PlasticLess.com

After I read about the concept of saving energy by making websites black, I immediately changes over to black on one of my blogs. I then went to a forum that was discussing good and bad design decisions and the consensus seemed to be that people don’t like black. They complain that it is too hard to read. There have been people pushing Google to go black. They are too duplicitous to come out and say that they aren’t changing because they don’t want to risk loosing any of their enormous share of the search engine pie. They say that it is unclear as to whether the savings are really significant. They biggest savings comes with CRT monitors, which are gradually being displaced in the market by other more energy efficient monitors. I think public places that have rows of CRT monitors should set black search sites as homepages. I am going to try using Blackle instead of Google.

This is a reusable canvas tote that is for sale at KChronicles.com. Keith Knight is a cartoonist who lives in San Francisco. I read a comic today where he admits to being cheap through a series of possibly true anecdotes. The tote costs $15, which is an ok deal when compared to the ubiquitous and snobbish ‘This is not a Plastic Bag’ bag. I admit to being cheap, too. I shop for clothes during ‘back to school’ week when my favorite store gives away a cloth bag with a minimum purchase. I also picked up a canvas bag from a community booth that was promoting recycling.

I have mentioned elsewhere that I was disturbed by my personal consumption of AA batteries. After a bit of market research, I bought a charger and some NiMH Batteries. This seems like it is an environmentally responsible thing to do. I hope someone starts mass marketing wind and sun powered rechargers soon. That would be awesome. NiMH battery technology has improved to the point where it they are just plain better than alkaline batteries without much fanfare. I think it is because there is lots of money to be made from disposable batteries. Oh yeah, you generally get some plastic packaging with your disposable batteries.

This is part of a huge collection of pointless plastic purchases by Chris Reid. I have to admit that I bought a few plastic water guns when I was a kid. They are all in the landfill now. I guess that makes Chris a better person then I am, right?

He is a plastic toy enthusiast. It was just a phase for me. I think it is quite likely that many of his cherished items will be part of the problem eventually. In the mean time, his enthusiasm is probably fueling demand for these things. I want to do my part to dampen that enthusiasm. Here is my proposed alternative to the super soaker. Tell someone that you are going to give them a drive home when it is raining and then don’t follow through. They will get wet. You will have caused it. Not only does this not result in plastic consumption, it also saves on fossil fuels.

Oh, and there is this…

I saw all the advertising for video games and I started thinking about all that packaging that hits the curb after Christmas. That got me thinking about how renting games and videos produces less plastic waste than buying your own. That got me remembering my Netflix experiences. Then I was thinking about how many sites are using this business model for other products. Some of them are better than others. Gamefly is the Netflix of gaming.

There is a Netflix of handbags. I think that is stupid.

Learning how to make your own rope probably probably won’t change your life much. Our modern day lives aren’t very rope intensive. I needed a rope to prevent something from blowing away today. Most rope that is available in stores these days is made from nylon. Rather than go up the street to by a few meters of nylon rope, I just made my own rope out of a shirt that was in our rag box. If you Google ‘how to make rope’ you will find that it is a serious obsession for some people. They would probably say that my little twisted length of rags is not a rope. It did serve my purpose. I used to make ropes from discarded green coffee bags. If you live near a small roaster you might be able to score some jute or sisal bags. They have a lot of different uses. I gave many of them away to a man who ripped them to shreds and used them in the smoke maker that he needed for his beekeeping enterprise.

I am not a regular at Starbucks. In fact, I live in one of the few places in the World that does not have Starbucks…yet.

I was surprised to hear that they ever sold plastic children’s cups that were made in China. From the description, they sound like the kind of thing that McDonald’s gives away with a Happy Meal. Giving things away would devalue the brand, so Starbucks was selling them for about $6.

Now they are recalling them because they can easily break and then the small parts present a choking hazard. If you bought one of the 250,000 cups, you might want to think a little more carefully about how to spend the $6 the second time. See if you can find a half pound of Fair Trade Organic Coffee from a local roaster who will sell it to you in a paper bag.

No, I am not reporting on some kind of Warhol retrospective. It seems that somehow small chunks of plastic found their way into a lot of cans of Campbell’s Soup.

The details of the recall are here.

I spent some time working in a coffee packaging plant and I know how possible it is for mechanical malfunctions to result in bits of mangled material going into the product. My workplace was small and there was a lot of hands on work done by people who cared. The only incidents that I can recall resulted in coffee worth maybe $200 retail being tossed into the compost because it might have some foreign material in it.

72,300 cans of soup is a huge oops. My sources offer no details as to the source of the plastic or how it got there.

This is a good example of how ubiquitous plastic is in our processed food chain.

I have to confess that I did use the numbers on a rectangular piece of plastic to get access to the upcoming Radiohead release. I would have preferred to pay with PayPal, but WASTE merchandise is old school.

This album release is getting some great free publicity from the New York Times, the BBC and elsewhere because the band is selling the download on a pay as much as you want basis. I am a lapsed Radiohead fan and I can’t be sure that the new album will be my cup of tea, but I wanted to show my support for the marketing idea. I pre-ordered and paid based on the assumption that I might only like one or two songs.

I encourage fans to pay for the download and not but the two disc set.

In Rainbows will be released on October 10th.

We went to a Car Boot Sale on Sunday. This was ostensibly only to look for good used books. We have kicked the habit of buying ’stuff’ a long time ago.

I fell off the wagon. I bought a used pair of hand operated hair clippers. The ones pictured on this post are new. I think it might make more sense to buy a product like this new. Mine are seriously dull and I am not sure if anyone local is skilled at sharpening them.

I am balding and I choose to go with the ultra short hair look. I have to wonder how many bottles of shampoo I have saved in the last 7-8 years. If anybody knows a good source for shampoo that is not packaged in plastic, I would like to know for the rest of my family.