Reshape Your Reality–Fight Back Against BP!
So here’s an awesome article on nine ways you can stand up against BP. A lot of them should be easy, particularly for those of you in the Boston area or similarly shaped areas (IE easy access to locally grown food, great bike infrastructure and passable public transit, etc).
The hardest, in my mind, is the “use less plastic” one.
I’ve started really inventorying my plastic usage since the spill, because that was the biggest thought for me. I’ve always tried to minimize how much I use my car, I eat vegetarian, I love buying local and organic, etc (and, as I said, it’s pretty easy to do these things in my area, so I had some assistance). The list gets really long–my frozen veggies and my bread come in plastic baggies. The vitamin water I drank this morning was in a plastic jar. My cosmetics are in plastic containers. The power adapter I bought for my laptop the other day came shrouded in several tiers of plastic bubble (I literally had to get out a knife to get into it because scissors weren’t cutting it, no pun intended). When I make a supply order for my office, everything comes shrouded in plastic and floating in a GIANT box full of inflated plastic air bubbles, no matter how small of an order we placed (seriously, who packs these boxes?).
So here’s my suggestions on how to cut back:
- Obviously, recycle. There’s lots of plastic we can’t avoid, so be sure to recycle it. Also, recycle your glass, cardboard, and paper while you’re at it. Oil isn’t the only resource we should be thinking about responsibly.
- Try to avoid heavily plasticized products. IE if you have the opportunity to buy something in less plastic, or even ideally non-plastic, packaging, go for it. I’ve been a big fan of Lush cosmetics for a long time (fair labor practices, a large assortment of vegan products) but I found out that they recycle their packaging, so if you bring it five empty containers, you get a free face mask. What a fun way to promote recycling!
- Order less off the internet. I love internet shopping, but let’s be real–there’s the packaging, the shipping, etc–so it gets wasteful. Besides, we should support local jobs in our communities!
This is only a start. I know there should be more, but this is what I’ve come up with.
Back in my first ever class on feminism, at the tender young age of eighteen, my professor explained to us the relationship between environmentalism and feminism. While I’m still not sure that I’m jiving with the crunchy cuddly idea that the Earth is symbolically female and thus when we rape the planet we are symbolically raping all women (meh), I DO comprehend the idea that respect for life, understanding that we aren’t entitled to every goddamn thing we want, and valuing sustainability and personal responsibility does reflect how we treat one another as humans, which is feminist. Call it cheesy, but I think it’s true. If nothing else, if you have any intention whatsoever of ever having kids or knowing someone with kids or loving an animal with a really long lifespan, you should care about the faith of the planet.
The option of emigrating to Mars is looking less and less likely, so I guess it’s time to shape up down here, amirite?
Vegan Weekend Warrior: The Reckoning
Great success!
The Vegan Weekend was a great success!
I ate really well and felt really good the entire weekend. Everything I ate was freaking delicious and satisfying. I didn’t really struggle with any cravings (I hate when I eat a meal and then only a little later, I feel like my blood sugar is crashing). It was, over all, a great weekend for food. Plus I biked almost 30 miles, got some sun, bought about 15 pounds of fruits and veggies at Haymarket, did some sewing, watched some Farscape, and did some serious cleaning in my apartment.
Anyways, here’s a rundown of what I ate:
Friday: breakfast of coffee with chocolate soymilk, pecan praline granola; lunch of a banana, green tea, and a protein bar; dinner of pan seared ginger teriyaki marinated tofu, red quinoa, spinach, and orange-infused dried cranberries, a glass of wine; late evening snack of a vegan ice cream sammich (om nom nom!)
Friday night dinner!
Saturday: breakfast smoothie of a banana, a kiwi, vanilla soy milk, and flax seeds, a slice of toast with apricot jelly; lunch of salad, raisins, and cranberry juice (okay, that was kind of lame, but I was volunteering at a blood drive (I gave blood while dressed as Princess Leia. I live a very normal life) and it was catered by Olive Garden. I needed to eat SOMETHING or I was going to pass out from giving blood, but salad was the only option. Olive Garden isn’t exactly what you’d call veg-friendly); dinner of vegetable ratatouille, ciabatta, lemonade; dessert of vegan gluten-free almond cupcakes with chocolate almond frosting.
