"recycle" news and stories

Adding to the (occasional) guilt of finishing off a greasy, cheese-laden pizza is that awkwardly large, hard-to-trash pizza box -- do you bend it? Rip it into pieces? Leave it for someone else to deal with in the morning?

Whole Foods will be breaking this vicious cycle with the newly designed GreenBox, made to sustainably package, serve and store their take-out brick-oven pizza. Announced today by makers ECOvention, LLC, the boxes are manufactured from 100% recycled cardboard and are said to replace the need for paper plates (for serving), as well as plastic wrap or tin foil (for storage). The company realized that a standard 14-inch pizza box could breakdown into smaller reusable compartments, which could then be recycled more easily.

What's their secret? Clever perforation.

Even though 2009 was a money-conscious year, most of us did not make a foolish decision to abandon wine. Because who doesn't need a heart-stopping bottle to pair with your favorite cheese or impress dinner-party guests?

Winemakers scrambled to keep their audience of sippers happy by offering value-oriented choices without compromising quality. Drinking wine at home -- instead of the local, hip wine bar -- became just as cool, and cheaper still. And lots of wineries and vineyards adopted green stripes by folding sustainability into their business models.

Here is a recap of the year's hottest wine stories.

If you use loose leaf tea to make yourself a cuppa, you know that, in addition to being difficult to clean out every last bit of tea leaf, a lot of them get thrown away. They might not be strong enough to make more tea with, but there are a lot of uses for used up tea leaves, some of which still benefit from the antioxidant power of green tea. To prepare the used leaves, first dry them completely by laying them on a sieve or even a series of paper towels. Once dry, they can be used to:

• Take odors out of cutting boards by rubbing a freshly washed board with the leaves, then washing again. They can also help to absorb odor in carpets and even cat litter.
• Fill a small cotton bag with the leaves, dampen it, and place on your eyes to reduce puffiness. If you want to use this technique on your whole body, you can make the bag larger and put it in the bath.
• Green tea is a natural source of fluorine, which fights cavities and gingivitis, as well as strengthening teeth, so the leaves can be mixed with water and used as a mouthwash.

[Thanks, Robert]

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The UK's top supermarket Tesco has announced that they are to introduce bio-degradable carrier bags. It also aims to cut the number of plastic bags given to customers by nearly a billion each year.

According to letsrecycle.com the UK gets through over 17.5 billion plastic carrier bags a year from supermarkets alone. So you would have thought they would be happy with the supermarkets plans. Not at all.

The fact they are to be biodegradable got the Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Chris Huhne a bit fired up. He accused the supermarket chain of misunderstanding waste issues, suggesting that degradable plastic bags will produce greenhouse gases when they break down. You just can't win sometimes.

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My children both attend schools that do not offer hot lunch programs. Some weeks I am completely organized and able to prepare baked goods and other wholesome edibles. Other weeks I spend a couple hours trolling around the grocery store on Sunday afternoons buying prepackaged snacks disguised to look healthy. Whatever the case plastic containers are involved. If I send mine they rarely return home to their nesting places on the pantry shelves. When asked where they went, the kids might reply, "Well, they were flopping around my lunch bag. They spilled and got everything all gooey so I threw them in the trash." If I send prepackaged stuff then it all ends up in the garbage anyway. In either instance there is waste guilt involved.

So imagine my delight when I encountered the Laptop Lunches site. These are lead free, reusable lunch boxes that come with containers that fit exactly to the interior of the box. There is no slippage or leakage, they come in cool colors, a healthy lunch ideas book is included and they also have an insulated carrying case with a strap. They are a little more expensive than the usual Wal Mart lunch boxes but well worth the price. The site also offers an adult version, complete with two metal thermoses and a stylish hemp carrying bag. And if you happen to misplace some of the containers, no worries, everything is available to order individually. This seems like a great answer to the lunchtime dilemma of ideas, leakage and waste. What do you think? Would you spend the money? If not, how do you handle these issues?

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