Homage to Aro St minimart

The Aro St minimart rocks. Not only can you get Vogels, organic Purebread and organic milk there, it is one of the only places in Wellington that I have been able to find organic, free-range eggs. (Supermarkets usually only have organic barn or cage-free eggs.)

You can even get Architecture NZ in the magazine section.

Aro Valley is the best!

Plastic-free courier packages

Hooray, I've been able to update the Plastic-free actions post.

I use couriers a lot at work, and recently I've discovered that you don't need to use the plastic TrakPacks, you can just use a regular (paper!) envelope and stick a courier sticker on. Since I courier stuff at least a couple of times a week, this represents quite a saving on plastic.

I guess if you're a dyed-in-the-wool greenie this would seem obvious, but I had always assumed you need to use the official plastic bags.

Now I know there's another option it seems obvious to me too.

Plastic tally for one week

This is the plastic I threw away during the week in July when I was keeping a record of it:

window envelopes x 4
magazine wrappers x 2
polystyrene meat tray and plastic wrap
boughten sandwich gladwrap x 2
bread bag
cookie packet

The polystyrene meat tray was an old one from out of the freezer.

Dairy products and carbon emissions

About a year ago I switched to organic butter because it tastes (and keeps) better.

When I went to the emissions reduction target consultations and heard that some 16 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions come from nitrous oxides from nitrogen fertilizer use, I switched to organic milk as well (plus you can now get a low-fat version at Moore Wilson's and New World).

Now that Ravensdown and Solid Energy want to build a plant to convert lignite (brown coal) to urea, I'm going to break down and start buying organic cheese as well.

I never understood before that some fertilizers are literally made out of fossil fuels.

Why would we make fertilizer to grow more food to feed more people based on a resource that's going to run out one day? That's five kinds of crazy.

Global Climate Wake Up Call

This is the international clip for the Global Climate Wake Up Call on September 21.

See if you can spot Civic Square.

Deodorant update

So, risking this being Too Much Information, yet feeling the need to show journalistic integrity by following through with the whole investigation:

I've abandoned the whole baking soda deodorant approach - it was the most effective deodorant I've ever used, but after a while I got funny red patches under my arms. They weren't uncomfortable or itchy, but it just seemed like funny red patches couldn't be good.

So, back to plastic-y commercial roll-on. Sigh. It's really not as good.

A once-only plug for Starbucks

Normally I am anti Starbucks and all that it stands for (slick characterless multinational peddling overlarge overly calorific drinks in throwaway plastic cups) but in a personal lapse today I supported their profit margin by giving them my money. And yes, getting a throwaway plastic cup did make me feel a bit yucky.

(Did I mention their greenwashing with their token fair trade coffee? They talk up their fair trade drinks in their marketing material but if you look carefully at the menu you'll see that only one or two items are actually made with fair trade coffee. Ooh that bugs me.)

But (and here's the once-only plug) while I was there I figured I would pick up one of their bags of used coffee grinds for the garden. I have thought about it before but the bags were always too heavy and I didn't like that the grinds came in a plastic bag ...

Well, today I discovered that the bags aren't so heavy any more AND when I got it up to the garden the plastic bag turned out to be a bag the original beans came in that had been reused (at least, that's what it looks like it is—the top was cut open roughly and there was one of those little coffee bag "breathing" valves on the side).

So I might be popping back there again. Not to buy any drinks, you understand, just to pick up the coffee grinds :)