What I did over summer vacation

Well, summer is drawing to a close, classes started up again last week and I feel like it's time for my "what I did over summer vacation essay." Unfortunately for you  (or not??) I don't feel the need to write an essay per se. How do you feel about a bullet list instead?

• Spent 230 hours in class
• Made 9 books
• Ate a lot of pizza, biscotti, and pastry
• Saw the Tall Ships
• Saw the Queen Mary 2!
• Commuted about 250 miles on my bike
• Only had one flat!
• Worked two jobs
• Quit one of those jobs!
• Had only two weeks of actual summer 
• Went to Old Sturbridge Village
• Visited The Cape
• Got really sunburned
• Museum hopped
• Moved
• Watched several documentaries about plastics

Old Sturbridge Village!

The Cape. It was a gorgeous day for the beach.

The USCGC Eagle

Some of the Naval boats. A US one and a German one I think.

The Queen Mary 2. Maybe as close as I'll ever be to cruising on it.

Ethiopian binding, and three varieties of Italian paper bindings

The Story of Stuff

I was looking for a good book about plastics the other day and I stumbled across The Story of Stuff.  It's about 20 minutes long, but I highly recommend watching it. It's pretty enlightening.

Beloved Norton Anthologies

Well, it's done. The last of my Norton Anthologies has been removed from my bookshelves. I am proud to say that I sold that book back to Amazon for a whopping $30. I'm sure that's probably a pretty significant loss, but since I bought it more than 4 years ago, and I don't remember what I paid, I feel like thirty bucks is pretty good. This particular anthology was pretty hard to give up. It had all my marginalia for The Wasteland and The Importance of Being Earnest. But I did manage to procure another copy of T.S. Eliot's poems and so I could copy my notes in. Of course it ended up being more of a project than I'd planned on because I had to copy many of Norton's footnotes in as well as my own notes, but I think I got most of what I need. And it does feel good to that those 4 inches of space back on my bookcase--especially since I've still got almost 2 dozen books that don't fit... Now if only I could figure out how my books keep managing to reproduce when I only recall buying two books in that last several months (and those both are my textbooks for the new semester, and one hasn't even arrived yet).

Tapped

By the year 2030 two-thirds of the world will lack access to clean drinking water.

This morning I sat down and I watched the documentary Tapped. After I watched Bag It last week, one of my roommates recommended Tapped to me as another good documentary about plastics. I promptly checked it out of the library (have I ever mentioned that I love libraries?) I'm coming to realize that I actually feel pretty strongly about environmental issues, and plastics littering our oceans is something that really bothers me. Bottled water also bothers me. Before watching this film, bottled water always bothered me from a financial point of view. Why would I want to spend $1.80+ to buy a bottle of water when I can get a drink from a water fountain for free? To me, I have a hard time understanding why someone would want to spend that kind of money. But then, I also don't get things like soda at restaurants for much the same reason.

I thought that Tapped was a fascinating look at the bottled water industry and the effect that it has on our lives. And below are some of the things that I took away:

40% of bottled water is just filtered tap water.

80% of PETE produced in the US ends up in Nestle, Pepsi, or Coke beverage containers

Municipal (tap) water is highly regulated and bottled water is virtually unregulated.

Municipal water providers have to test their water 300-400 times per month to ensure safety of their water. They also have to make their reports available to the public. Bottle water providers don't have to test their water or provide their reports.

We put an awful lot of faith and blind trust in a for-profit industry that is almost entirely self-regulated.

BPA is present in many kinds of plastic bottles, including water coolers, sport bottles, and baby bottles.

BPA has links to obesity, cancer, diabetes, ADHD, and many other diseases.

FDA approval of products comes from and is based on studies that are performed by the industry the product comes from. They don't typically ask for independent studies when looking at approving a product.

World average for beverage bottle recycling is 50%. US average is 20%.

Only 11 states offer container deposit legislation. (you pay a deposit on the bottle when you purchase and get it back when you return the bottle.) But only 6 of these have bills to include bottled water.

Michigan, which has a 10 cent deposit gets a 97% return rate. Other states with a 5 cent deposit get about a 70% return rate.

About half of Americans don't have access to curbside recycling.

Bottled water may have its place in disaster relief, but there issues around bottled water that make it unsuitable for regular use.

You're really better off just refilling a reusable water bottle at the drinking fountain.

I feel very grateful that I didn't grow up in a household that drank a lot of bottled water. Certainly we had some, picnics, the beach, vacations, etc., but generally when we were at home tap water was good enough for us. And I am so glad. I think it will make my desire to completely give up bottled water that much easier. If the demand for bottled water wasn't there I don't think that the bottling companies would bottle as much of it. I challenge you to consciously think, next time you have bottled water, about where your water comes from and where the plastic bottle is going to go when you're done with it.

