What are the green solutions to the following?
- Garbage bags (besides just putting trash straight in garbage can and trying to reduce the amount of trash you generate\
- Cotton balls
- Take-out containers (while we’ve cut back on eating out, every now and then Chinese food or a pizza is in order)
- Poultry and Meat packaging
- Wire hangers from the cleaners (the cleaners in my neighborhood won’t take them back; I’m not sure if that’s true for all of them)
- Recycling among food vendors at food courts (Both at South Station and the Prudential Center here in Boston, it didn’t look like much was being done.)
- Panty-hose (once they get runs and holes – what’s the best way to dispose of them?)
- Plastic pots from hanging plants (I guess I can start just buy the plants and reuse my old ones.)
These are every day things that I haven’t figured out. I recycle what I can and am committed to getting a composter this spring. In the meantime, in between time questions like this nag at my brain. Once a question settles in my brain, it will tumble there like clothes in a dryer (whose alternative would be to hang clothes on a clothesline).
If you’ve found a solution to these or other everyday matters, please share.
Good news: A great example of simple green technology was featured in a wonderful article in today’s Parade magazine (3/1/09), “The Simple Tool that Saves Women’s Lives” by Dr. Ranit Mishoni . The simple tool is the solar cooker, which can be made very inexpensively. “Take two pieces of cardboard, add some tinfoil and sunlight and anything can be cooked. You can even get water to boil.” What an ingenious, practical and important invention! All that is required is sunlight. Each cooker costs about $15 and using them frees up women to do other things as well as prevents some diseases. It made me smile to read about it and I hope it moves you as well.