I know, everyone else in the eco-blogosphere switched from conventional toothpaste a billion years ago.  But I've been a little squeamish (and busy) (and lazy) and haven't gotten around to trying the homemade variety yet.  The salt thing kinda grosses me out.  So I've been using all the little travel tubes I have around from the dentist etc., which is dumb because what am I going to take on my upcoming weekend adventure?  Anyway, I am In It To Win It and not buying anything so I made some for July and maybe beyond if it works out.  Thanks to Life Less Plastic for the salt-free recipe - I didn't use the vodka because I didn't have any and this is a competition, remember?

Ahem, is there a prize or something?

If my blog looked into the mirror, reached in, and pulled out its opposite, it would be Buy-By Brian, Brian W. Jones's blog detailing everything he's purchased since August 2007.  His posts are artful and thoughtful, and he sent me a really sweet note about our respective projects.  In a way, it's much easier to define something in the positive, as he is doing, than it is to define something in the negative, as I tried to do with Fix.

Most interesting is Brian's categorizations of "want/need."  You can sort all of his entries this way, and it reveals telling things about our culture.  Honestly, many citizens of the world would label 100% of Brian's "needs" as wants.  But to be fair, many of the things he needs are culturally or socially dictated.  Or they follow a logic like, "if you're gonna ____, then you need a ____."  Drillling down this way provides a lot of insight into the parent activity, such as biking or working in a particular field.  The devil is in the details: if you read carefully, you begin to experience how even the most prosaic of choices can inspire serious reflection.  (Not that I know how this guy lived before all of his stuff got stolen.)  Enjoy!

Easy come, easy go.  So why am I so depressed about leaving my new tote in a cab last weekend?  Because I made it! (Admittedly, I had help, but still...)  And it was full of experiences: my notes for some art projects I'd been working on and 2 magazines I'd been using for reference for those projects.  Ugh ugh ugh.  I'm sure whoever found it just threw it out - it would probably look like garbage to anyone else.  I would have been much happier to have left my entire suitcase full of clothes and shoes!

A year of Fix actually made me more attached to things in certain ways: I feel like I really need the things I have/buy and I put more effort into the things I buy/have.  I think this is interesting: "material" is a dirty word in our super-consumptive society, implying that someone "just cares about things."  But someone accused of materialism in the conventional sense actually doesn't care about things but acquiring things; alternatively, he/she bases his/her self-worth on having certain things.  In reality, the more material we are - the more we respect the materiality of the things we have - the less consumptive we are.

The moral?  ALWAYS get a receipt from the driver!!! (I can't believe I didn't do that!) And if you find something do what you can to return it to the person, no matter how random the thing - you can't necessarily depend on the driver to do it.

Fix hasn't been as DIY as I thought it might be at the beginning...but now that I've eschewed buying for so long, and I detest throwing things out, I'm starting to see the things around me in a new way.  A plastic net bag for potatoes became a scrubby for my dishes.  This t-shirt became a roomy new tote, thanks to the vision and skills of one of the helpers at the Swap-O-Rama-Rama.  It's one-of-a-kind, and gives the tee I promised I'd wear but never actually did a real purpose.  I'm looking forward to making more bags with old shirts when I finally get the old sewing machine I have fixed up...

(For the crafty folks, I doubled the thickness with other old tee scraps and made two squares.  We joined these to a strip at the bottom and sewed up the sides, tacking the little triangle back to the bottom.  I sewed around the edges of two doubled-up tubes for straps.  These are already stretching; I will probably have to knot them up soon.  Next time I will probably try more thickness or use something else altogether for the straps - I always have way too much stuff in my bag!)

I'll be away for a couple of weeks on an early summer vacation.  Enjoy the long weekend!

Two or three posts ago, I wrote how silly it is to go out and get a fancy new container for water to replace plastic bottles.  Serves me right for sounding so smug: not a week later I found myself buying a brand-new water container!  

