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Jun. 17th, 2012 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
geekinthegreenOne of my 2012 New Years Resolutions was to make an effort to be Zero Waste, and eliminate disposable products from my life.
As most resolutions go, that lasted about a week. Maybe two. But what I did do was start writing down everything that was disposable that I threw away or recycled (while I know most green bloggers go ahead and just save it all to take pics of later, I didn't think the people I lived with would be appreciative of that). Thanks to the word cloud in the program I used, it became evident super quickly that my main problems were yogurt cups and granola bar wrappers from my work snacks and lunches. Also plastic tea bag wrappers. But I digress.
Anyway, that's why I'm here. Let's talk about this shit, shall we?
As most resolutions go, that lasted about a week. Maybe two. But what I did do was start writing down everything that was disposable that I threw away or recycled (while I know most green bloggers go ahead and just save it all to take pics of later, I didn't think the people I lived with would be appreciative of that). Thanks to the word cloud in the program I used, it became evident super quickly that my main problems were yogurt cups and granola bar wrappers from my work snacks and lunches. Also plastic tea bag wrappers. But I digress.
Anyway, that's why I'm here. Let's talk about this shit, shall we?
Coming here from the green_living comm :)
Date: 2012-06-30 07:10 pm (UTC)I have a solution for my tea bag wrappers, if you don't just want to throw them away, maybe it's useful for you too?
A few years ago I had collected a lot of paper tea bag wrappers because someone said that for 1000 tea bag wrappers, you could get a wheel chair in exchange for them (from a Dutch tea/coffee company). However, it turned out to be a fake rumor, so I was left with a lot of tea bag wrappers.
On a Dutch site where you can post messages if you have something that you'd like to get rid of for free, I posted a message that I had free tea bag wrappers. An elderly woman in the same town contacted me and she said she was using them for tea bag cards. So for the past few years I've been collecting bags full of teabags (also getting them from other people) to give to her. She sells those cards mostly to get money for her church :) I think it's good that all of those paper tea bag wrappers aren't thrown away. Recently, she also asked specifically for the plastic wrappers - those are more difficult to cut into shapes for cards, but those shiny cards become quite pretty and are popular as well. So maybe you can find someone in your neighbourhood as well who uses tea bag wrappers for their hobby?
Personally I've started switching to leaf tea (not buying new tea bags, but using the ones I have first, and when I want new tea I buy tea leafs which last a lot longer as well).
Re: Coming here from the green_living comm :)
Date: 2012-06-30 07:52 pm (UTC)I've never heard of tea bag cards, but we do have Freecycle or Craigslist here which you can post items on for free. It's an idea, but I'm not sure I have enough left to make it worthwhile!
Re: Coming here from the green_living comm :)
Date: 2012-06-30 08:56 pm (UTC)I think that if you have about a small plastic bag full of tea bags, it's already worthwhile for someone who uses tea bags for their hobby.
I buy my leaf tea in a special tea store mostly, but there are also organic-product-oriented drugstores who sell leaf tea. Recently quite a lot of people from the US on my friendslist have been mentioning the following website: http://www.adagio.com/ One because she got a gift card for this store and the other people because they wanted to try out more kinds of leaf tea.
Re: Coming here from the green_living comm :)
Date: 2012-07-04 07:28 pm (UTC)