By Robert Miller
Staff Writer - The News Times
Updated: 01/31/2009 01:59:00 PM EST
The green revolution can start with simple annoyance.
"I was tired of bringing all those plastic bags back to recycle,'' Marla Duffy said, explaining why she was loading her groceries into fabric bags at Caraluzzi's Bethel Food Market last week. "Plus, these hold a lot more.''
But Duffy, who lives in Bethel, said her family has taken on other new habits -- reusing water bottles, doing the laundry and dishes after 8 p.m., sending the kids off to school with snacks packed in reusable plastic containers.
The same sentiment holds true for Sandie Delany of Redding, who was also shopping at Caraluzzi's last week.
"I hate those plastic bags,'' she said.
Mary Ann Kulla has taken to using the fabric bags as well, although, she admits, she's still getting used to the idea.
"Its a very hard habit to unlearn,'' she said of loading her groceries into throw-away bags.
But on other fronts, Kulla's in the lead. Her family switched to using compact florescent light bulbs several years ago. As the bulbs have finally begun to burn out, she's brought them to the local Home Depot.
"They're the only place around here that recycles florescent bulbs,'' she said, pointing out that those florescent bulbs, while energy savers, contain mercury that should stay out of the environment.
And, like it or not, it's these small things -- small personal things -- that may be carrying the Green Revolution. Especially in hard economic times, when people may have to put off buying new Energy Star appliances, or trading in their old car for a new Prius, the small things become increasingly important.
And, because, often, one small green decision leads to another, they can snowball -- using compact florescent bulbs can lead to thinking about the best way to recycle them. For people trying to promote green habits, it's all for the good,.
"It's going great,'' said Heather Burns-DeMelo of Woodbury, founder of CTGreenScene, a Web site that provides viewers with a cornucopia of ideas on better living through environmentalism. "There are more ideas out there than I can keep up with.''
For example, Burns-DeMelo said, some parents have moved beyond thinking about reducing the waste paper used to wrap their kids' lunches to working with PTOs to do the same on a school-wide basis. Others want to bring locally-grown produce into school cafeterias.
"There's a woman who hopes to establish a leaf composting site for Fairfield County,'' said Burns-Demelo. "Another parent, in Westport, is looking at the use of pesticides and herbicides there.''
Burns-DeMelo said that often, one deed leads to a chain reaction of others. She is also the founder of Fairfield County GreenDrinks, a monthly meeting that allows people interested in the environment to meet socially to discuss their ideas.
"The more people do these little things, the more things get moved up a notch,'' she said.
And it also gives people a sense of involvement.
A Blogger For Any Diet
In another sense, I was very much amused by all the uproar realizing people’s anger was not because of an unpopular stance on abortion or gay marriage, but a grocery store. Now that is funny!!! I had no idea that people were so attached to where they bought their food. Shame on me, though, as food is always chock-full of intimate meaning for people. Lesson learned.
In the wake of the fallout from the DFO articles, this week allow me to offer a more personal piece that I hope will establish a context for what I write, and why I write it; a kind of road map to my inner gastronome.
The first item on the colloquial menu is the term “connoisseur”; this is what I consider myself in the food arena. Think of it as the “who does this guy think he is?” part of my writing. The second proffering is the usefulness of critique and analysis. While criticism nearly always gets a bad rap, I think we need critics and critical understandings of any subject, food included. As subjectivity is common to all of us, being critical can actually help us appreciate even our least favorite ideas by allowing us to see there is always another side to any story. But first, the connoisseur…
Continue reading "A Blogger For Any Diet" »
Posted at 08:24 PM in At Home, Awareness, Commentary, CommunitySupported Agriculture (CSA), Education, Food & Farming, Localvore, Media, Natural Health, Organic, People, Politics, Quandries | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)