I visited Ireland this past weekend and when I stopped for a Fair Trade Organic Coffee at a shop in Dalkey, I had a small disappointment and also some inspiration. I was sitting down in the store to have my coffee and I would have preferred to drink from a reusable cup rather than a disposable one with a plastic lid. I saw a poster at the till touting their refill program for things like toilet cleaner and shampoo. While we enjoyed our coffee, we discussed the possibility of starting a program like this ourselves. There are a lot of benefits to this type of program besides waste reduction. If you source the most environmentally responsible products possible for each purpose, you may be reducing the amount of toxic chemicals that are going down you local drains.

Something that I found been produced and consumed quite profusely in Ireland were spoken words. Opinions, narratives, arguments, philosophies and more were almost overwhelming me while I was in Dublin. When I was researching this post, I landed on this wordy page about the UberGrocer. Words are not biodegradable.