Cuppycakes! Bad photography!
My cupcakes were a huge success. My sister is gluten-intolerant, so I wanted to make something she could eat. I adapted the recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, adjusting to make them a little more almondy because I like almond, and likewise with the frosting. The frosting was chocolate “buttercream,” and was the only thing I was really worried about. I mean, I swear by buttercream frosting.
I have to say, after these cupcakes, I will probably never make normal buttercream again. The frosting was so rich, so creamy, so delicious… We had a ton of leftover frosting, and we kept just taking fingerfulls of it because it was SO GOOD. My sister said it reminded her of chocolate mousse. Oh it was so good.
The cupcakes were a wild success–even after I told everyone they were vegan, everyone still went back for a second. I consider that a win!
Sunday: late brunch of Chesapeake tempeh cakes and iced coffee; dinner of pasta salad with wilted spinach, corn, and sweet onions, tossed in a nayonnaise/mustard/balsamic vinegar/herbes de Provence sauce, and a Blue Moon summer ale.
OMFG CAKES
I got the tempehcakes and remoulade recipe from The Post Punk Kitchen, and you guys, IT IS SO GOOD. I have a ton of leftovers (those three little cakes were more than enough to power me through the day and 15 miles of biking and adventuring) which are currently in a tupperware in my office fridge with sliced red pepper, spinach, and some pitas. I’ll be eating tempehcake sammiches for lunch for the next two days. Fuck yeah.
Those were SO DELICIOUS. I strongly believe that everyone should make them and experience them because holy shit, they had to be one of the more wonderful things I’ve eaten in my life.
I love food. I love food that is creative and exciting and filling and healthy and conscientious of the world we live in. This weekend, I successfully enjoyed all of these things, with a particular elevation of my conscientiousness. I really enjoyed it. I loved the process of preparing my food, nibbling the veggies while I worked, the wonderful smells in my apartment, and I loved how good I felt eating everything.
I’m hammering out my exact food philosophy, but I have a feeling that within the walls of my apartment, it’s going to be more and more vegan (I have some cheese and eggs right now, and I’ll use them up because I can’t abide being wasteful, but I doubt I’ll buy more). I suspect that when it comes to going to friends’ houses, I’ll be fine with holding to vegetarian considerations–I know too many people who are grudging about even that much, and I’d rather slowly expose them through sharing and positive feelings than being militant.
Anyways, I had an awesome weekend. I’ll be back to talkin’ gender and layin’ the smackdown soon, but expect a little bit of reflection on foodie-ism as this continues. Just as where we choose to spend our money is part of everyday activism, so is what we consume in the literal sense.
I leave you with a photo of my beautiful Haymarket haul. This is what $12 will get you on a Saturday morning, except then you have to bike home with it all on your back. As it turns out, that is heavy. X-TREME GROCERY SHOPPING, yo.
That's 3 bunches green onions, a pound of baby spinach, a half pound bundle of fresh basil, a pound of bananas, three lemons, a pound of ginger, 4 sweet onions, 3 red bell peppers, a box blackberries, a box of raspberries, and four limes. We're gonna need a bigger fridge!
More Than Just An Oil Slick
The BP oil disaster. I can’t even begin to express how heartbroken I’ve been over it. It seems like every time I turn around, the situation is getting worse. There’s more oil, the flow can’t be stopped, the oil is reaching the shoreline, animals are dying…
The worst part, to me, is this feeling of complete helplessness. I looked into going down to Louisiana to help with clean-up efforts along the shore, and BP is refusing all non-local volunteers in order to avoid having to provide shelter. Beyond going down to Louisiana to help clean up, I can’t think of anything else I can do–there’s no action I can engage in to help stop the flow of oil, to staunch the leak, to hold in what’s already there. My planet is getting destroyed, my world is going to hell, and there is nothing I can do. But if nothing is done, the oil is going to go around Florida and make its way up the coast and out into the open ocean.
