Freshly Brewed Book Reviews
This is one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in a long time, and in all my years as a reader. St. John Mandel’s prose is elegant and moving, at once nostalgic, contemplative, and hopeful.
Katie Moran
A New Yorker with many passions. I'm moved by yoga, travel, books, the outdoors, environmental issues, music, climbing, the nerdy community, photography, and coffee.
Adventures in Greening: Paperkarma
It seems that, no matter what I do, junk mail always appears in my teeny, tiny mail box. I’ve done the trick of writing “return to sender” on my junk mail, to no avail. I’ve called clothing companies to tell them that, while I like their company and will continue shopping from them, I do not want their catalog anymore. And I have to do this every single time I order anything from, seemingly, every company I purchase clothing from online. Multiple times. A week never goes by without some offer from a credit card company. How do I get them to leave me alone? Paperkarma might do the trick.
Adventures in Greening: Coffee Break
Ages and ages ago, I wrote about my penchant for cold-brewing coffee. This weekend, I took my cold brew process a step further: I ground my own beans!
I was in Nicaragua on a yoga retreat last month (such a beautiful country, I must say!), and, coffee lover that I am, I had to pick up a bag of beans. I knew I wouldn’t be able to use this bag right away, so I took home beans in order to better preserve them until I could grind them for fresh use.
Adventures in Greening: Taking out the Leftovers
After three years of writing bi-weekly posts, it sometimes feels like I’m out of new things to try to Go Green, if only because writing a green blog isn’t my day job (who knows, maybe one day!), and I don’t always have the time I’d like to research and experiment. In that case where there’s a time crunch, I try to bring you news tidbits. Friends often aid me in this endeavor by sending links my way, so thank you to people who keep my green inclinations in mind! This piece is the result of one such instance.
NerdGirl Fashion
It’s a good time to be a female nerd. Once upon a time, not too long ago, there weren’t too many options for clothing for nerdy ladies. Yes, we could purchase the baggie tees that our male counterparts wear so well, but, outside of Halloween costumes, we didn’t have many clothing options that catered to the female form. When Hot Topic started selling Harry Potter gear in women’s cuts in the 2000s, I was beside myself with joy: now I could wear my nerdiness in a stylin’ way.
Thankfully, Hot Topi
Adventures in Greening: Greening the Afterlife
Is there such a thing as being too green? You may think so, after reading this post. I, on the other hand, think that what I’m about to share with you is really neat (big surprise, right?) So what is the topic of today, you ask? Organic Burial Pods! Two Italian designers have come up with an alternative for people to consider when deciding on their final resting place.
Adventures in Greening: Sweatshop
This link popped up on my Facebook feed a few times last week, so you may have already seen it, too. I linked to a piece about fast fashion a few posts back; living in New York City, a fashion capital of the world, I see a lot of fast fashion. You can actually see trends being born when you live here. As Heidi Klum says on Project Runway: “One day you’re in, and the next day, you’re out.” That’s fashion, apparently. But how can we chuck out clothes every “season” and get on board with new trends? How is such clothing made so rapidly?
Adventures in Greening: See Ya, Styrofoam!
I read some exciting news about my neighborhood last week: starting this summer, New York City is banning foam food packaging. Additionally, foam packing peanuts will no longer be sold in the city. This means that food cart vendors (of which there are many) will have to find a different way of sending you off with your food. This is exciting news for the treehuggers, but city officials have been fair to those who oppose the initiative, giving supporters of foam packaging a year (in 2013) to prove that the material could be recycled. Their findings? Foam cannot be recycled.
Adventures in Greening: New Year, Same Me…
…with new goals, that is! I’m not one to ascribe to new resolutions at the start of the year (I make ‘em throughout the year!) But here’s a list of things I hope to have accomplished by the end of the year. I don’t want to overwhelm myself, and I don’t want to make the list unrealistic. We’ll see how things are going at the end of the year, which, given how quickly this year went, might just fly by.
Adventures in Greening: Happy End of the Year!
