Personally Green

Raise your hand if you’re green! OK, I see a virtual roomful of airborne hands. Jolly good.

Undoubtedly, each of you has your personal definition of the green lifestyle. We probably have a lot in common, but we each do some unique things.

I was reflecting on some of the quirky things I do. The more I thought, the more I realized they may be pretty nutty. Or not. So I’m sharing my green lifestyle to elicit comments about yours.

What offbeat things do you do? What have you struggled with recently? Let’s compare notes, shall we?

My personally green life:

If I buy something like packaged sushi for lunch, I’ll put the packaging in my car to recycle at home.

If I see a clean bottle or can on the top of a trash can, I’ll take it home for recycling. (This is the extent of my social recycling; I don’t dig deeper into trash cans and I don’t take anything other than clean bottles and cans.)

I’m a wild thing at the farmers market. My reusable canvas bags hold smaller reusable bags for cherry tomatoes, Persian cucumbers and other small things. Unruly, wet, dirty, earthy heads of lettuce, carrots, broccoli and everything else just goes in the canvas bags.

I recently went into a supermarket to buy stamps and ended up buying some other things, too. I didn’t want to go back to my car for my canvas bags and I refused to take a paper bag. Balancing things under my chin, I could barely carry all my purchases. I must have looked pretty funny.

I work part-time out of a small office where people often leave water bottles lying around after only taking a few sips. I pour the water on the lawn and bring the bottles home to recycle.

Per my post below, I’m just delighted with the Original Spaghetti Scrub. It’s perfect for dishes, but I’m still using an icky sponge to wipe down the countertops. Who has a better idea?

The aforementioned visit to the supermarket was weird and frustrating for me. I had to forage for food there and it was challenging to find things I’d want to eat. Normally I buy produce at farmers markets and I buy proteins in the most unexpected place: the freezer case at Smart & Final. It’s my secret go-to store for clean, convenient fish. They have individually frozen, boneless, skinless, wild-caught fillets at a great price. The one ingredient was fish, nothing added. Today I discovered a second ingredient in the salmon: sodium tripolyphosphate. Dangit. I just looked up what the #$%&!! sodium tripolyphosphate is and I doubt I’ll buy any more of this salmon. Well, at least the white fish is still unadulterated.