Alternatives to Disposables - Reusable straw review and giveaway

Glass Dharma giving away 1,000 free glass straws for Earth Day

This is the "beautiful bendy"
and it's the straw I am
currently drinking from. 

Last month, I taped a live segment with the More Good Day Oregon program entitled "Green On The Go." I already had most of the reusable items that I wanted to display in my personal inventory. One item I hadn't ever invested in, though, was a reusable straw. I contacted a company here in the states that makes reusable glass straws, Glass Dharma and they sent me a few straws to highlight on the show and to try out. Work and a whole mess of other obligations prevented me from actually trying the straws until yesterday. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. For me, it was as if I had been trying to cut a steak with a plastic knife my whole life and suddenly someone gave me a real steak knife to eat my food with. The experience didn't leave me speechless or anything, but I was struck by how much I enjoyed drinking from a glass straw. This might sound a little strange, but they feel really good in your mouth. You can feel the temperature of your beverage and the end is smooth, not like a plastic straw.

To be honest, before the segment, I hadn't given much thought to straws. I have been slowly removing disposable items from my life and trying to replace them with reusable alternatives, but I didn't have any strong feelings/thoughts about straws, yet. Since the segment, I've been thinking a lot more about straws. Just like the steak knife, this is what straws should be! When choosing between disposables and durables, I have yet to find an instance where the following doesn't hold true: durables are more elegant, nicer to use and well, more durable than their disposable counterparts. I know we all love the convenience of disposable products, but the fact remains these items aren't very convenient to our planet. Even if the disposable is able to be recycled (which is rarely the case) there are still a lot of resources that went into creating this item that we use and then immediately throw out.

If you'd like to try out a glass straw, Glass Dharma is giving away 1,000 of them this Earth Day. You can submit an essay of 100-200 words or a short YouTube clip. Easy peasy!

Don't be discouraged if these new habits take awhile to form. I've changed my habits for: bags, to-go containers and cups but it seems to take me, on average, about a year to create each new habit. I won't say I'm proud of that, but I seem to have trouble with:

• Remember to have the item with me 
• Take it in to the store or restaurant
• Remember to ask the cashier or wait staff for no disposables
• Actually use what I brought with me. 

I've screwed up the process at every one of these steps in the past, but eventually I get it and it becomes second nature. Habits are hard to break, but the enjoyment of using a better product that you're not just going to throw away is well worth it, in my opinion. The perceived inconvenience is far outweighed by the quality of the durable products, and the glass straw is just the latest product to convince me of that.

Lastly, here's an interesting infographic from elocal.com that talks about some of the problems with our constant purchasing of disposable products. I thought it was interesting, perhaps you will too.

Happy Waste Reduction!

Green Drinks 2 Year Anniversary Party NEXT WEEK!

I sure hope I'm going to see you all out at our wonderful 2 year anniversary party next Tuesday night! More details

One Year Anniversary-A Give-away!

Hello World! (If you're a "geek" you understand the significance of that.) That was my first post on March 11th of last year. The blog will be one year old a month from today. In celebration, I'm giving away something that I get asked for all the time. If you're at all a garbage geek like me, you'll love this:

Working in the industry I do, I get this kind of swag all the time, but I've been asked over the years if I have any of these little mini recycle bins, so the last time I was at a conference I picked up a special one to be given away to my readers.

So, how do you enter? I'm so glad you asked. There are three ways of entering the contest:

1. Leave a comment on this post. It can be anything! Just a "sign me up! " will do, but if you'd like to comment on anything else, you're welcome to.

2. For extra credit, you will get 2 entries into the giveaway if you comment on another post. (Please make the comment pertinent to the post.)

3. Or, if you're *really* an overachiever, you will get three entries for sharing a reuse story with me. If you use something in your home in an unexpected way, met your neighbor when you were setting something out on the curb for free or any fun reuse story you want to share with me, you'll get 3 contest entries for that. You can share your story in the comment section of this post or send me an email. (If you have pictures, I will give you extra credit for sharing those, too!)

Just be ready to have your story shared with my readers.

Good luck! I'll post the winner some time after the one year anniversary, March 11th, 2010.

Here it is in all it's desk-organizing glory (No, you can't have my titanium scissors, sorry! I'll throw in the ruler made from phone books, if you want it though.)

Updating the ol' blog

I've been working harder on my blog content lately-have you noticed? I hope so! :D With my one year blogiversary coming up, I've been thinking about what this blog is, what I want it to be and how I can make it better for all.

I also have some recent improvements and some in the works:

1. I just added the "you also might like" feature. Do you love or hate? (I'm finding it looks a bit clunky with posts that are short and when it adds posts that don't have a photo-see below...)

2. I've always struggled with adding photos. I know lots of people add photos from Google Image searches, but there are some potential copyright issues with that. I also know that personally, my favorite blogs are the ones that have lots of wonderful photos taken with the author's camera. Unfortunately, I find I don't really have enough time to take a photo for each post and/or that because a lot of my posts are just links to others' blogs, I often don't have time to try out the tutorial and photograph it for the post. So...advice?

3. I will be working on adding labels (keywords) soon. I think that will help with #1 and possibly have the added benefit of increasing traffic.

4. Finally...anything you'd like to see here? Comments are open, as always.

P.S. I think for my one year anniversary, I'm going to hold a little giveaway of an item that I've been asked many times for. Stay tuned!