Letter to..

Dear Edward Humes,

I just finished reading your book "Garbology" and I have to say: I really enjoyed it, with pain in my heart. I was initially looking for Bea Johnsons book about her zero-waste lifestyle in our university's library but it seemed to have been checked out for the semester. I decided to still go and see if in her section there'd be other books on the same subject and after a while of browsing my eye landed on your book.
I'd like to compliment you on a very well written book, great structure and very comprehensible even for someone who doesn't know a lot of science or statistics. 

Some of the measures I've taken to cut down my waste is to always bring a bottle around, anywhere I go. Businesses that take my bottle and fill it with coffee, I'll give them my money. If not I ask them why not, usually it has something to do with hygiene laws and such, but I always at least try saying it would be more profitable for them to allow people to bring in their own form of packaging, so the business doesn't need to pay for it. Similar to what you said about supermarkets, if everyone were to bring their own bag, stores wouldn't have to spend millions on plastic ones. I like to go to Aldi because they propagate a similar structure. They don't give out plastic bags and you bag your own items. I think this is because Aldi is (correct me if I'm wrong) German owned, and in Germany you'll see stricter guidelines. I recently heard that even Trader Joe's is Aldi owned, and that might be why they like to go for the paper bags. I always bring my own bags to the store (as a European I feel a certain pride in doing that, since many European countries now also include that monetary tax for plastic bags). 

Another thing I've started doing is finding my clothes at Goodwills. Generally the quality of the clothes is higher and I've been able to find some great pieces there. I needed professional clothing for a bank-job and luckily Goodwill came through. I have also started using a shampoo-bar for my hair during the last few months and for feminine hygiene I got a Ruby-Cup which has saved me almost 2 (24 or more packages) years of tampons already. 

Me and my husband moved smaller about a year ago, and I'm trying to figure out which items we really love because most is still in storage (now we share our house with 3 others so we don't need our own utensils and pans but I keep them because we are planning to move out at some point). I started using cloth napkins and I always bring my stainless steel utensils everywhere with me. 

Today (small victory) we had a few guests over and my mother-in-law usually gets plasticware for the guests to eat from. Instead of the plasticware I suggested that we use a few of the (36!!) stainless steel spoons we already had. All we had to do was wash them afterward, saving 10 spoons. 

I'm very interested in making America greener, in keeping the fly-away bags away from the trees and out of birds' stomachs. I'm currently studying Economics at Georgia State University and I'd be super interested in setting up more green initiatives involving and promoting zero-waste lifestyles. I was wondering if you give talks at universities already or if you'd be interested in starting doing that? 

Regards,

Rangadevi Dasi Chakraborty