If you look at the image in that article, the distance that the oil is spread is huge. That’s an enormous amount of coastline. Even just all the ecological damage being done to the Gulf is huge. And here’s the thing–we get a lot of food from the southern regions of the US, and the oil is going to impact that. It’s going to get into the water, get into the plants that the animals will eat, and come down as acid rain. This spill isn’t just impacting the fishing industry; it’s impacting everything.
And now it’s worse. Again. Now it’s going to have reproductive effects. Feministing gives us a heads up that there are chemicals in both the oil and the dispersants that can impair fertility, or influence the development of a fetus. This spill is literally shaping our next generation. It will have effects that will trickle down for who knows how long. Like radiation from Chernobyl, the spill is altering us.
You don’t have to TOUCH the oil to feel the effects. This is much bigger than a potential increase in the price per gallon at your local gas station. All that stuff I said about how the oil and its related chemicals will travel through the entire system? Yep. That means you’ll end up eating or drinking those chemicals. It’s hard to say exactly how far those reproduction-mangling chemicals will travel, or how common or severe the effects will be. But do you really want to play Russian Roulette with this kind of thing?
I wish I had more of a sense of what we can do. For now, I’m working hard at trying to cut back on my use of all things oil-related, but a lot of this is hard–what do I replace my plastic kitchen trash bags with? When I buy bulk drygoods at the market, I have no option except to put them into the plastic baggies they provide (bringing containers from home would alter the weight measurement at the register) . Bread comes in plastic. Toothbrushes and razors in bubble packs. Seriously–think for a second about how much of the stuff you throw away is just packaging! Stuff that isn’t reusable, or recyclable, or anything. I recently saw a bag of chips that came in a compostable bag and I almost squealed with excitement. Unfortunately, my current living situation doesn’t allow for composting (my grandmother has been composting for as long as I can remember, and my sister does too. I’d love to join that bandwagon!).
For now, I’m doing my best to think about how I interact with the world around me–how to cut back on waste, how to be more energy efficient, and so on. Building good habits now will help keep those behaviors going even after the BP disaster is “over.” It’s never too late to start changing our ways to try to prevent history from repeating itself. There may be nothing we can do to stop what’s going on now, but we can do what we can to stop it from happening again and try to stop other disasters that we can’t currently imagine.
Remember, just because we think nothing will happen and we think we’re ready doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. After all, BP thought there was no possible way things could get this bad.
I want my future back. I am still waiting on my jetpack, dammit!
Recycling just got even sexier.
As the title says, as if recycling weren’t already sexy enough, it has gotten even sexier!
Via Feministing, we learn about the Sex Toy Recycling Program:
Finally, there’s an environmentally friendly way to dispose of used or broken vibrators, dildos, plugs, or any other sex toy you may have. Our Sex Toy Recycling program offers you a way to recycle sex toys that you no longer want or use.
Simply drop your clean used toy(s) in the mail, when we receive it in our warehouse we will have it cleaned and disassembled. The rubber, silicone, hard plastics, metal, e-waste and motors will be sent to recycling facilities that process the materials for reuse. Did you leave the batteries in? Don’t worry, we dispose of them responsibly..
Now, when you get rid of that old, broken or unused sex toy, you will be helping our environment. You can feel good that you have done one more thing to cut consumer waste, reduce landfills and help eliminate the toxic chemicals that seep into our soil and ground water.
Not only do we make recycling your sex toys simple, we also offer a reward as an incentive. For every package of toys you send in to be recycled, you will receive a $10 gift card to use at one of our affiliate partners as well free shipping when applicable on your next order. So the more you recycle, the more you can play. Going green has never been this much fun!
Let’s face it, this is pretty awesome–what a great idea!
Bitches Get Stuff Done 