http://www.sustainabilityissexy.com/facts.html

Sustainable bagasse coffecup!

Yup, that’s the date that economists suggest is the breaking point for humans on planet earth. Lots of our behavior will change by then…transportation, birth control, the interwebs and especially how we consume products.

When it comes to disposable products, the future is here. SustainableParty.com offers a whole line of different sustainably produced disposable items including coffee cups manufactured by and benefiting blind american workers in the midwest. How healthy for the earth is that?

Check em out and ask Starbucks to start using these cups today!!:

From the official website:

“Algalita staff set sail on “Junk,” a raft built on 15,000 plastic bottles. Their 2,100 mile journey will take them through the plastic-plagued Northern Pacific Gyre. Designed by Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal, the raft boasts an airplane fuselage, discarded fishing nets, a solar generator, and a wind turbine. This ambitious journey will bring further public attention to the plastic marine debris issue.”

Eriksen and Paschal manage to upload blog entries and video from the middle of Pacific somehow. For this their blog, junkraft.blogspot.com, deserves a visit by all of us. It’s amazing stuff and you can read about their trip AND the massive trash gyre that you may have heard about on the news that their parent organization, The Algalita Marine Research Foundation, is given credit for finding.

The idea starts with 102,950 people joining this campaign after which time they will begin writing their names on each paper cup they are served for “in store” use. If Starbucks does not comply they will “insist that they remain on a shelf, to be reused the next time we return to the store.”

Another campaign of interest involves Pepsi’s use of unsustainable plastic in bottling their Aquafina Brand water. “When we reach our goal of recruiting 50,000 Aquafina drinkers, we will stop drinking Aquafina water, causing PepsiCo an abrupt drop in profits, amounting to approximately $20 million annually in gross profit.” They demand they find a bio-plastic alternative to existing bottles or suffer the consequences of a sizable boycott and likely a lot of bad press. Cheers to the campaign organizers and everyone at The Point for an interesting approach to social change.

GreenHome.com offers suggestions for eco-friendly alternatives to popular earth-nasty products. Included in their offerings is a travel mug made from corn-starch. This sustainable and renewable organic compound looks and feels like plastic but under years of hot and moist conditions, will biodegrade . I don’t think you can put it in the dishwasher, buy hey, your christmas shopping just got a whole lot easier!

You can choose from 3 different designs printed with vegetable derived inks.

I thought clean drinking water was a basic human right. Small towns in the U.S. are witnessing their municipal water being purchased by conglomerates like Nestle Corporation, repackaged and sold back to Americans as “pure spring water”. On so many levels this is wrong. So wrong in fact the City of Burbank in California has a new bottled-water policy which calls for city employees to use tap water during official meetings and City Hall proceedings. Other parts of the country too are realizing the huge negative economic and environmental effect those ”healthy” little bottles can have. Inside the Bottle urges that everyone mobilize to prevent consumption of bottled water.

The bottled water industry even have their own website dedicated to helping people sell more of their harmful products.

The Environmental Working Group can help you determine the quality of the tap water in your area.

A trip to the water cooler will feel so much healthier if you don’t make any trash in the process.