I carry my own bags (when I remember) to grocery store, and haven't had water in a plastic bottle for a year. My remaining roll of paper towels is unopened, and I'm happy with reusing/washing cloth ones!
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AND--- another bit of good news
Recent article about Asheville Greenworks: Celebrating a 50 Year Legacy, in The Laurel of Asheville,
They say:
Presently, GreenWorks’ long-term vision includes four core impacts: Community-Scale Climate Resilience, Empowered Communities, Systems Change and a Healthy Environment. Key programs and projects in these areas include restoring the urban tree canopy, preserving native pollinators and reducing air and water pollution.
While GreenWorks’ overarching mission may have evolved, education remains a central tenet of the nonprofit’s work. “Our work has always been to be in conversation with Asheville’s communities,” says Dawn Chávez (GreenWorks executive director.) “GreenWorks is celebrating 50 years because the organization has remained relevant to the changing needs of the environment and the community over time. We have invested in building trust and meaningful relationships, followed through on commitments and demonstrated to communities that we are with them for the long haul.”
We have no choice about cloth bags now. It's something, but then there is a ton of plastic inside our cloth bags.
ReplyDeleteSince Covid, we've not been good about reusable containers when we're out for coffee because they were frowned upon then. We were much better before.
Glad to hear no plastic single use grocery bags there! I sometimes forget to bring my cloth bags in from the car and am too decrepit to go get them.
Delete...I use too many paper towels, but no coffee cups or straws. Does that even out?
ReplyDeleteGood to hear you're aware of the paper towels. Try not having the next roll opened...and stack some cloth towels or washcloths where they were. I am in the middle of doing that, and sometimes really wish I opened the next roll of paper towels, but I figure the longer I switch the better I'm doing. Definitely good to hear about coffee cups and straws!!
DeleteThere are bamboo tooth brushes?
ReplyDeleteI have seen them, they have little bristles and all. Haven't tried one yet, but they're really inexpensive.
DeleteMy bamboo toothbrush reorder arrived yesterday! We do our best, but JB, being the kitchen cleaner upper, won't stop using paper towels, despite us having lots of rags!
ReplyDeleteI just commented to Tom about just not having any new opened rolls, and see how it feels. The roll is there in the closet, but the cloth towels and wash cloths as well as torn tee-shirt rags...lots of options available. But hey, you do what you can!
DeleteI haven’t seen floss in glass. I don’t like metal straws so I buy paper ones. I like canned water better than plastic, and recycled aluminum is in demand. My reusable bags wear out before the claimed 170 uses. Then there’s the impact of washing polyester bags and towels. Polyester releases microplastics into the wash water and it winds up downstream as a pollutant.
ReplyDeleteIf you start watching for greenwashing in “sustainable” products, you see an awful lot of them are as non-green as those awful CFL bulbs that leak mercury in landfills. Also, people need to be diligent in disinfecting their reusable products. One case of diarrhea caused by an unsanitary shopping bag or straw will use up a lot of extra toilet paper, to say nothing of the misery. (Guess I am a born skeptic.)