Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Individual change vs political change

After reading through the No Impact Experiment handbook this week I was thinking harder about how I could cut down on the rubbish I generate.

Because I was noticing every item I threw away, it actually crossed my mind that I could go really hard core and take my own dried peppermint leaves to work to make herb tea instead of using the imported, individually foil-wrapped teabags in the tea room.

It's not that crazy. The teabags are just dried mint and we have a ton of mint in the community garden. It would save some unnecessary packaging. It would make me feel good.

Then this same week our Sustainability group got revved up again at work. An awesome bunch of people. Someone raised the issue of the heavily packaged teabags (we've started getting a new brand recently—the kind we used to get (Twinings) aren't individually wrapped).

We decided to talk to the tea purchaser about it. Turns out, they were happy to switch back. Just like that, we saved the foil packs from 50 people's cups of tea.

Political change. A million times more useful than me bending over backwards to be just a tiny bit greener in my own life.

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