.  I love food, and I love really good food.  Tasty and good-for-me food is my favorite.  At different times in my life, I’ve paid a lot of attention to nutrition labels in food – how much salt, iron, fat, calories, etc. something I’m about to eat anyway (ha!) has.  The past two years I’ve been looking at food totally differently.  When I became a vegetarian two years ago, I started reading the contents of packaged food very carefully to make sure there weren’t any hidden meat products, like lard added to beans.  I also started thinking of my body as an energy system and realizing that everything I put into it affects how well I feel and how well my body works.  Before I decided to buy something, I would think about giving that food to every cell in my body to help it function.  Then I would ask myself if that food item was still a good choice for me.

When Mark and I started our no new plastic year, I didn’t have to look at all the labels of packaged food because we made everything from scratch.  We grew to appreciate the unaltered flavor of different fruits and vegetables.  I learned that winter squash can be roasted in the oven with potatoes and come out so sweet and flavorful that no other seasonings are needed.  I learned that homemade guacamole is easy and more delicious than anything in a plastic container.  I was even shocked to learn that onion dip could be made fresh, rather than from a powder.  I grew to appreciate food in a new way.

Lately, I’ve been checking the contents of food I used to enjoy and have been shocked at the ingredients I used to put into my body.  I can’t believe it’s even legal to sell some of the things I used to eat.  They are stuffed with preservatives, colorings, MSG, salt, and all sorts of other extras.  I was also shocked when I looked at the kitty cat food in the store yesterday and saw that every single brand of dried food in the store was full of crap.  Even the brands I thought (based on commercials) were good for cats – like Iams and Purina.  Check out the ingredients and you will see the main ingredients are corn and meat by-products.  I felt so bad for feeding my kitty this horrible “food”.  We found a decent dried food brand at Whole Foods that we used to feed her, but that brand wasn’t sold at the store we were visiting yesterday.  Cosmo has been eating wet food at my mom’s for several months, and at least that has some real meat in it.  However, they are lined with plastic.  Today I was in the kitchen and thought I might actually be making our own cat food in the future.

I also cringe every time I see a diet ad trying to get people to eat bars, shakes or supplements instead of a regular, balanced meal.  Really???  I can’t believe we have gotten so far away from healthy, fresh food that we think a bar or popping pills is a good substitute.

I think this comes from disconnecting from our bodies and how we feel.  It feels so good to eat fresh, healthy foods.  We get energy from foods that have healthy, living energy in them.  We get energy from food that is lovingly prepared and served.  We get energy from taking time to eat our food slowly, paying attention to what we’re eating, and enjoying good company.

Maybe our next project will be NoPackagedFood.com.  Ha!  As if we need another project….

Happy eating!

Melanie