Pilot and The Ledger-Star, Norfolk, VA – TAKING GREEN LIVING TO A NEW LEVEL
TAKING GREEN LIVING TO A NEW LEVEL
0 Comments | The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, Norfolk, VA, Jun 9, 2010 | by SEAN O’DRISCOLL
By Sean O’driscoll
For The Associated Press
When she goes to the supermarket, Bea Johnson brings along a sealable glass jar so the butcher can slide in a pork cutlet. In the bulk aisle, she fills reusable bags she makes from old bed sheets to carry rice, pasta, oatmeal or nuts.
In fact, everything she and her husband buy is without packaging: They make their own household cleaning products, buy soap that comes unwrapped and return milk bottles to suppliers for refills.
At least three times a week, Johnson phones marketing companies in her unrelenting war against junk mail.
“The amount of money you can save by just carrying your own water bottle is huge,” said Johnson, who blogs about her lifestyle in Marin County, Calif., at zerowastehome. blogspot.com. “Plus, the more you get away from plastic, the more likely you are to buy fresh.”
Johnson has emerged as a guru for people looking to take green living to a new level.
“We’re definitely seeing more people interested in living without waste, but the demographic has changed,” said Sarah Kennedy of San Francisco’s Rainbow Food Cooperative, which offers everything from shampoo to seaweed in bulk.
“Before it was tree-hugging hippies who washed and reused their produce bags. Now we’re seeing a much more middle-class movement, more moms with their kids, with Tupperware boxes and neatly folded linen bags,” she said.
The effort to reduce packaging has moved into the mainstream. The state Assembly in California approved a bill that would ban plastic bags from stores and require retainers for paper bags. The measure has yet to reach the Senate, but other cities have placed restrictions on plastic bags, including an outright ban in larger retail stores by three counties in North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
Johnson, who began with the less ambitious target of simplifying her family’s life, soon realized that less clutter also was good for the planet.
The health benefits of a wrapper-free life are a major theme for Colin Beavan in New York. He wrote a book, “No Impact Man,” about a year he and his family spent without electricity and living with as little waste as they could
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