My boss had a birthday; I had no gift ideas.  Inter-office gifts are so tricky but still I wanted to do a little something...I was despairing...and then it hit me!  Several months back Boss came back from a lunch appointment with a Ball jar.  The barbeque they ordered came with lemonade in jars - a fun little gimmick and then he had a reusable quart container for tea and water in the office.  It served him great for months, until he dropped it on the kitchen floor.  I think he mourned the thing for a whole week. 

I was so proud of myself for remembering the jar!  He loved it, it wasn't expensive but still thoughtful, useful around the office, etc. etc.  That it is more earth-friendly is just an extra-special bonus for me (I'm pretty sure he prefers glass because it tastes and smells better).  I went online - I was now looking to get this thing ASAP, and finding things like Ball jars on short notice in NYC is really, really difficult (believe it or not).  I soon discovered that I couldn't buy one or even two new jars online.  I had to buy twelve!  Used jars?  No problem - eBay people sell tons of them one at a time.  But I felt like I couldn't get the big boss a used jar for his birthday.  Someday perhaps it will be acceptable but not this week. 

Forgo the perfect birthday present because the manufacture and shipping of twelve brand-new jars seems so wasteful?   I figured his one jar would keep lots of plastic cups and bottles out of the trash, and the example for the company would be extremely valuable, whatever his motivations for using the jar are.  The container is distinctive and memorable, and he was taking it to both internal meetings and meetings with visitors - maybe many more cups and bottles would stay out of the landfill because of his "message."  

He was delighted by the gift.  Maybe I'll learn how to do some canning. 

Much has been said about the most visible of "green" lifestyle changes, the water bottle, and I thought I'd add my two cents.  I bought about five bottles of water in 2007; if I had to guess, I'd say I bought ten the year before.  Specifically, I thought people at my art opening last July might want to drink water (they preferred the whiskey), and I was pretty much forced into buying a bottle at a crowded take-away place when I asked for a cup of tap water.  Three of these purchased bottles are still in my fridge, unopened.  I started Fix with approximately twenty taking up space on the top shelf: the plastic devils have a way of showing up and hanging around.  It seems like I'm always being handed one on the street, drinking only half at a meeting -- not to mention the several provided every airplane flight.  I take 'em home, drink the contents, fill 'em up with tap water, and repeat.  Over and over, with some washes in there.  When they get funky, I put them in the recycle.  So I think it's really funny when long eco-blog conversations get started about the benefits of one trendy refillable over another.  I read a good one on Brave New Leaf a few weeks ago.  Sure, my bottles will eventually run out - I do refuse them quite often - and then I'll have to choose between the Sigg (pictured), the Klean Kanteen, or the tried-and-true but now vilified Nalgene.  Before I buy one of those, though, I'll give No Impact Man's solution a try: a glass jar with a lid.  Got plenty of those hanging around.

Got plenty of bags for shopping hanging around, too. Paper bags, bodega bags, plastic bags -- they have babies when I'm not looking, I swear.  The cloth ones are a little less promiscuous, but I still have a ton of them: free totes from benefits, worn messenger bags and backpacks from college, a gigantic beach bag I got as a gift.  I can't imagine actually buying a special bag for shopping, when I have so many taking up precious inches in my apartment.  The plastic bags are the best: they take up virtually no space in the bag I'm already carrying for the day and I can reuse them over and over again.  When they get worn out, I demote them to bags for garbage or compost, but this takes a long time.  I guess my point is, though I'm grateful for how reusable bottles and bags have become visible symbols of personal environmental "action," they are still consumables.  It will take us so long to make our way through the manufactured things already in circulation, I don't see a whole lot of logic in pouring precious resources (oil) into things we already have.                

When Fix ended and I started buying stuff again, I approached consuming with a new perspective.  The research I did during Fix made it clear how resource-intensive new things are, and I still believe that buying less stuff, via repairing old things, buying used, borrowing, renting, or simply deciding you don't need something, is one of the most environmentally friendly lifestyle changes one can make.   At the same time, I've had a little more money to upgrade the products I surround myself with to ones that are made better and I can repair with more success; I also feel it's my responsibility to buy things that are made more sustainably because I can, hopefully proving the viability of these models and therefore lowering the price in the long run.  (With the current economy, who knows if this will ever happen...)