There is enough water for human need, but not for human greed. --Mahatma Ghandi

September Goals--live life plastic free

Owing to the success of my goals in August I'm going to make some September goals too. Remember that awesome, life-changing documentary I watched last week? Well, it has inspired me to try to become plastic free in my life. I will freely admit that I don't think I can quit plastic cold turkey. If nothing else, it's going to take me a while to find a replacement for the copious amounts of plastic Tupperware that I use. But, I can make small changes. At the end of Bag It the narrator gave some suggestions for simple things that we can do to reduce our plastic consumption:

• cut way back on single use disposables
• quit using plastic grocery sacks
• don't drink bottled water
• choose things with less packaging
• buy used
• bring your own containers
• buy less stuff
• reduce, reuse, then recycle
• clean it up
• simplify your life

I think this is a pretty good list of things to start with, but I'm not so ambitious as to think I can tackle all of them this month. So I'm  mainly going to focus on not using plastic grocery sacks, or plastic produce bags. I admit that I already failed this week. I've been looking around and have found some cotton mesh produce bags that I want to order online, but I'm waiting for some Amazon credit to post this week. But I still needed to go grocery shopping today and while vegetables like potatoes and onions really don't need bags anyways, broccoli really keeps together better in a bag. So I gritted my teeth and did use one produce bag today. But I repeatedly told the lady at the checkout that I didn't need my eggs in a plastic bag and that when she poorly filled my reusable bags that I'd take paper over plastic.

While plastic grocery sacks are going to be my focus this month I also want to work on not drinking bottled water (which I don't often anyways, but still), and I want to work on bringing my own containers (which means I need to work on coming up with glass containers that I can bring...)

Recap on August Goals

I'm sure you've all been anxiously waiting to find out how my August goals went. As a reminder, these are the two goals that I made for myself for the month of August:

1. To be Facebook free for the month of August.
2. For all of my worldly possessions (with noted exceptions) to fit comfortably in my car behind the front seats when next I move.

Overall, they went pretty well. I do remember once about 2/3 of the way through August having a nightmare that it was August 31 and something weird happened and I forgot and checked my Facebook and then realized that I'd missed my goal. I was pretty happy when I woke up and realized that that wasn't going to happen. In fact I was so busy last weekend that it was September 2nd before I had time to sit down and spend 10 minutes realizing that I didn't miss anything on Facebook all month. And you know what? I really didn't miss Facebook at all the whole time I was gone (though Facebook thinks it missed me, it sent me a "welcome back" email after I logged back in). Sadly, my Facebook hiatus does mean that now I have that weird timeline thing going on, which I don't really care for. Oh well, all the more reason to not use Facebook. muahahah. I haven't decided if I'm going to continue my Facebook free life style indefinitely or if I'm just going to pick a time each week where I can check it if I feel like it. Probably the latter. I do like the idea of using Facebook to keep up with people. I just don't like Facebook.

As for moving my possessions. They pretty much all fit behind the front seats in my car. As my roommate can attest, she did have to sit with her knees by her chin because the passenger seat was pushed all the way forward, but she did ride with me to my new place. We did have to take a second trip for my bed frame, my fan, my nightstand, and my food, but my chair ended up fitting in my car, my mattress fit on top of my car, and I didn't end up taking the a/c unit at all. I'm not sure though if my stuff fit in my car well enough because I actually got rid of very much stuff, or if maybe I'm just getting better at packing. As I've been unpacking I've been finding myself with a fair number of things that don't have an immediately obvious home and so I need to try and get rid of some more things. I really want everything in this new space to have a home. I think that if it has a home it should be easier for me to keep my room clean.

Essentially I am pleased with my progress on my goals this past month. I definitely think I could have de-owned more things and with any luck I can do some de-owning this week as I unpack from my move, but I feel good about the progress I made. And I'm really happy with how my Facebook-free life has been going. And I will keep it up at least to some extent.

Labor Day

Happy Labor Day. I feel very lucky. Here in Boston the Temple opens for half a day on the various Monday holidays during the year. Normally it's closed on Mondays, but about a half a dozen times during the year it's not. And since today was a Monday holiday I took advantage and spent some time at the Temple this morning doing baptisms for the dead. I love going to the Temple. It's so peaceful there, and it brings peace to my entire day.

Boston Massachusetts LDS Temple

Merry Moving Day!

Just wanted to check in and wish everyone a merry moving day. So far my move has gone very smoothly. And I was only a couple minutes late for work. Traffic in Harvard Square was terrible. I'll post more next week.