Change a Bad Habit for the Good of the Environment!

This month, we are asking a bit more of you than last month (Remember last month?  Bring your own mugs and tumblers to meetings?).

This month, in keeping with our article on the GCA NAL Position Paper on Waste Management, we are asking you to begin carrying a few other things with you in your car when you go out.  That begins, as Cynthia points out, with shopping bags.

While you are at it, do you keep gloves in your glove compartment?  Betcha you don’t!  Here is something far more practical to tuck in that storage spot:  another cloth bag, with the following inside:  a dishcloth, a washable metal fork, a washable tumbler or mug (the same one you take to garden club meetings!), and a stainless steel straw.  If you meet a pal at Starbucks for coffee and a bun, at Panera for lunch (I see you, Martha Marsh!  And BTW, thank you for bringing me a package of stainless straws), or even if you are just rushing into a fast foodery, you can turn away their single-use paper napkins, their plastic straws that kill the sea turtles and birds, their plastic or coated paper cups, their plastic forks that poke out of the sand into our feet when they wash up on beaches.  In fact, if you do fast food salads you might even throw a dish into the bag, and save the no-longer-recyclable plastic clamshell box from entering the trash stream.  Restaurants such as these have begun to allow use of customer’s re-usables.  When you finish dining, stuff your utensils in the bag, take them home, and put them in the washer with the dinner dishes.  In the morning, bag them up again, and pop them in the glove compartment.  Handy and Easy!  Now isn’t that better than gloves?

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