Recently I embarked on buying a new razor.  I wasn't entirely happy with the Preserve razor I purchased at a premium last year, so I thought I might follow a fellow eco-blogger's advice to try a safety razor.  She bought hers used on e-Bay. (This may seem gross but there are sites devoted to teaching you how to clean it and replace the blade so it's safe for shaving today.)  I thought this was a good idea, preferring the used option for most things these days - books, clothes, paper, etc.  I spent a good hour researching the recommended kinds and then another hour researching where to get them online.  e-Bay had a model that seemed right, a year old, at 2/3 the price of a new razor.  I bid, and another zealous buyer had set a price higher than mine, so the price kept going up and up.  At a certain point, the used price started to seem ridiculous - the same as a new one!  I know a new razor costs more to produce than a used one; at the same time, the e-Bay razor will have been packaged and shipped at least twice.   Plus, I'd have to buy a special soap to clean it, which will have its own packaging and shipping.  Finally, the idea is that I will use this razor for the rest of my life but is this really true?  What if it's a total hassle?  I will have purchased a razor and blades for a substantial amount of money and resources...I suppose I could always sell it again on e-Bay...

The point of all of this is that I've spent now at least two and a half hours on this razor, which seems like a lot of time to spend on a product.  I'd rather spend two and a half hours researching a trip to Greece, or - more to the point - my time might be better spent on the phone with 311 about the recycling (again), volunteering at a soup kitchen or local tutoring center, or writing my congresspeople, city councilmembers, and state senators about the NYC e-waste and congestion pricing bills.   In short, some of this "environmental action" feels a little like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  All this energy could be spent in more eco-productive ways.   And I still don't have a new razor. 

I'll leave you with another example, one that feels a little less futile than the razor but illustrates why I think a lot of people just shut their brains off about this stuff.  I was in the store buying mints.  They didn't have the kind I usually buy, so I tried to evaluate the rest of the options.  There were a bunch made by huge companies, rolls wrapped in foil, i.e.: not a lot of packaging per mint.  There was another organic kind in a metal tin; at the time, I figured the tin could probably be recycled with the metal, and at the very least re-used for something like paper clips or buttons or something.  So I bought those, at a considerable cost.  But later, as I pull mints from the tin, I think to myself, "I already have a little box for paper clips and buttons."  And when I move, I'll probably come across the empty mint tin and think, "I'm not gonnna drag this thing to another state!"  And then I'll throw it out - I'm sure the NYC recycling people only recycle metal in the shape of a can.    

Handkerchiefs and the library.  Seriously.  I tried a lot of things last year, and some of them I will probably continue for a long time.  But these two I can be sure of.

I started with the handkerchief thing because I knew I would run out of tissues and I was afraid I would run out of toilet paper. I really didn’t want to have to use cloth at the end of 07 – my apartment is small and laundry is not so easy.  I asked my grandmother if we could make some handkerchiefs when we had our sewing visit last year; she suggested instead that she give me a stack of old men’s cotton hankies.  Perfect!  They are soft on the nose and less gross than it might seem.  Plus, having a hankie in your bag is great for many things: spilled coffee, a forgotten napkin, etc.   

As the daughter of a librarian and a big reader, you’d think the public library would be a no-brainer.  But the New York system seemed like all of the other crazy city bureaucracies and since college I’d gotten in the habit of writing in my books and thinking I’d need to go back to them.  So I’d been buying books new!  Not very often and not very many, but this was a practice I clearly didn’t need to engage in. 

