I’ve done some follow-ups on older posts… details and links below.
1. Checking in on the Whole Foods Gimme 5 Program
In January of this year, I wrote a post titled Corporate But Cool, which gave a bit of information on Whole Foods’ Gimme 5 Recycling Program. Unfortunate for me, this program had been live at Whole Foods for an entire year before I heard about it… and so, since I was a bit behind the curve on this, I figured time was well overdue for me to take my *huge* collection of number 5 recycling products and mosey on over to my nearest Whole Foods location. And look! I found a nicely full (but not over-flowing) Gimme 5 bin available just inside the front doors:
It even looks like some extra bags were lying there nearby, and the bin gives a clear visual explanation about the energy/water savings that recycling these number 5 products gains. That being said… it wasn’t clear who is in charge of/makes sure these bags full of number 5 recyclables get to the Preserve company for reshaping into toothbrushes and other home products. Part of me worries, like in every office building I have ever worked in, that the recycling bins are just for show and that the people that collect the recycling bins at the end of the day simply dump them into the ‘regular’ trash. Much like Elizabeth Royte’s excellent book ‘Garbageland: On the Secret Trail of Trash’, it’s extremely hard to know where your trash goes. I would hope that Preserve gets these goods and can use them to shape their products… but outside of following the bags of recyclables myself, I’m not sure how to verify this.
2. Food Miles
Eating local foods has, of late, been a serious conversation amongst foodies, the energy-conscious, the politically-conscious, farmers, hippies, hipsters, you name it. Everyone seems to want to do right by eating locally… but ‘doing right’ is a pretty complex equation with so many moving parts that it seems like no set formula has yet been agreed upon. I made mention of this in an earlier post, ‘Eat Local. Most of the time.’ back in November. Various organizations, in an effort to be more energy- and socio-politically conscious, have been working on this complex question, and back in December, a deep paper about this topic was posted here.
This paper was written as a joint venture between Oxfam and International Institute for for Environment and Development. These sites have so much information that you can spend hours perusing them… together with the paper they posted, you can easily spend an entire evening. Enjoy!
