The Sustainable Toothbrush

Say hello to the illest toothbrush in the world... the Radius Original. It's made from sustainable, cellulose plastic (read: trees), and claims to be biodegradable. Now I think the jury is still out on the topic of biodegradable plastics, but it's definitely better than throwing your old plastic toothbrush in the trash and just letting it sit there until the Sun consumes us.

When my 4000 pack of toothbrushes from Costco finally runs out, I'll definitely be picking up a few of these bad boys.

Update: I forgot to mention.... they come as either left- or right-handed. As a lefty, I love anything that caters to the copious amounts of awesome running through my brain which causes my left hand dominance.

Recycle those Brita filters!

Good news in the world of recycling. As of January 12, 2009, Brita has begun a program in conjunction with Preserve to start recycling your depleted Brita filters.

Preserve is a company that takes those pesky resin-code #5 plastics that people can't always find a place to recycle (Sussex County, NJ does... are you jealous???) and turns them into a variety of products, of which my personal favorite is the recyclable toothbrush.

Since the Brita filter is apparently a #5 plastic, Preserve is accepting the Brita filters in their Gimme 5 program. Gimme 5 works in one of two ways: 1) drop your #5 plastics off at your local Whole Foods, or 2) or you can mail them your #5's.

Now I'm not totally sold how this program works, but then again I'm not crazy about plastics to begin with. Basically, Preserve gets #5's and turns them into products such as toothbrushes, kitchenware, and tableware. After you're done with those items, you have the option of shipping your items back to Preserve where they turn it into plastic lumber, which is NOT recyclable.

Sadly this is the AlGore-ish truth of plastics (and what I hate about them); they're not indefinitely recyclable and at SOME point, all plastics will end up in the landfill. This is where the concept of REUSE and REDUCE come into play. Take a plastic bag for example: REUSING the plastic bag once means that you're REDUCING the total number of plastic bags you throw away by one. The more you reuse a plastic item, the greater it's utility.

Update (11.06.09): I still have my three Brita filters sitting in my shed because I keep forgetting to bring them to Whole Foods! PS. Dear Whole Foods, please build a Whole Foods within a reasonable driving distance of Vernon, NJ. Morristown and Franklin Lakes are simply too far away.

Composting [DIY]

Okay.... so my last piece was admittedly long-winded and way too scholarly for my taste, but it was for an assignment at school, so I hope you can forgive me. If you actually read it, however, you would have picked up the following fun-fact: 25% of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in 2007 was compostable. That's right.... 25% of all the crap you throw away every year can be composted.

Now you're probably thinking..."But won't it just compost in the landfill and turn to dirt anyway?"WRONG. The problem with landfills is that as you start layering stuff up, it cuts off the air supply to the trash underneath it which means that instead of composting or rotting, it just sits there doing nothing which renders the term 'biodegradable' all but useless.

So let's start composting then, huh? Give me an excuse and I'll have a solution. For those with limited/no space, you have a couple of options; vermicomposting, composting in a plastic bucket, or yuppie composting. Or if you're truly adverse to composting at home, find out if your town or county offers a composting facility (a lot do). If that resource is available to you, start stock piling your compostable items and take them to them to your local composting facility. Though personally I'm lazy, so I'd rather just throw all my crap in a pile at home and let it rot. If you want to create a compost pile at home, Lowes has a pretty nice guide to building your own.

Now here's my situation....

1. I live in an apartment, so a full-blown compost pile is out of the question.
2. The idea of having a box of worms in my kitchen is positively disgusting, so vermicomposting is not an option.
3. I'm a poor college student, so the NatureMill home composting unit is clearly out of the question.

So what I decided to do was convert an unused plastic bin to a compost bin via an About.com article. Here are some pictures...

Basically this is an old resin-code #5 plastic bin that I wasn't using for anything and I just drilled a shit-ton of holes in it; top, bottom, and sides. I cut up a few pizza boxes and added some old produce I had in sitting in the fridge for a while (3.5 romaine lettuce heads, 1 papaya, and 1 pear), and placed it out on my balcony.

Over the last few days I've added some a hunk of grass/dirt from outside, egg shells, a couple sets of coffee grounds/filters, and other random veggie scraps. Clearly it hasn't had much time to do anything, but I figure that it will really start 'cooking' once spring really sets in. I'll be sure to keep this blog updated with the progress of the composting.