Hope everyone is having a good “Monday” back after the Memorial Day holiday.  Yesterday I hassled a friend about heading home to be productive.  After all, the only activities allowed on Memorial Day are relaxing, eating and doing a ton of yard work.

Wait, what?  Yah, I had to add that to the list because that is what our weekend was about.

To Portland…

DH and I spent the first part of the weekend down in Portland.  Highlights include derby teamwork & strategy clinic (<3 RCR so bad!), visiting my friend’s farm and her new baby goats, and eating amazing Portland food.  New recycled cotton derby socks.

Best of the weekend?  Ned Ludd. Amazing food, kitchen garden out back, container garden in the front.  Homemade pickles.  Yum.  The farm-to-cone sea salt and caramel ice cream at Salt & Straw came in a close second.

Inside Ned Ludd. Photo CC|| http://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/

The options for real, local, sustainable food in Portland never cease to astound me.  It’s such a luxury to be able to eat out and have so many choices for thoughtfully prepared, ethically sourced food.  Affordable.  Sure, not IHOP affordable.  But not IHOP food either!  And having these choices shouldn’t be a luxury.  Clearly, it doesn’t have to be.  What would it take to bring places like this more into the mainstream?  Or at least to more places?

And Back

Memorial Day proper was garden day.  We mapped out what is going where in the yet-to-be-built (we’re getting there!) raised beds and weeded.  Weeded, weeded, weeded.  I’m excited to get the scarlet runner beans and the herb gardens going, and just waiting for a day with a little bit less precipitation to get the beds built.

Although, if all else fails, I’ll just build garden beds in the rain.  It’s Washington, right?

Post-Recycled Consumer Goods, What?

Right now I’m reading You Are Here: Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet (longest subtitle ever, right?).  It’s a good book – I’ll do a full review when I finish it.  Short version for now: engagingly written, some of the same stuff but some new stuff too.

New stuff like the difference between recycled-content goods and post-consumer recycled goods.  Maybe I’m the only person in the world who missed this memo, but I totally did.

I try to be good about buying recycled products.  Toilet paper, office supplies, pretty much anything where I have the option, I buy recycled.  I totally didn’t realize that I was missing the mark here.  From You Are Here:

Recycled-content products are usually made from the leftovers of production when new goods are manufactured.  With paper, this is the extra shavings of pulp and sawdust, for example.  Post-consumer recycled products, on the other hand, are made from materials that have served their function for consumers and have been recovered through a recycling program.  The latter is obviously better for the environment because virgin materials are being saved.

Either way recycled is better than not recycled, but I have been mistakenly thinking that “recycled” meant “post-consumer recycled.”  Good to know.

Speaking of recycled, this weekend I saw shopping carts made out of recycled plastic (post-consumer?  who knows…).  Those were pretty neat!

How was everyone’s Memorial Day weekend?

Related posts:

1. Greenwashing Our Way Towards Better Standards?
2. Edible Urban Gardening and My Project
3. #EcoMonday And Living Green One Day A Week

Greenwash: the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly, such as by presenting cost cuts as reductions in use of resources.  It is a deceptive use of green PR or green marketing. (Taken from the Wikipedia entry.)

I got a letter in the mail from my mom the other day that included a Mother’s Day card for me to plant.  To plant?  Yes!

Made from 100% recycled paper and printed with soy ink, this card has wildflower seeds embedded in its fibers.  Its final resting place will be my garden next spring.  Except that it won’t be final, because the flowers will become a part of my garden, continuing on indefinitely.

This card made me think about the sponges I bought the other day.  “All natural,” environmentally friendly sponges, made out plant fiber and recycled paper with biodegradable packaging.  I felt silly buying them, because it seemed like I was being had.  And they were more expensive.  But I figured that even if they weren’t all they claimed to be, at least they weren’t wrapped in plastic.

Are You Being Greenwashed?

Maybe.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell.  It can take a bunch of research about companies, their practices, and specific products, which is usually more than I am willing to do for a sponge or a Mother’s Day card.  But it’s important to understand that greenwashing is going on, and that not all “eco-friendly” tips and products are actually all that they are advertised to be.

That being said, I think greenwashing has the potential to help us move towards better standards for our companies and for ourselves.  Wouldn’t it be great if consumer pressure could encourage all companies to “greenwash” their way towards biodegradable and recycled packaging?

A Factoid

If every household in the United States replaced one roll of regular paper towels with 100% recycled paper towels, we’d save 544,000 trees.  That is a lot of trees.  (This factoid courtesy of Intercon Solutions.)

Moving Towards Better Standards

Once again, I seem to be back on the idea that small changes can and do matter, especially when they are embraced by a large amount of people.  Every time you choose to purchase recycled paper towels or “eco-friendly sponges,” that one product makes a tiny difference.  But, more importantly, you send a signal to the company with your purchasing power about your consumer priorities.  And, as strange as it seems, by choosing to purchase greenwashed products, we may actually be nudging companies towards making more meaningful changes in their product lines and practices.

That doesn’t mean that we can just buy recycled paper towels and organic cotton underwear and call it done.  We have too far to go for that to be the case.  But the little changes are important because, when paired with a far-reaching and ambitious vision of the big picture, consumption habits are our first (and most easily utilized) tool as we strive to build a sustainable future.

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