Its so hard to get up on Mondays sometimes. The New York Times had some great articles that I found today and I felt it would be fun to pass them along. The
first looked at the natural health care product company
Burt's Bees, maker of an amazing lip balm. Typical article discussing the of how Burt's Bees got its start, its history, and how it got its name were fascinating. What struck me the most was that the company is now a subsidiary of Clorox, a company that does not necessarily ooze environmental health. Roxanne
Quimby, the former owner, sold her stakes in the company to spend portions of her time to preserving large tracks of land, returning them to their "pristine" condition. I wonder why money prevailed in this instance. I feel that
Quimby still could have preserved her swaths of land, by no means a bad thing, and still kept Burt's Bees out of Clorox's clutches. If nothing else the PR around the buying and preservation of land would have been amazing. Think if Burt's could have struck a deal with say
Ducks Unlimited and worked to preserve even more areas for preservation. This means that Burt's could be the official lip balm of duck hunts everywhere...ha.
Another post (though a couple of days old) on the
NYTimes was a
conundrum of whether or not to reuse plastic water bottles after use. This country is already addicted to many things and bottled water is just another item on the list. To the tune of billions a year we consume the water and toss the bottle. Most of the time this water is just city tap water. It is a better alternative to say pop, but most of us have access to clean water right from the tap. Even more disturbing is in the building in which I work. There are several water fountains (the old fashioned kind) stationed throughout the building. But instead nearly everybody takes a single use cup, gets a swig from
the water cooler and throws the cup away...really is a waste. Not only in the form of the cup, but also in the energy used to capture, bottle and transport the water to the office.
Some people, like myself, rinse and reuse the bottles over and over again. I have since changed this habit once I started reading more and more literature about chemicals from the bottles leaching into the liquid as the bottle ages. The
NYTimes piece was
humorously written about the very same problem I faced. At home, I no longer use plastic bottles to store my water in for when I am at home (I do keep a few bottles for when I'm on the run and in the car) but have since switched to glass jugs like those used at some "posh"
restaurants.
Nalgene's are probably a better alternative to the "single use" type bottles but
according to some research these may also leach chemicals and have since been banned in some
Canadian sporting goods/outdoor outfitter stores. If you're really concerned,
metal bottles are
available and don't pose the risk as the plastic.
But for me reducing the
ridiculous amount of plastic containers we use in a given day. Whether its glass,
Nalgene, or metal, if you are
reusing your sturdy bottles to limit the amount of waste your produce I think the risk of a little
chemical in the body is worth it. What do you think?