Last year I started exploring the options with the NYPL: there is a branch not too far from my house, but even better, there is a tiny branch right by work.  I realized that I can’t approach them like bookstores, browsing like I did as a kid, but rather like my mailbox for Netflix.  Anytime someone recommends something to me, I put it on my library list online.  If 221 other people are waiting for it, I’m sure there’s something else I can read in the meantime, or, I can assess other options, like seeing if a friend has it or buying it used.  Eventually my request turns up at the library I choose, and they conveniently send me an email letting me know it’s there.  They’ll even hold it for a few weeks if I can’t get to it right away.  This little system is so perfect: I’ve read some things that I decided I needed to own, so I bought them used without a second thought.  

Not just for my mom’s sake, I have to push this one: please, please, please support your public library, one of the most democratic and First Amendment-positive institutions we have going.  It turned out to be way easier than I thought it would be; if I can do it in New York City, you can too.     

An oldie but a goodie:

Enjoy your new stuff - Merry Christmas!
xx
Megan

I need a little help with this one:

"These are all fine and good ideas, and I've actually done some of them in the past for friends (including your sister), but the question is...
WHAT DO I DO FOR FOUR-YEAR OLDS?! Especially four-year olds obsessed with Disney Princesses (don't research that one, it will make you nauseous), AND who live in the middle of nowhere?"

My experience with four-year-olds is very limited -- and I understand that they are very special creatures who definitely appreciate stuff.  My best no-stuff gift idea would be dance classes, in which aforementioned four-year-old could be a princess.  Price and geography might prove prohibitive in this case, though.  The problem isn't just the princess, it's also the Disney.  Maybe you could introduce her to some other, non-Disney princesses?  Like Pippi Longstocking?  (You'd have to read that to her or get her the videos, and she might be a little young - Random House says 9-12 but my boss reads the books to his 5 or 6 year-old daughter.)  Or maybe a book of bedtime-story fairy/folk tales?  I tried looking up "princess dolls + organic" but most of the organic/earth-friendly toys out there are pretty dorky; this site had some cute stuff.  The problem is, she lives in a Disney-saturated world, and she wants Disney stuff -- and there's nothing worse than asking for exactly what you want and getting a stupid homemade thing that you didn't want. 

Are there any parents out there that can help this dude find something good for his niece?

---

"Some good suggestions but how about donations to causes as gifts? WWF have some nifty symbolic adoptions of animals and Greenpeace Australia have symbolic gifts this year too - from activist handcuffs to armchair activism...   

And there are so many more organizations like Oxfam with this idea in place for all your social and environmental justice needs :)."

Thanks so much for the ideas, Kat - I hope these will trigger some gift donations from my readers. 

My no-stuff gift guide is largely designed to give to people who have dryly referred to Fix as "Megan's activist project" or "that thing you're doing this year where you don't buy anything" and who are sick of what they perceive as smugness every time something remotely related to Fix comes up.  I've got a few people in my world who think shopping is unequivocally great and who feel like they're being preached to all the time by crazy New York liberals; I'm sure you've got a few, too.  I thought I might submerge the politics a little and just try to keep plastic and imported junk out of people's lives. 

I did, however, consider writing about giving service or donations as gifts.  One of the best gifts I ever received was a donation in my name to a small organization that had dance classes for disabled kids.  The givers understood that dancing is something I am incredibly grateful for; that they made dancing available to people who conventionally don't have access was a gift greater than anything I could have thought of.  Charity is a personal thing, though, and, despite what I said below about giving a piece of myself, I feel uncomfortable intimating that I know exactly which cause the recipient of my gift would like to donate to.  If you know precisely what will work, I'm all for it - the gift will still be a gift for him/her as well as the charity.  (Local/community causes might be more personal than giving to giant organizations that zillions of people donate to regularly.)  I recently found out about another alternative: charity gift cards.  Companies like TisBest, CharityChoice, and JustGive partner with charities/non-profits/NGO's to create a list that your dollars will go to, once your recipient chooses which he/she likes best.  I don't know a whole lot about these - if you have any info, feel free to comment.  (I learned about them from a segment on NPR.)