It’s been a relatively good year in environmentally-friendly news. California became the first state to ban the use of plastic bags in grocery stores, a design for a mobile personal printer was revealed, and Illinois banned the use of microbeads in cosmetics. This list could go on with things that happened on a more grassroots level, or with things that I just plumb missed out on hearing about (enlighten me in the comments!)
Adventures in Greening: Living a No-Waste Life
As I continue to try to eliminate trash and plastic and unnecessary Stuff from my life (not always succesfully), I’m always on the lookout for inspiration to keep me striving to improve my habits. Thankfully, my friends are on the lookout for me, too. Kate-book’s very own Kaitlin sent me this piece about a 23-year-old New Yorker who hasn’t produced any trash in two years. I’ve been perusing her blog and other social media presences, and they are WAY cool. She seems to be a great resource, and as a fellow NYCer, I will benefit from her recommendations for where to find no-waste shops. How exciting! I can already feel myself getting reinvigorated.
Adventures in Greening: Buy Nothing Friday
So, Friday is almost upon us, otherwise known as Black Friday, AKA the day where people will bring other people to harm in order to make sure they purchase the biggest deals they can find. For a growing number people, it’s also known as Buy Nothing Day, a day to focus on all else that life has to offer: family, friends, cooking, gathering items to donate.
Adventures in Greening: And the Holiday Season Begins?
As the consumer culture machine grows ever more advanced, I’m seeing Christmas advertisements all over the place now, and we’re barely at mid-November! These ads serve to make me feel a little crazed. Despite the fact that I’m getting better about not buying excess Stuff, the frenzied atmosphere that precedes Christmas in the months (months!!) leading up to it can still make me feel somewhat pressured to contribute to buy in, as it were, to the idea that the holidays mean showing someone you care by giving them a new watch or gaming system.
Adventures in Greening: Goodbye, Socks?
My friend sent me a link to Not Socks back in August, but I’d missed it until now. It might be more helpful to have this information in the summer, when you really don’t want to be wearing socks, but, hey, maybe you can ask for a pair this holiday season to get you ready for the summer.
Adventures in Greening: Way to Go, California
Almost two weeks ago, California became the first state to ban plastic bags. Starting next summer, single-use bags will no longer be offered in large summer markets and grocery stores. However, according to this Huffington Post article, bags at other retailers and bags used for vegetables, fruits, meats, and do not fall under this law. Convenience stores, pharmacies, and liquor stores in CA will have until 2016 before the law takes effect for them.
Adventures in Greening: Home Printing in the Future
I stumbled upon this Kickstarter project too late to be a backer, but that won’t stop me from actively seeking out this printer once it’s hit the market. But, you think, printers aren’t the most eco-friendly product on the market; if you don’t recycle the cartridges (which you can with HP printer models, either by returning them to a store or mailing them back to the company in the pre-addressed envelope that comes with each cartridge) they become trash. And they’re so big, and are made of so much plastic…
Adventures in Greening: Pit Stop
I fell pretty behind in checking email this summer, which means I’m seeing a lot of great emails about many upcoming events that would have been right up my alley…if I’d seen the email two months ago.
Adventures in Greening: Link Love
So, I’ve been a bit exhausted the past few weeks, so sleeping has taken priority over researching and writing (sorry, y’all). In lieu of a lot of reading, I’m sharing some favorite links of late. Check them out, and have a great Monday!
Adventures in Greening: Of Trash and Ocean Patches
Happy Monday! I hope you all had a fun and safe holiday weekend. You might have been lucky enough to spend some time at the beach during the long weekend. While there, you were hopefully thinking about snoozing on the sand, listening to tunes, and swimming until your fingers pruned. You hopefully weren’t thinking about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or, if you were, you weren’t letting it bum you out too much. Why do I say that? After all, The Garbage Patch is a major bummer. But it turns out that it’s disappearing. Yay! But, hang on: Is this a good or bad thing?
Adventures in Greening: Back to the Future
I’m pretty excited to say that I am, for once, on top of an electronic advancement. Well, sort of. I’m not calling myself Nostradamus, or anything (but I will share ::cough:: humblebrag ::cough:: that a friend of mine did deem me so when he passed along the article below), but it looks like some green technology that caught my eye awhile back might actually become real.
Load More Articles
